Template Based Real Estate Websites

Whether you are just getting into real estate or have been in it for years I’m sure you’ve seen the myriad of template based real estate websites out there. They’re quite literally everywhere. Touted by the template design companies for their ease of use and built in content, template based RE websites exploded online in the early part of the decade.

In this post we’re going to go over primarily the cons of template based real estate designs and show why they, for the most part, can do more harm than good when it comes to marketing you, your services, and your properties online.

The Basics
Why are you getting a website? What purpose does a website fill when it comes to your real estate business? If you can’t answer those questions take a few moments to peruse our site as it will give you a wealth of free information as to what your website should do for you. Though I will gladly give you a real quick overview here.

Your real estate website should allow you to market you, your services, and most importantly, your properties, to a much larger, BUT more targeted market. You’ve probably heard the statistics “…70% of all home buyers and sellers go online first…”. Without a website that ranks on the FIRST PAGE of search engines such as Google how are you accessing those 70% of buyers? You’re not. Now on to design…

Why real estate templates are in a word: bad

A couple of the key components that the template based designers promote about their sites are some of the most detrimental. In fact one of the primary companies out there actually promotes themselves with tags similar to this:

Includes hundreds of themes
Special content
Real estate reports
Listing management program

First let’s discuss their hundreds of themes that give you different layouts and colors. The problem is these are the same layout combinations that, literally, thousands of other agents are using. What’s setting you apart? What’s making your valuable visitors stick? You will never see these sites advertise their bounce rates (the number of people who leave a website without going to any other pages - a critical number in real estate)

They offer an example site, listed as “the most impressive website”, here are some of those stats:

13.91%
Code to Text ratio. You want MUCH higher. Essentially it says the home page is nothing but code.
VERY bad for search engines.

52.71 seconds
That’s the amount of time it takes to load the HOME PAGE on a dial up connection.
17.49 – The time it takes on a DSL / Cable modem connection. Those two connections represent around 90% of the people that will come to your site.

On average you have less than 8 seconds to capture someone’s attention to keep them on your site. New information suggests its down to 3 seconds. How much business are they missing because their site takes so long to download?

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content, in the simplest of terms, is any information, or content, that can be found elsewhere on the web. Google and other search engines give value to the first site that it finds the original content on. The flip side of this is the search engines can actually  devalue websites that are also using the same exact content. It is built into their algorhythm to discard or give less credit to sites it considers “scraper” sites. The “real estate reports” and “special content” on many of these template bases sites offer the same canned content used on thousands of other sites and does you and your real estate business absolutely no good. It can actually do you harm if you are one of those thousands of sites utilizing those “special reports” that are duplicate content from other sites. Google especially (which Google has the largest market share) likes to see fresh new content that they can deliver to people using their search engine. Not the same content recycled over and over again.

Cost
If a company is going to charge you a small “setup” fee and a monthly fee to “design” your website, RUN. If it says “Websites from $29 a month” or “websites from $99 a month” you now know that this is a template site where they flip a switch and voila you have a online brochure that looks just like everyone elses that most likely no one will ever see. Lets be honest real estate, especially online is competitive. If you’re being quoted less than $2,500 for a real estate website than chances are you might just be throwing your money away. Most real estate websites, to be effective, need to be a minimum of 25 CUSTOM pages. Not canned information and templates. It should also have the ability to offer your listings in a search engine friendly manner and offer IDX/MLS integration within your site, not some frame. Definitely do your homework when it comes to price.

How to check If your site is a template or does not have search engine friendly code

Go to your websites home page and with your mouse, using the right click button, click in the middle of your site, but not on an image. A small window will open up with a bunch of different options. Using your mouses left click button, click on “View Page Source” a new page will then open up with what is the “code” of your website. If you see a lot of things that look like this<td> and <tr> then your site is very likely a template and is not very search engine friendly. If however you see primarily <div> tags you might be in luck as the site might be designed using CSS instead of tables. However the caveat of that is that it could be laden with a lot of unneeded images that can cause the same problems as having an all table site. Now that might be getting a little too technical, but it is a 10 second check that can give you some insight into your website.

If you currently do not have a website than make sure that your designer uses a tableless CSS / XHTML design. The better designers will all use this method, but many, because its easier to use tables, will not use a tableless design. Especially if they are using a template based design in which to create your website. Creating a tableless design takes much more skill, its a longer process, and requires extra testing to make sure it fits into all browsers. However the rewards FAR outweigh the time it takes to do it right.

If you’re thinking about redesigning your website, or even getting a website for the first time, definitely look at all your options. Yes real estate template designs are going to be cheaper because there is no work involved for them. However, when it comes to reaching 70% of your target market the reality is it most likely just wont get it done. Even if you do manage to spend the extra money (it costs more to SEO a template site) the bounce rate can be astronomical. We hear from realtors all the time that tell us they are getting traffic to their site, but when asked how many leads they are getting its 1 out of every 500 or so unique visitors. That is unacceptable in ANY industry, but especially in real estate and during this current market.

A complete Custom website and SEO package to make you the dominant leader in your area doesn’t have to cost a fortune, but it is mandatory if you want to make sure that you weather any real estate market.