Ten Tips For Choosing A Real Estate Website Designer
How do you make a smart decision when choosing someone to design your real estate website?
Provided you don’t decide to go it alone and do it yourself, here are 10 things to consider:
- Figure out what you want. Don’t call web design companies and ask them, “What can you do for me?” It’s your business. And the fact that you don’t understand the technical side of web design does not put you at a disadvantage. So take charge. Do you want a real estate website that “looks” like a good one (meaning it looks like everyone else’s site), or do you want a website that produces results? The two are often very different. Don’t pay for your website to take up a corner of cyberspace only to act like one of those useless color brochures. The whole point is that it needs to generate a response. It needs to reach out through the computer screen, grab your visitor by the shirt collar and get him to take action! Know exactly what you want to achieve and then ask for it.
- It’s the words that matter! There is no more powerful method of communicating with a market on a large scale than the written word. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the marketing behemoth, AGORA, a $270 million publishing giant. They do it with the written word. You need to find a web designer who can write. And I don’t mean write in the corporate speak you find on most business websites today. I mean the writing that connects with people. Writing that Joseph P. Lunchbox from the mountains of Tennessee finds interesting. Just like if you sat down in a restaurant with your best friend and had a conversation.
- Pay them for results. This is probably the quickest way ever devised to separate the web designers who have their stuff together from those who are just out to pay the bills. The agreement is simple: the better the results, the more they get paid. If things go well, you will probably pay a lot more for your real estate website, but if every dollar you invest returns 2 or 3 dollars, would there be any reason to stop investing your money?
- Make them sell you first. You most likely don’t have the time to contract with a design firm, seo firm, copywriting firm and a marketing firm just to get your website up and running. You’re probably looking for a “one stop shop,” where you can get all of your needs met. So if your web designer is going to deliver the “total package,” ask them to sell themselves to you by answering this question, “Why should I hire you, Ms. Web Designer, over any and every other option available to me?” If they can’t sell themselves, you probably don’t want to give them the responsibility of “selling you” on your website.
- Be open to new ideas. There is more than one way to skin a cat and there are many ways to design a successful real estate website. When your web designer comes up with an idea that sounds weird to you, ask for more information before you dismiss it. Some of the most successful websites out there are the ones that approach the problem (of generating leads and listings) from a slightly different perspective than anyone else.
- Sign on the dotted line. Communication is key to getting a successful real estate website. Issues that begin as small misunderstandings can quickly balloon into very sticky situations and become very expensive for everyone involved. Spend the extra time and effort on the front end to hammer out all of the expectations, details and deliverables – and put it all in writing.
- Negotiating a low fee probably isn’t in your best interest. While you may feel good about negotiating a large discount off your designer’s quoted fee, you will probably eventually regret it. Just put yourself in the shoes of your web designer. How dedicated would you be to a project (one that you really need to pay the bills) where you felt you were “forced” to deliver the same level of results for 50% of your normal fee?
- Be a good client. Good clients trust the professionals they hire. If your trust level isn’t high, keep looking for someone else. Once you sign on the dotted line, don’t spend your time constantly questioning their judgement. Keep your eye on the end goal: a real estate website that makes you more money.
- Don’t assume anything. Assumptions can kill a web design project and make everyone frustrated. Ask questions – lots of them.
- Trust your gut. In the end, never let degrees, qualifications, awards (and even results) go against your gut feeling about someone. You are in the people business. Trust the skills you’ve developed to read people. If you just feel there isn’t something right, don’t ignore it.
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Excellent advice, especially 6. Make sure your Scope of Work is detailed with the functionality you require—-be able to list everything because you can always drop the “dont need right now” from the core “must haves”. The more detailed the SOW, the less likely you will run into extra costs. And find out what extra work is billed at. It is also a good idea to look at their past work, get a timeline and ask if you could contact former clients for feedback.
Ask to meet the team if you can or at least know how many people will be working on your website & their qualifications.
Check if you can get face to face meetings.
The most important thing is to pay upon completion of set benchmarks & keep as big a reserve (final payment)as you can, which is not paid until everything is on your server and it works. Make sure you get at least a 60 day warranty period after launch for bugs.
— jf.sellsius Sep 30, 09:37 PM #