The notion of built it and they will come has not died. It has just gotten a bit more sophisticated. As web 2.0 has assaulted our senses with audio, video, interactivity, & connectivity, the playing field has only gotten messier.
Without a plan, without a strategy, & without a slippery slope that leads consumers down into your machinery is a big waste. Like a flume of search engine smoke, traffic is burned and pollutes your pocket book as it travels to brochure style websites with little or no conversion to leads.
For some reason many have let the net confuse them that they do not have to sell or market. Putting a website out there with the hopes of massive response just won't happen. Especially when the consumer can easily find another realty website. Your website should have multiple elements that together are part of many other pieces of the puzzle like traffic, lead capture, lead conversion, lead incubation and contract.
Each one of these must add up to a final objective, a SALE.Even more depressing than pages dropping into the supps, is a business running on only a couple cylinders. Have you stopped mailing? Have you stopped telemarketing? Have you stopped offline prospecting? Just because the web makes it so you don't have to?
There was a book from many years ago called the 7 Habits of Highly Successful people. One of the key principles from the book is start with the end in mind. When one does not have traffic it is easy to obsess on traffic. However, the most important piece is to obsess on lead incubation as those are warm bodies that you need to sell.
Utilizing what in essence is a digital brochure will not cut the cake anymore. Figure out your objective and the path to that goal. How can you create a slippery slope such that the leads come to you in mass?
Our "brochure" site had been online for 12 months with limited success. The change to a fully goal driven website worked wonders. Our traffic isn't huge but the conversion rate is great.
Web design people work with visitor numbers, sales people work with conversions and it's selling that matters to us.
Posted by: Paul B | July 26, 2007 at 08:28 AM