May
27
A few weeks ago we blogged about what an impatient lot Internet users are, and how a slow-loading website is a sure recipe for online disaster. But there is much more to it than that!
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has just published a new report based on research that reveals that Web users have become even more ruthless and selfish than ever. When people visit a website, they increasingly have a specific task in mind and just want to get that done and leave. This means that today’s Internet users are less likely to linger on and explore your real estate website, and will be wary of offers and other attempts to distract them and try to make them stay.
In the words of Dr Nielsen, “People want sites to get to the point. They have very little patience. I do not think sites appreciate that yet. They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.”
Interestingly, people are becoming frustrated at the widgets and applications that are added to websites supposedly to make them more user-friendly! And now, only 25% of your visitors will arrive on your homepage, compared to 40% in 2004.
So what does this mean for your real estate website?
In a nutshell , you have to make sure that it is as easy as possible for your visitors to find or achieve what they want. Don’t expect them to dig around - they won’t! If people just want to do something on your website and then leave, at least make sure that the few moments they spend there are pleasant and productive. Whether they are hell-bent on running a property search, reading more about the area, finding a map, or whatever, the process has to be as quick and simple as possible, so that when your visitors leave your website, they do so with a feeling of accomplishment and will be more likely to check back again.
Your site has to be well-organized so that visitors can tell at a glance where they want to go. Avoid clutter and keep the options simple and structured. Make sure that the key functions of your real estate website (such as property search and contact form) are readily visible and easy to use. And don’t clutter your contact form with too many boxes to be filled in so that people can focus on what is most important to them - their enquiry!
Similarly, consider using a simple quick search form as standard, with an optional advanced search feature for those users who are prepared to go into more detail. Or if you decide to combine the two on the same page, make sure you clearly highlight the basic input fields to distinguish them from the optional ones. Ideally, you should experiment with different alternatives and see which ones your visitors prefer.
Also, because 75% of your visitors now arrive at a random page from the search engines, it is more important than ever to make sure that the main features of your site are prominently and consistently displayed on every page.
And, while fewer people are landing on your homepage, 25% of your visitors is still too many people to annoy with a fancy Flash intro. If your website has one, get rid of it now! When people want to look at pretty pictures of the area you operate in or of the kinds of homes you offer, they will be much happier clicking through to a clearly labelled photo section than having to endure or ‘click to skip’ your slideshow each time they visit (and if they want to listen to music, chances are they already are).
The overarching message here is that now, more than ever, your real estate website has to be about your visitors and about helping them to quickly accomplish what they set out to do. Ignore that advice at your peril!
May
13
What’s the future of SEO? Jeremy Schoemaker says there’s none at all.
Apparently intent on starting a heated debate, he writes:
My honest answer is there is no future in SEO. From my experiences I am seeing Google SERPS results strongly influenced by Google Toolbar data, Google User history, and Google Analytics data. Google’s combination of SEO and social voting via toolbar/history/analytics will continue to sway more in the realm of social voting. I feel this technology will only get better. I don’t think anyone can argue that core SEO has gotten less valuable over the years and I see that trend continuing.
Well, sorry to disappoint, but SEO is here to stay. It’s just going to be done differently, but for as long as there will be search engines to get ranked in, there will be things you can do to get better rankings. It’s true that traditional SEO is on the way out, but it’s not about to die. SEO is going to evolve. And very drastically too!
The shift to social voting
In the early days of the Internet, getting top spot was easy if you knew which buttons to push. Search engines were pretty primitive back then and had a hard time figuring out what your page was about. In fact, they practically asked you to tell them what keywords you wanted your page ranked for (keyword metatags anyone?) and gaming your way to a great ranking was child’s play.
Modern search engines are way smarter. A lot of the old tricks don’t work anymore and SEO has adapted accordingly to keep up. But now the whole SEO industry is facing a chasm - the shift to social voting, as Jeremy says.
In a nutshell, the people who visit your website are getting an increasingly large say in determining how well you rank in the search engines. Whether your visitors vote for you tacitly by clicking your link in Google’s search results, directly via the Google Toolbar, or endorse your site publicly by writing about it in their blogs - and these are but three examples - the search engines are going to be watching to see what the public is interested in so that they can return the most relevant search results.
Social Media Marketing - The new face of SEO
Using blogs, podcasts, video, and all the latest Web 2.0 technologies to promote your website is going to be vital for those who want to remain in the game. And the emphasis is going to increasingly be on providing the great content that your visitors want - meaning high relevancy, good writing, strong branding. Once upon a time you had to choose between optimising a web page for the Google, or for your audience. Now that the people have power, the way to search engine success is going to be through your audience - which can only be a good thing.
This new way forward is called Social Media Marketing, and Jeremy Schoemaker has unwittingly given you a perfect example of how it works.
As I write this, there are probably dozens of keyboards - maybe more - tapping away in response to the heated debate that Jeremy started with a single, craftily chosen blog post. Some will be commenting on Jeremy’s blog page itself, others in their own blogs. People will be e-mailing his post to friends and colleagues, or discussing it in fourms. And as the discussion rages, Jeremy is in for a boatload of attention and links back to his site.
Of course, as the visits, links, votes, Diggs and what not come rolling in, Google and company are going to be watching. And when they realise that people are interested in Jeremy’s site, they will reward it with more status and better search rankings.
You see, claiming in his blog that SEO is dead is actually a great bit of SEO Jeremy has done for himself!
Of course, the benefits of Social Media Marketing go way beyond search engine rankings, because it has the power to bring you a stream of visitors to your site by other means too. And on the other hand, certain elements of traditional SEO, not directly related to Social Media Marketing, that have to do with making sure the search engines have an easy time crawling and figuring out your website are not likely to disappear any time soon.
It’s not SEO that’s dead, but those websites that fail to recognise the need to keep up with the times. So the next time you’re talking to someone who’s proposing to help you with your search engine rankings, you’d better make sure they know what they are talking about and you’re not chatting with a dodo!
May
5
Arabian Horses in Spain
Filed Under Our Latest Design work | Leave a Comment
We are pleased to announce the recent launch of a new web site Risco de las Vegas for Stan and his family at Grupo Los Menceyes displaying one of the most prestigious collection of Arabian Horses in Spain. Situated in Granadilla de Abona in the south of Tenerife, Risco de Las Vegas offers a wide range of Arabian horses for sale and pride themselves on their outstanding Horse Collection..
We wish them well in their business and are confident that their world class horses will be much sought after by the elite in the Arabian Horse World.
May
1
Gone in 4 seconds! A slow real estate website could be your doom
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Saying that no one likes a slow-loading website is a huge understatement. In one study of online shoppers done in 2006 by Akamai and JupiterResearch, 33% said that 4 seconds is all they are prepared to wait before abandoning a retail website.
Now it may seem a little hasty to automatically apply the 4 second time limit to a real estate website, but you can safely assume that if your real estate website takes much longer to load, your visitors are very likely to leave.
Your website may be loading slow without you even realising!
How can that be? Simple. Your typical web browser stores images and other parts of the websites you visit on your computer’s hard drive for the very purpose of quickly loading websites you visit often without having to download everything from the Internet each time. This means that since your real estate website is probably one you visit regularly, you could very well be viewing much of it from a copy stored in your PC, giving you the false impression that it loads fast, when the real experience for a new visitor could be very different indeed.
Fortunately, there is an easy test you can do by forcing your browser to reload your page from the Internet so that you can see its real performance. Just visit the page on your real estate website that you want to test and hold down the Control key and then click on Refresh in Internet Explorer, or hold down Shift and click Reload in Firefox.
What can you do to make your website load faster?
Get a faster web host: One of the most common causes of a slow loading website is that the server it is hosted on is not up to the job, so your hosting service is the first thing you have to test if you are having loading time problems. While moving to a better web hosting service could solve the problem, proper web design is paramount to giving your visitors the fastest experience possible. The following points are just some of the things that a professional web designer will be looking at to make sure your real estate website has what it takes to make it in the speed department.
Optimise your images: While it is not always practical to cut down on the number of images on a real estate website, you can make sure they load as fast as possible by optimising them for the web. A common mistake is to take photos of properties and upload them to your website without making sure they are as small to download as possible.
Avoid unnecessary bells and whistles: Flash animations and other fancy widgets may look nice on your website, but if they take too long to load, few people will stick around long enough to see them anyway. If you use any of this, make sure it is well optimised and test to see how it affects your website’s loading time.
Keep your site design simple: We said simple, not plain! In fact, an experienced web designer should be able to build you a professional-looking real estate website that has a clean underlying structure that allows it to load quickly. It is also very important to make sure that the HTML code (the backbone of your website) is also efficiently written for best results.
So remember, speed is one of the keys to keeping the visitors you get to your website. Go ahead and test your website as we describe above, and see how it measures up. If you want to learn more about how to improve your website’s loading speed or otherwise make the best of your real estate website, please contact us at Sorted Sites for a free and no-obligation consultation and assessment of your needs.
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