How Web Design can make the difference between you and your peers

Don't build your own site
It is important to note in this day and age that you should not go about building your own site for all the time and technology it takes but to farm that out to a web designer, if you call a local college or look over bulletin boards in the local grocery store you can probably find someone that can do this for a reasonable price. Your job is to give direction to the designer and then let him or her build and finally let you test the site.

Domain Name and Web Hosting
It is critically important to have your own domain and have your hosting done by a reputable web service host. Anyone that has an internet account gets free web space but the perception to the customer in this day and age is that a pro would have there own domain. The price of domain name and hosting is very low. I spend $10 for a domain name and $10/month to have my hosting done. There are several advantages to having the hosting besides just the look of the name to customers the first is that search engines are more likely to index you well and higher in the rankings, the second reason is that you will probably get a lot of extra services such as auto responders, databases, newsletter services and of course lots of email addresses. This should not be a difficult thing for a novice to set up and I know that my host has been really great for having Frequently asked questions all over the website in case there are any problems.

Clean Design
A clean design to me means that there is no obstruction, it is not a good thing for a Realtor to have a big flash site with graphics zooming in and out of view because the audience is looking for a reason to be at the site not to wait to see how cutting edge a site is. The site design that I like best for marketing is the style I have used for this site with a logo at top, sidebar on left and right, and with a wider middle or perhaps without the right sidebar

Compare with the best
In deciding how you would like your site setup look at some of the more popular sites that have spent millions on site design and web usability; google, cnn, msn, and sites within the industry like realtor.com and mls.ca perhaps even other Realtor sites will help and you will be able to determine what is the most practical and the most important Most importantly take off your Realtor hat and concentrate on how the site looks as a consumer

Top graphic
Now that you know the basics of how you want your site to look it is important to figure out what is most important when people scan a site for the first time. The order is like this top graphic, then headline, then sides of the page and finally the text in the middle. This will show you the importance of that top web graphic as it is the first thing a person will see. On this site I have created the top graphic by taking two pictures of people on the phone and a keyboard in the middle the text only hides a little bit of the person on the left and a bit of the keyboard. In creating the graphic I was most interested in projecting communication with two people and technology with the keyboard. Look at other sites to see how you are struck as a consumer by the graphics.

Sidebars
The sidebar on your site will have two purposes, navigation and a form to subscribe to your email newsletter. The newsletter subscripting is critical because anyone that goes to your site will leave and hopefully they are so compelled by the content that they will give a name and email address so that you can send them information and start to build the relationship that will lead to a sale. There are other pieces of information that you can include on the sidebar such as links to your weblog or listings on MLS .

No Frames
Back in the mid to late 90's pages with frames were very popular. The way a framed page works is that the navigation on the left side is a static page that has your navigation and when you click on a link then it will put that "page" in the right side frame. This seems at first glance to be a good idea as it seems logical not to have to build that side every time but in actual fact it makes it a difficult site to navigate for a search engine. You will find over time that search engines will be the free way for you to get most of your visitors as people do a search in google for instance and then start clicking through the sites looking for someone that can help them....so be nice to the search engines and skip the frames.

Bookmarkable site
You have a much better chance of getting interest from a visitor to your site if they bookmark it to visit again. Since the odds are low that everyone that visits your site will make an immediate decision to buy or sell their house with you it is important to have them come back. There are a few pieces of information that you can put on a site to make it bookmarkable such as area crime stats, leisure centers in the area or city, mortgage rates and even things for kids such as coloring pages as kids are one of the big motivators for people to sell their house and buy another.

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