Business Website? Yay or Nay

[Amber Forkey]

Of course when you become licensed initially there are so many to-do lists and articles to read about what you should do first, it can become very overwhelming quickly. A topic of discussion I have seen on a lot of the "you definitely want this" lists, is your own personal website. The brokerage I am with has their own already but my goal to develop my own brand and would like to have a website that reflects that mission. My biggest question is whether or not agents have found their website to be useful and if so, did they hire out the building of it or did they design it themselves. Please note I have very little website building experience but can navigate my way around sites like Squarespace rather well. 

[Jason Shackleton]

@Mark Shaver

Thanks for the insight on my site's analytics. These numbers are going to be similar across the board for most startup type businesses. I have put 0 into paid marketing for this particular business site you have broken down. I also have another ai site that I now use for submissions.

I personally won't consider paying someone 10x to create a slightly more visually appealing site with a better click through rate. If I were to scale this up, I would rather spend that same 10x in a sales funnel driving 10x more people to the site. I can only assume you are in the high end website building business.

If I were to make the most beautiful website in the world with a 100% customer conversion rate and no one ever saw it what does it matter?

Personally when I found my agent it wasn't because of his website anyways. Websites don't make sales. The call to action and conversation afterwards makes sales. The only piece of data I took from his site was his phone number and I haven't been back since. It was his knowledge and local real estate investing experience that led to him gaining my trust over the phone, then in person that led to 3 commissions from me and many more in the future.

There are many different ways to get to the same place .If you are able to do it by building higher quality websites then that's great for you. If one already has volume that is a good thing for them to do at that point. However for someone just starting out as an agent it likely is not the best advice to give. They likely have a very limited budget and can more quickly see a ROI and build a list of potential clients with paid ads.

Now if said agent was further down the road and has some money to toss around sure why not build the brand at that point. How does one build a brand worthy site with next to no money?

I was at a marketing conference last year and one of the speakers did the marketing for the most successful real estate agent in the U.S. He barely mentioned website development. It was mostly all about ads leading to a sales funnel, leading to a form to weed out people etc. At the end of the funnel the agent only received calls for those that are ready to buy now. This marketing system would also cost an arm and a leg and likely not be the best for a new agent as they woulden't close enough deals.