A well designed, clear and easy to use website is one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to generate leads for your business, especially if it is built and marketed properly. On the other hand, an inadequate site could very well lose your firm business and allow your competitors to win greater market share – at your company’s expense. But as crucial as it is have an attractive, professionally presented website – it is only half of the equation.

ON THE MOVE

The introduction of an ever wider range of gadgets capable of viewing web content means that now, more than ever, consumers are able to use multiple devices to search for and research property while at home, in the office and on the move.

“Every consumer focused website should be designed to be accessible by any device and consumer facing businesses should ensure their website is responsive and designed with the needs of the user in mind,” said Colin Tankard, Managing Director of Digital Pathways.

Roger Goodwin, Operations Director, Digital Trading, agrees that people’s “thirst for information on the move” has transformed the way consumers use the internet.

He added, “Offering value added information on a mobile friendly site is not optional if estate agents want to attract vendors, convert leads from local searches and survive in this very competitive market.”

But not only are searches made with different operating systems, they are made using different screen sizes.

If your company’s website was built using a desktop or laptop computer, the likelihood is that your might look great on there. Very likely, you might also have an advanced mobile device and you are able to test your site on there also. But there are still a number of agents that do not have mobile friendly sites that are able to adjust with the size of the device it is displayed on.

“There are plenty of agents still out there whose website on mobiles use the same layout as a PC so it is tiny and unreadable,” said James Wyatt of Barton Wyatt.

Take time out to examine your firm’s online data to see where your website’s visitors come from and you will almost certainly find that not all your audience use the same kind of device. Instead, they are almost certainly using a whole host of appliances, including tablets, netbooks, mobile phones, laptops and desktop computers. The big question: is your website friendly with most – if not all – of them?

“Mobile usage is continually increasing and agents must make sure that they are mobile compatible,” said Nick Hubbard of Estates IT.

Using multiple devices

For an excellent user experience your website needs to work well across all devices, Google research found that many people move sequentially from one device to another to accomplish a task, which could include searching through property listings online.

“The vast majority of people begin their property search online and therefore it’s vital that our website is compatible across all mobile devices, in order to allow people to search while on the move,” said Lizzie Leigh of Jackson-Stops & Staff.

With lots of different screen sizes available to view your firm’s website on, it is imperative that users are not required to pinch and slide the screen to view the content on your website. Instead the site should be able to grow and shrink with the size of the device it is displayed on, otherwise called responsive design.

“If a website is not optimised for a mobile device, the user experience is never good, and a bad user experience will force users to click the back button and to look elsewhere,” said Dean Webb, Sales Manager at Resource Techniques.

He added, “The best way to ensure that a website is compatible with any device is to ensure that the website is responsive, and built by a reputable company that really understand responsive website design.”

Responsive design

A mobile website and a responsive site are basically two very different things. A mobile website is a small window which is effectively just a search panel, while a responsive website is one that adapts to all different sized devices while keeping the design of your website consistent.

To help agents achieve their full potential online, a growing number are having responsive websites built to help reduce the amount of panning, resizing and scrolling required to access the information provided on any given page, no matter what device is being used.

“We produce full featured and very attractive sites which are responsive to the device used and change shape accordingly,” said Mike Griffiths, Managing Director at Expert Agent which has developed more than 650 responsive estate agent websites in the last two years alone.

“A responsive design ensures that important messages and editorial content as well as property listings can be viewed properly regardless of the device in use,” he added.

It is widely expected that in a few years, responsive design will be the standard architecture for most websites across the property industry and beyond.

Responsive design can be optimised for mobile, bringing specific content to mobile and tablets and the full site to desktop users.”Jamie Lovie, Intelligent Mobile

“Responsive design can be optimised with mobile users in mind, only displaying specific selected content to mobile and tablet users and delivering the full site to desktop visitors,” said Jamie Lovie of Intelligent Mobile.

She continued, “In our experience, mobile users tend to be on the go and when visiting your website they don’t want to know about the company history, latest news or staff profiles. They want to search for properties, call your office or find local close-by information.

“The key is to make it as easy as possible to complete a search and have clear, quick calls to action.

Because all responsive design websites have “one URL and the same code” regardless of device, it is generally easier and more efficient for Google to crawl and index, “resulting in enhanced search engine listings”, according to Lovie.

“Search engines prefer responsive websites as they deliver a consistent user experience, Google rankings now have a focus on user experience, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO [search engine optimisation],” she added.

Mobile-friendly test

A recent Google study found that people in this country now use an average of three devices, with around one-third of users making at least one monthly purchase using a smartphone. “On average about 50 per cent of all property searches are conducted on a mobile device now,” said Sarah Arbuthnot, Director of Client Services for World Archipelago, property search specialists. “The aftermath of ‘mobile-geddon’ means mobile-friendliness is now a Google ranking signal.”

“The importance of having device specific content means users will find it easier to get relevant search results that are optimised for their devices, which in turn means more engagement and more sales,” she added.

Agents can discover whether their website is ‘mobile friendly’ by Google’s standards by using Google’s ‘mobile-friendly test.’

“Type ‘mobile-friendly test’ into Google and you will find it,” said Adam Clack, Marketing Manager, Technicweb. “If your website isn’t mobile friendly there are a couple of options; get a mobile website built for your current site or get a new ‘responsive’ website built. I highly recommend this [the latter] option.”

Google-compatible

As any tech-savvy individual will know, the way that Google decide where a website will appear within their results page is by using an algorithm, which is made up of thousands of triggers.

But crucially, Google changed their algorithm on mobile devices earlier this year to favourably rank sites that are mobile friendly, making it even more important that estate agents ensure that their website is accessible on all devices.

Clack explained, “What this means is, if you don’t have a website that is responsive or mobile friendly your site effectively won’t rank ahead of someone whose website is. The impact this will have on the traffic your website receives and business your website converts will be massive, especially when you consider 60 per cent of all internet use is now on mobile devices.”

Keep it fresh

The enforcement of mobile friendly sites on businesses by Google makes the next build of your site a very important one, according to Clack, who believes that agents should update their websites every couple of years to help gain a major competitive advantage.

“Generally you should change your website every two years to keep up to date with all the latest trends,” he explained. “If you are in the property industry it is essential to use a property website specialist to build your site due to the complex nature of these websites and all the features that need to be included.”

Agent benefits

It is not just estate agents’ clients who are becoming more mobile and want to access information on the move. Many agents also increasingly want to be able to keep in touch and update information when they are out of the office to make efficient use of their time.

Some very exciting work is taking place in this space driven by some of the more innovative technology providers in this sector.

Dezrez’s system, Rezi, runs on any browser and operating system across tablets, phones and laptops.” Justin Morris, CEO Dezrez

Estate agency software and services expert Dezrez, for example, is rolling out Rezi, a cloud-based fully integrated marketing and property management solution product designed to run natively on any browser and operating system across tablets, phones and laptops with a Wi-Fi or 4G connection, allowing agents to have access to their entire system, including the latest information, while out on the road.

Justin Morris, CEO of Dezrez, said, “Rezi does everything you’d expect it to and a lot more. We’ve incorporated and enhanced all the best features and functionality from our existing software and used robust testing and modern design elements to create a highly flexible and future-proof platform that gives users everything they need to look good and work smarter and faster.”

Agents waking up to the opportunity

With internet traffic from mobile devices rapidly increasing, the conversation around cross-device optimisation is growing louder, with many agents realising that it pays to keep ahead and seeing some great results by catering for the ever growing number of mobile users, many of which may not only become potential vendors or landlords in the future, but are helping some agents generate more business today.

Contacts:

• Barton Wyatt www.bartonwyatt.co.uk
• Dezrez www.dezrez.com
• Digital Pathways digpath.co.uk
• Digital Trading www.digitaltrading.co.uk
• Estates IT www.estatesit.com
• Expert Agent www.expertagent.co.uk
• Intelligent Mobile www.intelligentmobile.com
• Jackson-Stops & Staff www.jackson-stops.co.uk
• Resource Techniques www.resourcetechniques.co.uk
• Technicweb www.technicweb.com
• World Archipelago www.worldarchipelago.com