Any online business requires a fabulous website or an app to attract potential clients. There has been significant growth in the number of digital shoppers in the last decade. Earlier, when clients needed information about various properties around their area, they’ll have to book an appointment with agents and have limited options. With the digitization of everything, real estate agents deal via a website, and customers are presented with unlimited options. In terms of business, you should get a real estate business website as all of your competitors to have one, and you want to stay in the league till the end. All of your listings should be visible to a wide variety of customers to enhance your chances of conversions. Realtor is one of the real estate platforms that has gained enormous popularity since its release. On average, Realtor receives more than fifteen million users on its website in a month.
Real estate platform is on the rise as per the report of the National Association of Realtors, more than eighty percent of Older Millennials, more than seventy-five percent of Younger Millennials, and more than seventy-two percent of Generation X find their dream home on a real estate platform. The reason for this popularity goes to one of the most common and feasible features of these websites, Property Listings. It helps the users in finding various information about the property without paying a physical visit to the property. Now with advanced technologies, listings are made more attractive and feasible and include augmented reality, 3D walkthroughs, and video showcasing. In this blog, we will discuss the process of real estate website development by taking Realtor as a reference.
What is Realtor?
Realtor is a real estate listing website and is operated by News Corp.’s subsidiary Move, Inc. Realtor is based in Santa Clara, California, USA. As per the reports, Realtor is on the top of most visited real estate platforms. Realtor was launched in the year 1995 as an information network for real estate agents. However, it was closed and was re-launched in the year 1996 as a real estate listing website. As per Morgan Stanley, it was valued at more than 2.5 billion dollars in the year 2016. Realtor has been affiliated with the National Association of Realtors and has been linked to more than six hundred regional Multiple Listing Services. The Realtor website’s listings are thoroughly verified and are updated continuously. The reason for the success of Realtor is the feasible features and the verified information.
The Realtor operates with a website and a mobile app which have pretty good ratings and reviews. The website offers users a virtual tour of the property along with a calculator where they can simulate their monthly mortgage on a property. The listings are updated in real-time and allow users to search for a property according to the location, pricing, and much more. Users can get in touch with the realtors through the website and discuss the various possibilities. Realtor revenue generation is based on advertisements, and the application and website are free to the users.
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Why Invest in Real Estate Website Development?
Real estate is a business that stays afloat in any circumstances; whether it’s a pandemic or any other situation, the market fluctuates a little but stays ahead of all other sectors. Realtor website development has been on the rise as it gets you significant revenue figures along with massive popularity. Let’s know about some reasons why you should invest in real estate web development.
Qualified Leads
A detailed website with all the relevant information that a user wants from a property listing website will create less confusion, and the users will not call for clarifications. With the help of your website’s analytics, you will be well aware of the interest of the customers and update accordingly. To save time, you can integrate a chatbot into your website that will answer FAQs and will filter out the potential prospects. More than fifty percent of people like to interact on chat. You can craft a set of questions that will help you in filtering the genuine customer. With these integrations, you will only get qualified leads with the exact requirements. More qualified leads mean more revenue generation.
Get the Most of Digitization
Suppose a real estate firm operates offline and has a great business, but its business is only limited to a selected geographical area. On the contrary, a firm with a great website can operate all over the country with verified listings and agents. Make the most of the technology and get a real estate platform to get infinite business.
Alluring Advertising
A website has more options for advertisements; hence, the visibility of your business will increase. There are numerous ways to advertise on a website on the internet. Along with a handsome profit, your business will be recognized by a large number of people on the web.
Search engine marketing (SEM) can rank your website higher on the search engine result pages and attract more leads based on relevant keywords. Pay-per-click will help you in placing your advertisement all over the internet and aware a huge population about your business. With content marketing, you can make more people aware of your website’s various features and functionalities. You can take the advertising game to the next level with the help of affiliate marketing, where you pay people a little amount for promoting your business on their individual platforms.
Must-have Features in a Real Estate Business Website
Functional features are the main attraction of any successful website. Your real estate platform should have some ergonomic features that allow the user to get the most of your website. There are some common features that should be included, such as user profile, Wishlist, attractive design, and much more. However, there are some features that enhance the functionality of your website and deliver ease of access to the users.
Advanced Search Options
A search option with a lot of filters makes the process of selecting the properties easier for the user. Your listings should be carved in such a way that a user should be able to make his/her way through them easily. You don’t want your users to be lost in complex searches. Add filters with advanced parameters such as location, pricing, number of rooms, etc. To take this further, you can integrate a mortgage calculator where users can calculate their monthly payments for a particular property.
Attractive Image Gallery
The users buy the things that visually appeal to them. Ensure that your website has an attractive image gallery of the properties you are listing. Every image should be of good quality and should provide a complete view. You can categorize the images as various parts of a specific property. You will be shocked to know that websites with better image quality have a higher number of potential customers.
Updated Information
Users should be able to believe the information displayed on your website. To ensure the trust between your users and your business, it is mandatory to maintain an updated database. You can add tags on each listing that displays the time and date it has been added. Your website should display the bought or available properties.
IDX/MLS integration
Internet Data Exchange is a software standard or, in other terms, a set of rules and policies that are used to display multiple listing services properties on various real estate platforms. To facilitate updated information to the users, you can integrate these services into your real estate web development process. Remember, when the trust between your users and your website will increases, your potential lead count will increase.
SEO Friendly
You can always ask your real estate website developers to make your website SEO-friendly to attract more qualified leads. SEO-friendly websites are easy to market and enhance visibility. You can perform various techniques to market your website throughout the internet. WordPress delivers an SEO-friendly framework where you can add various plug-ins that will help in performing various SEO techniques.
Mobile Responsiveness
Not all users access websites on their laptops or desktops. Most of the population love on-the-go websites and access them on their mobile devices. Ensuring the mobile responsiveness of your website will attract a ton of users. Value your customer’s behavior and implement changes, and you will have a ton of potential prospects in no time.
Also Read , How to Build a Real Estate App?
Real Estate Website Development Process
The real estate web development process is kind of complex as compare to other service-based website developments. You have to analyze various factors before starting the development process. Conduct diligent market research to know your competitors and their strategies. You will get an idea of how you can do better and attract users to your business. Get to know the expectations of the users of your website. You can either conduct market research by yourself or hire a marketing team that’ll do it for you. Market research reveals all the crucial factors to the real estate website development, such as cost, features to be included, market strategies, user behavior, current trends, and much more.
Now that you are aware of most of the facts, you can carve a functional road map to move ahead in the development process. A functional road map will help you in the long run. Any website has two major factors that will affect its functionality. They are the front end and the back end of the website.
Front end: It is the part that your users interact with on your website. To make it more interesting, you can ask your real estate website developers to integrate an alluring design that will awe the customers. Try to keep it simple yet functional. The front end should have all the features, including the search options. The alignment of content should be pleasing and present your professionalism. Make sure to add all the company’s social media handles that user should find easily on the website. Add a contact form that should ask for the contact information for future discussions.
Back end: It is the part that your engineers or the people who will handle your website’s functionality will interact with. The back end is the core of any website. Your real estate platform should have all the essential integration that is needed for a competitive back end. Your website should have databases with properties to facilitate a feasible real estate marketplace. It can be possible that your real estate web development companies already have a database of properties; you can simply ask the web developers assigned to you to integrate them into your project. The two most popular real estate databases with relevant pieces of information are the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
Technologies
An ultra-modern technology stack can make your real estate web site’s functionality and deliver seamless user satisfaction at the same time. To develop a great back-end and front end of your website, you’ll need programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Your front end of the website can be made more functional with the help of various frameworks and libraries. Your real estate website developers should be familiar with the functionalities and their implementation. A reliable real estate website development company can provide you highly experienced developers. The most preferred frameworks and libraries of the developers are AngularJS, React.js, jQuery, and Sass.
For the purpose of back-end development, your web developers can use programming languages like PHP, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and Node.js. The most preferred frameworks and libraries for back-end development are Express, Django, Rails, Laravel, and Spring.
An IDX integration in your website will take you into the club of successful real estate platforms. It is just a standard for agents as it allows you to showcase your MLS data. However, other than MLS and IDX integration have no extra advantage, but it’s good to have a plus point on your side. You can ask your real estate web development company to integrate it into your website. Some of the most popular IDX website options are Placester.Com, Realestatewebmasters, Realgeek.Com, Realtyninja.Com, WolfNet, etc. If you choose to go for a non-IDX website, the most common non-IDX website options are GoDaddy, Parkbench, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, etc.
You don’t want to have a gloomy website that only shows property listings. You should consider adding a CMS and add blogs to your websites about various topics that help your customers know you or your listings better. The fresh content will propel your website towards achieving a high ranking on the search engine results page.
Integration of a chatbot in your website will fetch you some incredible leads and help you in building connections for your real estate business. It totally depends on your budget whether you want to integrate an automated chatbot that answers all the pre-recorded questions or it simply asks few basic questions to connect to an agent.
For the feasibility of customers, you can add a location feature with the help of Google Maps integration that will help the users to find the exact location of a property. Before visiting the property, the users need to book an appointment, and to facilitate that; you can use various calendar APIs from Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Further, the users will love to calculate their budget and the monthly payments for their new house. To facilitate that, you can integrate a calculator into your website.
After calculating, the users would love to book an appointment and meet the realtor or an agent, and booking an appointment cost a fee. To facilitate easy payments on your website, you should consider integrating a payment gateway in your website. You can choose from PayPal, Braintree, or Stripe systems, but it is recommended to choose the payment gateway that is widely used in your targeted area.
Team Requirements
A team is required to execute the idea of your real estate web development. Please ensure that you perform extensive research before choosing a real estate web development company for your project. Team of developers can come in various sizes and costs as per their expertise and reviews. However, if you decide to go with a freelance team of developers, it will cost you less, but it’s not sure that the product will be as per your expectations. Therefore, you can search for a reliable development partner that can be an agency with a good reputation and highly trained real estate webs developers.
The generic team required for website development consists of a project manager, project architect, UI/UX designers, web developers, and QA engineers. The team would be led by a project manager and assisted by an experienced project architect. Further, the web development team would comprise of UI/UX designers, front-end and back-end developers, and experienced QA engineers. When each stage of development is led by a respective experienced specialist, your chances of getting a website that satisfies your expectations and justifies your expenses will increase.
Monetization
Realtor generates a massive revenue of more than 118 million US dollars annually, and it is because of their successful monetization model. When it comes to realtor website development, a well-planned business model is the key to generate significant revenue figures. Here are some keen insights on the monetization model that popular real estate platforms use.
Sell Services to Brokers and Agents: You can charge various agents to add their listing on your website. It can be done in phases; agents can be charged to rank their listings on top of the search results, they can be charged to opt for a better and improved listing instead of a basic listing layout. Further, you can generate market reports of a property and sell them to the agents, which they will present to their clients for more incredible lead conversion. You can also take this one step ahead and charge for adding more photos beyond the permitted limit.
Advertisements: The most traditional and successful way of generating revenues is through advertisements. You can allow various companies to advertise on your website and charge a fee for it. Most of the real estate business websites are following this simple but effective business model.
Cost Involved in the Development of a Real Estate Web Development
It should have been clear by now that developing a real estate platform like Realtor is not as easy as you think. It requires patience, dedication, and, most important of all, the capital. However, the money involved in your project varies on several factors and can be regulated by your requirements. The best way to develop a website like a real estate business website like Realtor is with custom development. It has many benefits as you get to choose the team, the tech stack, and the design as per your expectations. A web development company that uses the ultra-modern tech stack that could make your website thrive in a complex real estate market will charge as per the skill set of the team.
Next, your cost of development will fluctuate on the number of features you want on your website, among other requirements. In terms of real estate websites, some factors will affect the cost of the development process, such as MLS integrations, uploading of listings data by sellers and agents, advanced listings search, Google Maps integration, and extensive Content Management System, etc. Various successful web development companies like Matellio offers feasible hiring models that are equipped with various benefits. For instance, you could choose a dedicated developer and pay per hour for the work done. You can choose the turnkey project model or hire developers on a time and material basis.
How can Matellio Assist You?
Developing a website like Realtor is complex, but with a focused differentiation strategy, it can be done. Apart from everything, you’ll need a highly skilled web development team, and that’s where Matellio comes into the picture. Our team of proficient real estate website developers is highly skilled and possesses vast professional experience. Our team of diligent developers and experts knows every in and out of the real estate industry and is well rehearsed about the technologies to be used.
We have developed several real estate business websites that our clients and their customers appreciate. The positive reviews and the ratings of those websites depict the skills of our team. With us, you get a thirty-day maintenance period and a choice of flexible engagement models. We can turn your dream of a real estate platform into reality with our years of professional experience and learning. Discuss your idea with our team by booking a 30 min free consultation, and we can get started on your project.
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