I would like to speak about something I see often on real estate websites– homepage clutter. Some examples of this are animated gifs, flashing ads, poorly spaced information and just generally bad formatting. Do your site visitors really need to see animated neon for sale signs on your homepage, in a cartoon style no less?
Image is paramount to your credibility and professionalism so your website design is critical. Make sure your website pages all follow the same format and style in general. I'm not saying they need to be framed identically but they should all have the same general feel and appearance. When a visitor navigates from your homepage they should know just by your template design they're still on YOUR website.
With today's faster computers and heavy ram memory capacity folks are opening up more and more browser windows and looking at more than just one topical website. Your visitors are doing this so be sure your site is consistent in its design.
As for the cluttered homepage, you have about 10 seconds to appeal to your visitor and keep their interest. If I'm looking for serious information and I see dancing houses on my monitor I'll quickly hit my back button or close that particular site.
Another problem with clutter is too many images. Photos, gifs and jpegs will add "weight" to your page and this means a longer loading/ opening time for your website. Your website should load into a browser in a fraction of a second. If it takes even 3 or 4 seconds to load you could lose the visitor.
People are impatient especially on the Internet where everything needs to happen quickly for them. Your homepage should be well formatted and information easy to navigate through.
I just completed a website for a consulting client and you will see the difference in their original site and their new site. Ask yourself which one you prefer and why.
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Don't overwhelm them with everything on the first page and get rid of the cheesy imagery. When visitors land on your home page they should be treated to a menu that will navigate them to everything your site has to offer in no more than 3 mouse clicks. That means you need to be able to get your message out quickly. Have your main home search capability on the homepage and a listing search box or a link to the listing search on every page there after.
Try to keep your home page text heavy with good solid real estate information. Try rotating all your own listings in a slideshow from ONE Featured Listing area where each image can be linked to the listing page of information where they can view large image/images of your listings. This is your website, so promote your listings. You can always have a separate search database for MLS listings.
If you are so inclined, your image should appear in the upper left hand side below the header and be the first item in your content sidebar if you have one. Your menu should run across the top of your template just below the header or in your left sidebar. You could have dropdown sub categories in either menu format so navigation is easy to any of your pages from the template. In other words your entire menu should be on every page.
Eventually as your traffic builds you may want to monetize your website in which case you will need side bars to place advertising banners and text links. Consider this when designing your template.
I'll leave it at that for today as this gives you much to think about. Take a hard look at your homepage and ask yourself how it can be improved, then fix it!
