Too often real estate agents websites are done by friends or developers that have no business developing websites for real estate agents. This is your window to the world and your most important marketing tool going forward.
The simple fact is most of these sites are useless when it comes to attracting search engines and all too often do not work in a variety of browsers under a variety settings.
These things MUST be considered when developing a website.
Pixel Dimensions
Pixels are basically little dots on your monitor. All computers that are sold today have a minimum pixel resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels displayed on the screen at once. However in the past 800 by 600 was the standard.
As the years go by 1024 x 768 will go by the wayside and a larger format will be standard. Here are some of the latest usage statistics of what people all over the world have as their resolution: How do we know these figures, because every time a visitor comes to a website we have to know just about every setting the user has so we can display your website correctly. (Source EchoEcho – 300,000 users from 500,000 different websites)
54% 1024×768
28% 800×600
10% 1280×1024
03% 1152×864
01% 640×480
Browsers
Up until recently Microsoft Internet Explorer domainated the market, but a browser developed by some teenagers using the Mozilla Open Source browser has created a worldwide stir – Firefox is without the doubt the best PC browser on the planet, it is safe, secure and has had over 20 million downloads in less than the 4 months since it released. There are also the Mac browsers, including the excellent Safari browser, also you need to consider the Mozilla and Opera browsers.
Your website will need tweaking for each of these browsers and you MUST make sure that your developer understands this, there is nothing more frustrating for a Mac user than web sites that do not work correctly. If you have never tested your site with these browsers then you can be sure that they will not work. Most people will just go away and never come back to your site, so you may be losing business without knowing it.
PS: Mac users can be very fickle – but they are a growing minority so discount them at your own peril
Downloads
Firefox (PC only)
Internet Explorer (PC only)
Opera Browser (PC only)
Safari (MAC only)
Meta Tags
So many sites do not have title, descriptions and keywords set up in the source code for all of the pages on their site, including property pages. This should be automated and you should be able to monitor and update these yourself. The less you need a developer the better it is for you. Search engines send robots out to web sites all over the world and if you do not have your pages formatted correctly then they will just ignore you. This leads to poor performnce as over 80% of your visitors should come from search engines particularly Google. If you are not setup properly your site will fail, it is that simple. It only takes a few minutes, go to your home page and click VIEW – SOURCE from your browser menu, you should see a title, description and keywords for this and other main pages setup. If you do not, wrap your so called developer over the knuckles and get them to fix it immediately.