As a real estate agent, you can’t afford not to have an online presence, whether it’s just a simple new home blog or a one-page listing, or a full-blown website. Done correctly, your site will serve as your online portfolio and business card—a way for your clients to (hopefully) find you. However, it’s not enough to just set up a site. You need to make sure that you can be found, and that your clients will find your site useful and usable.

How Important is Usability?

Usability is the experience of your visitors as they interact with your website. It is that aspect of the site’s design that makes it user-friendly and encourages your reader’s pleasant and stress-free visit. The more usable your site is, the higher the chances of your visitor coming back or taking an all important action—from subscribing to your e-newsletter to calling you up for an appointment.

A website with no importance placed on usability frustrates visitors and drives them away. After all, there are hundreds—if not thousands—of other real estate websites out there, and it’s all too easy to click the back button if they don’t find your site easy to use.

Tips for Making Your Site Usable

There are many factors that increase your site’s usability. Here are just a few of them:

• Start with the design. Make it as simple and as uncluttered as possible. Remove extraneous and unnecessary materials that distract your reader’s attention, such as images, videos, or Flash presentations. In arriving at your site, your readers must clearly see what you can offer, them so that you can draw them deeper into your pages. Making your design simple will also reduce loading time.
• Make the site functional. A usable site is functional and effective. When visitors land on your page, they know what to do and where to go. This means that your navigation should be clear; your listing can easily be found, and your contact information clearly available. When you meet your readers’ needs or answer their questions, they are likely to come back.
• Use studies on eye tracking to improve your site’s navigation. According to current eye tracking technology applied to real estate websites, online visitors liked simple headings that they can identify at first glance. Some examples include “Buyers,” “Sellers,” and “Local Information.” They are also likely to click on links leading towards consumer education resources, such as the most common mistakes made by buyers, the cost of living in the area, local weather, information about schools and other institutions, guides to closing costs and tax credits, calculating the mortgage, and articles on how to process loans.
• Provide what your online visitors need. Put yourself into their shoes; when you go online to find a real estate website, what do you need to know? Among the things you should include in your website are listings, keyword-rich educational content, and lead generation systems. By having regular updates on what visitors like to read, you will encourage them to visit your site time and again.

Test Your Site’s Usability

One way to test your site’s usability is to have your friends visit it. Have them find your listings, request a free report, or look for the buyer’s section. Get their comments afterwards. Were those resources or pages easy to find? How was their experience going around your site? Was there a point when they felt like giving up?

Your friends represent your potential customers. If your friends can’t use your site, then neither can your customers, and you will lose an opportunity to connect with them. Make sure their journey is pleasant by having a usable site, and you will be rewarded with a loyal following and, eventually, a sale.

In short, IDX (or Internet Data Exchange) is what makes your website MLS (Multiple Listing Service) capable.  In a lot of cases, IDX is put on websites using a framed environment which gives the user a chance to search the MLS but doesn’t provide any SEO value whatsoever.  Not only is this ineffective, I see it as ugly and clunky to navigate across some browsers.  The best way to go about putting a clean easy to use MLS search on your site is a fully integrated 3^rd party IDX solution.

These days, there are a lot of these 3^rd party IDX providers out there.  This makes it tough to select one, especially if you are just starting out.  The things you want to consider is usability, search functionality and SEO friendly architecture.  A good IDX provider will offer a solution that will add MLS search directly into your website (not using a frame) and offer features like: custom search, advanced search, maps, email alerts, etc.  The other important requirement is that the listings be indexable.  This means that search engine spiders can easily find their way to the detail portion of the MLS search through well structured linking architecture.

I recommend Displet [dis-play].  Displet does a bang up job in providing IDX solutions with everything I mentioned above, powered by IDX/RETS technology. Displet has a few different solutions depending on your exact need.  Their hosted solution drops right into your current site, and can be made to work with  WordPress, Joomla, & Drupal.