Interactivity - A necessary component for any site.

Interactivity allows your firm to collect customer information, such as what buyers and sellers desire and need from you. A professional web developer who is knowledgeable in real estate is very helpful at designing and incorporating links that route the user through information you want the customer to know or view. He or she understands the programming to create a fully interactive site that draws people in, and encourages them to act. Most importantly, a web developer that has experience helping real estate investors knows how to create site architecture and forms that will best promote your investment objectives, and encourage motivated sellers to contact you.

Online forms provide an easy way to get precise information and feedback through your web site. They may immediately send responses to you via email, or automatically enter user information into a database program. Most people are more comfortable filling in online forms than they are giving information over the telephone. Online form allows them to communicate with you, and allows you to pre-screen potential buyers and sellers.

Some forms that real estate web sites often use include:

- Online Seller Forms, which allows users to provide complete property and financial information;

- Special Report Forms, which captures information before sending out special reports, etc.;

- Ask an Expert Forms, which builds spontaneous relationships with sellers, by answering their questions;

- Wholesaler forms, which compiles a list of potential investors for your properties.

- Online Applications that may be completed online by your tenants or buyers.

What Makes A Good Web Development and Hosting Service?

You want to find a professional web developer that understands the real estate profession. They must also be able to provide you with quality design and hosting. What do you look for when you are selecting a web designer and hosting service?

Keeping the Site Simple: How Simple is “Simple?”

Web service providers can provide you with everything or very minimal. Questions you might ask before hiring a service are:

- How much of the actual web design is done by the provider?

- Do they provide you with a turnkey site, or just a basic site?

- Will you have to finish the site (and site content) yourself?

- How much control over your site will you have after it’s completed?

Up and Running

Ask how quickly your site will be up and running. Web services can take hours or they can take weeks to deliver. To prevent a premature launch of an advertising campaign marketing your site, you must know when to expect the site to be fully operational and functional. Keep in mind that the more complex you make your website, the longer it will take the web service to complete. Custom elements will obviously take longer to create.

Communication: Who Are You?

Even before you approach a web designer you should choose a domain name for your firm. It should accurately reflect your business identity. Your provider will create an email account linked to your domain name.

For example: If your domain name is, “JimBuysHouses.com”, then your email address could be, “jim”@JimBuysHouses.com.” This is much more credible than obtaining an address from a free email provider or ISP.

Follow up!

Implement an autoresponder. Autoresponders answer all requests for information quickly and politely. They are emails sent to site visitors in response to requests for information. Free information, answers to frequently asked questions, or special reports are examples of frequently used website autoresponders. This information is sent in response to clients’ requests in a matter of seconds anytime, day or night. No one needs to be there to monitor or engage it.

An automatic follow-up system that sends messages at predetermined intervals may also be beneficial, and your web service can provide this as well. For example, you may choose to send listing updates to individuals once-a-week, once-a-month, etc. Long-term follow-up is key to getting your message across and keeping your name in front of potential real estate sellers. More sophisticated real estate site providers offer pre-made scripts for you to use.

Size Up Your Market So Your Providers Succeed

For BEST RESULTS, have a focused marketing plan.

Do not believe that if you simply create a great website that you will automatically have a flood of new clients. This is not realistic in such a highly competitive and changing virtual market as selling real estate.

Your website is essential, but you must also market your website online. The better web development firms will create a professional, turnkey site that has the best chance to rise to the top in the search engines. How do they do this?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization helps sellers find you. It allows your site to achieve higher rankings for targeted keywords on prominent search engines. Marketing experts believe SEO to be crucial to online business success, since those surfing the net typically only look at the first 20 results that appear in an online search.

SEO is specialized and constantly changing. It can be a time-consuming exercise, which is best left to professionals who study the latest developments. Professional web developers will assist you with optimizing your real estate web site. They will promote your site online and can help you get more highly indexed.

The best way to find out how knowledgeable the provider is about SEO is to look up their website and see how highly ranked on major search engines (such as Google.com) it is.

List Online

For real estate investors, selling properties from your website is as important as buying them. After all, online advertising is faster, and cheaper, than print or other methods. Higher end online hosting services provide operations that allow you to list your properties for sale directly on your website, and receive responses and requests for more information through interactive forms.

You can achieve this by using a listing manager. Listing managers allow investors to create listings by filling in fields of the online form with the property information.

These web-based forms are highly user-friendly. They typically allow site owners to add, modify, or delete listings from any (local or remote) computer having Internet access. Good listing managers will walk you through the entire process of listing a property, step-by-step. Often, multiple pictures of each property may be uploaded to your website.

Buyers may click on the listed property to get a more detailed view, or on thumbnail shots to get full-sized picture views. In some cases, there is a web-generated map link available to help the user find the exact location of the property.

What Else To Look For in a Web Site Provider and Host

The difference between website growth, success and failure depends on the degree of planning you put into it. Web providers offer many options, or “extras.” They can range from those that target potential clients to meeting client demographic needs. The following are some of the “extras” that your web provider should offer you:

Bi-Lingual Options

The 2000 U.S. Census estimated the U.S. Hispanic population at 12.5% of the total U.S. population, or approximately 35 million. Clearly it is the second largest minority population in the United States. Some areas of the country have large concentrations of Hispanic population. It is imperative to not ignore this group of potential real estate clients.

Look for a web service that can create or provide you with a version of your site in Spanish.

Do not intend to rely on Internet services that automatically translate sites since they are generally very unreliable. They also do not translate images, flash etc.

Flexible Customizing

Be sure you have the flexibility to change or customize your website to reflect your unique business needs. Ask beforehand how much customization is permitted and if there are any charges for changes or modifications. Also check into the expertise and qualifications of the person who will be doing your site customizing.

Who Are You Gonna Call?

Tech support can be paramount. If your website goes down or something goes wrong, you want to be able to speak with live tech support immediately. If the web hosting company does not have a tech support phone number that allows you to personally speak with a live person, don’t place your business in that company’s hands. Be aware that many free and low cost web hosting services do not include this option.

Servers: Dedicated v. Shared

Typically inexpensive monthly fees indicate that your site is probably on a shared server with a reseller account, with hundreds of other sites and many similar reseller accounts. Traffic from the myriad of other sites bogs down the system. Users’ processes or scripts can create server problems, which in turn affect all the other sites hosted on that server. To reduce the possibilities of your site being affected by other users on the system, be sure your provider has a dedicated server.

Monitoring the Server

Any server can “go down” at any time. But, you want to be sure your web host has a monitoring system and equipment that continuously checks server response. A good web host will have automated server software that notifies their technicians of any server slowdowns or impending problems. They will strive to keep downtime not only to a minimum, but so it is nonexistent.

Less than a 99.9% uptime guarantee is unacceptable. A 99% uptime guarantee may sound good, until you estimate that one-percent of downtime per year may translate into over 87 hours or nearly four days!!! Consider one real estate deal may be a profit worth thousands of dollars - you can’t afford to settle for less than 99.9% uptime.

Ready? Set? Get Online Now!

So, you want your real estate business online, but you don't want to pay the high fees charged by web developers. Tune into the upcoming webinar to learn how.

About the Author

Jeff Adams is a speaker, author and real estate entrepreneur. Jeff has bought and sold over 350 investment properties. His automated online systems have helped investors all across the world make millions buying and selling real estate online. His step-by-step system “The Quick Easy Way To Make Millions Buying & Selling Real Estate On The Internet” teaches others how to buy & sell real estate online.