Make It Easy For Them!

What makes Apple's iPod so much more successful than the many other good mp3 players out there?

Two things: good marketing, and product usability.

These two things are inseparable. If you drive all the traffic in the world to your website, but it's cumbersome and difficult to use, they will leave in droves, and you will have accomplished nothing. If you spend a fortune on creating the most user-friendly product that your client would want but you don't tell anyone about it, you've just wasted your money.

So let's look at what it means to make your Real Estate website user-friendly...An excellent resource for all things in the field of Usability is Jakob Nielsen's site useit.com.

What you WON'T find on his site is a pretty webpage with a lot of pictures and flash animation. In fact, there isn't a picture to be found. It is a very utilitarian page--just text links--but very easy to use.

Now I know that a Real Estate website is different. Images are part of creating a distinct brand. But before you shell out hundreds of dollars to add lots of flash to your website, think about the purpose that it's going to serve. Is it going to make your site look more professional or enhance your brand, or is it going to slow the load times of uses who have slow connections and frustrate people? Every element on your site should be well thought out.

According to the article Usability 101, usability has 5 key components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

From Usability 101:

Why Usability is Important

"On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either."


Usability and marketing are two sides of the same coin--both are vital for your business if you are going to succeed. I'll talk about what makes for good usability and good marketing in future posts...

Don't Lose Traffic to Your Competitors

Are you losing business because of a poorly designed site? Have you ever sat down next to someone as they visited your website for the first time? If not, you might be in for a surprise...

This article is not specific to Real Estate, but it highlights the importance of usability in a website. If you aren't designing your site with your clients in mind, you ARE losing business to your competitors...


Good Web design can mean good business

By Amy Zipkin

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The Web site for Sophia Brodsky's day spa in Philadelphia, the Body Klinic, was pretty rudimentary until a college student walked into the spa a little more than two years ago with an irresistible offer.

As she tells it, the student, Nathaniel Stevens, said that for $10 he would take her existing site and redesign it to drive traffic to her salon. If she got more business, they agreed, he would get additional money. Brodsky, a Russian immigrant, whose interests run more to cranberry facials than the Internet, thought why not.

Brodsky now maintains three Web sites and estimates that they have brought in thousands of dollars in business. "Now," she said, "people are coming to my Web site daily."

But small business owners like Brodsky who have a Web presence are still a minority. In its first survey of small business Web sites last April, Jupiter Research found that just 36 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees had a Web presence.

Still, the Web as an alternative yellow pages is drawing increased attention. The Kelsey Group, a market research company in Princeton, New Jersey, estimates that sales revenue from Internet Yellow Pages and wireless and other searches will increase to $13 billion in 2010 from $3.4 billion in 2005.

Those small business owners who venture online say the experience is generally worth it, though the learning curve may be steep.

Recognizing this, online advertising companies with names like Yodle, Weblistic, Webvisible and ReachLocal are springing up to help manage the sites.

The Web was not on Brodsky's mind when she put down $165,000 in 2004 for a spa that grossed about $6,000 a week. The spa was not even computerized at the time.

Experts generally advise small business owners not to establish a Web presence unless they have time to keep it updated. Jean Pratt, assistant professor of information systems at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Clair, said, "If someone doesn't maintain a Web site, it does become more of a detriment because competitors are keen on making theirs part of a marketing strategy."

A static site may damage the credibility of the business, she added.

Jody DeVere, president of askpatty.com, an automotive advice site for women that started in 2006, said she was determined not to let that happen.

To avoid spending $50 to $200 an hour for a Web developer, she spent several weeks learning how to post feature articles, blog and tag entries properly. To gauge the site's effectiveness, she enlisted a group of 20 women, including her daughter and two daughters-in-law, forwarded links and asked for comments.

The reaction was positive, though at least one said she was not sure what she was viewing, asking, "Is the site geared for women's questions about the car business?"

Steve Krug, author of a Web usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think," says that what looks great to a business owner may be totally lost on a user unfamiliar with the site.

He suggests business owners watch their site being tested, devoting several hours a month to the effort.

That's a feeling K. Rudolph knows well. She runs Native Intelligence in Bethesda, Maryland, selling computer security and security awareness training courses. The company started a Web site about a decade ago but took a workshop based on Krug's book in 2003.

During his presentation, Krug singled out her site's graphics and asked participants if they knew what business Native Intelligence was in. The first person to answer thought bright colors and cartoons meant it was designed for children.

"Watching someone use your site for the first time can be a humbling and enlightening experience," she said.

Rudolph and her then business partner spent about three quarters of their time over the next two weeks revamping the site, trying to answer questions Krug posed like, "What can I do on this site?"

Now Rudolph sets aside several hours a month to watch as many as three users in succession navigate links on the site. She enlists friends and acquaintances to cast a critical eye.

Native Intelligence has prospered since the site's revamp in 2003. The company's gross income rose to $1,094,000 in 2006 from $483,000 in 2003, although Rudolph says that she does not know how much of the increase was due to the Web site improvements.

Brodsky said that she used to favor winning customer recognition by developing new product offerings. But Stevens, who was just starting an Internet company, showed her that a versatile Web presence was also crucial. Stevens created two Web sites that mirrored one another. One, www.thebodyklinic.com, features a local telephone number, with area code, that had a picture of a brownstone front and clickable foliage that leads to the spa's various services. The site has generated a 10 percent increase in sales since Brodsky - now a Web convert - redesigned it in October, she said.

Its not quite mirror double, www.thebodyklinic.net features a toll-free number and was intended to track calls. He and Brodsky agreed that she would pay him for each individual click. Her phone calls on that line are monitored so she can tell how much customer traffic the site is generating.

Her Web budget has grown to about $1,000 a month, Brodsky said, but her weekly gross is now $8,000 to $10,000 a week, up from $7,000 in the past two years.

A sign of the times?

My First Website and What You Can Learn From It

I happened to have reason to want one of the images on it, and I pulled up the very first webpage that I ever built today...Boy have I learned a lot about website design, SEO, etc since I first built that page!

I'm almost too embarrassed about it to show you, but since I see my clients' sites day in and day out, I suppose it's only fair...So here it is: My very first website and please keep in mind when you look at it, that I was probably only 19 or so when I built it, and I added the last picture to it before I came to work for Z57.

So don't laugh too much...

I'm exposing my past website blunder because it is a perfect example of what NOT do when designing a web page. If you don't know what I mean, check out The Top Ten Worst Website Mistakes that I posted on my site a while back, for a refresher in the basics of good design.

Incidentally, I pretty much just keep that old site around as a reminder of what I have done, and where I've gone from there.

Blogging and SEO

This is just a quick post because it's about 4:00 am and I'm still awake reading about Search Engines and SEO.

I used a tool from yahoo to check how many links I currently had to my website KimMorlan.com and I was surprised at how many of them had come from my blog. Why am I telling you this? Because I really haven't been actively linking to pages on my website, yet my blog of course is a great source for links to my site.

You should also read this article that explains the differences between the various Search Engines. It's really good. Here's another page he's written, with a section (you have to scroll down) called General Theory on SEO and the Web.

Ok well it's now approaching dawn...I think it's time for bed...

How to List a Home So It Sells Fast in a Down Market

Here are some tips to sell those listings faster...

U.S. median home prices have been falling and the inventory of existing unsold residences rising. About 4.6 million homes are currently on the market. That's nearly a third more than a year ago and it would take 9.6 months at the current sales pace to sell them all, according to the National Association of Realtors.


Make sure listings are priced appropriately.

- Keep your seller's expectations realistic regarding price and what upgrades are needed to make the home marketable in the slow sales environment.

- Don't use dated comparables. A home that sold a month ago was probably put on the market 5-6 months ago, before the downturn, and doesn't accurately reflect what the home should be priced at today

- Sellers need to expect to pay for expertise, experience and aggressive marketing (making now a bad time for agent commission discounts). If anything, now is the time to pay an extra commission, especially to buyers' agents. In this market, it is often taking two good agents to make a deal go through.

- Buyers may be having a tougher time getting a good mortgage, due to the recent tightening of credit, so sellers should be willing to consider financing a part of the deal themselves, if possible.

- Remember PEA: Price, Maximum exposure through advertising, and Accessibility. If the listing isn't hitting all three of these points, the chances of it selling go way down.

- Make the property shine for showing: make sure repairs have been made, and if necessary, have the property pre-inspected prior to escrow to make sure that the seller has the chance to identify and fix any problems that might prevent a sale.

Don't forget traditional sale practices:

- Make sure the MLS and any web exposure involves detailed descriptions, and great photos.

- As a Realtor, make sure that the property is seen by as many eyeballs as possible. This means listing it not only in the MLS and on your website, but on classified ad sites such as Craigslist, Trulia, Google Base, etc.

- A great flyer is a must. Make sure the flyer box is always stocked.

- Make sure people are seeing the property. Invite neighbors (who might have friends interested in moving to the area, have a broker's open house, and several buyer open houses.

- Make sure your sellers are able to have the home accessible and in a condition for showing seven days a week (between 9 am and 7 pm daily).

Increasing your website ranking - Content & Links are Key

My clients ask me all the time how to increase their ranking in the search engines. While you can indeed take steps to improve your placement, it really takes patience and the willingness to devote the time, in order for you to see results. Ulitmately, you will probably want to hire an SEO company to do the work for you (if your goal is to be on the first page of the major SE's), since maintaining a website's SEO can be a full-time job in itself, but if you would like to give it a try on your own, read on...


There are two keys to getting good rankings:


1. Content
2. Linking

What kind of content is good Web site content?

- Sticky content-meaning unique, relevant content that makes your prospects stay at your site.
- Content with lots of images and/or multimedia.
- Local, relevant content that changes not only day-by-day, but hour-by-hour.
- Highly visual and/or functional content.
- Viral content that people want to share with their friends, family and
colleagues.

Some ideas to increase quality/quantity of content:

- Write a monthly article about your topic
- Write a page about your keyphrase/product/service
- If your headers don't have your keyphrase in them, then be sure to add it Make sure the titles on all your pages relate to the content of the page Write, write, write (and then write some more!).

Some other things search engines consider when determining ranking:

* links to your site,
* what is written in those links,
* who is linking to the site that links to yours,
* what are the keyphrases used in those links,
* what is the quality of the site that is linking to yours,
* how many other links does that site have,
* how many links out (and to what sites) does your site have,
* and other such criteria.


How do you get links?

It all starts with having good, unique, content on your site. No one will link to you unless you offer quality information about your subject. If you are in real estate, you must offer information about the area you work in. If someone wants to buy a home, first he/she will want to learn about it, so you will need to have good local resources about it.

The next step is to find other sites that would benefit from your site's information; sites whose clients would potentially want to buy or sell real estate in your area.

Some potential types of site to link solicit links from:

- sites that promote activities in the local area and the nearby areas
- nearby water parks and ski hills
- nearby towns
- lake and boating associations
- local construction web sites


How do you solicit links?

Be prepared to spend some time, and have patience. Send out personalized emails instead of mass emails (spam) to the sites that you want to have link to you. Be friendly, and point out the benefits of linking to your site. If you are lucky, maybe 1 in 3 emails will get a response. It can be frustrating and discouraging, but is ultimately worthwhile in the long-run.

Many sites don't ever update their content, so your site won't get the link because simply because no one ever makes changes to the site. If you can tell that a site hasn't been updated in years, don't waste too much of your time on them.

Follow-up is very important as well (just like in working website leads). Until you get a flat-out rejection, keep saying "Hi", and keep it personal. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of what sites you have contacted, and what you have written or said--you want it to seem like they are the only person you are contacting.

Finally, don't forget to submit yourself to as many legitimate directories as possible, such as the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). Getting listed in DMOZ and other directories counts for a lot in all the big search engines.

When submitting to directories, take your time and choose the right category to submit to. Make sure you read how they want their descriptions and titles written, and then write them that way. This is the key to getting into the directories.

Soliciting links is a very time-consuming (and frustrating) venture, but it is essential to getting good rankings in the search engines. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of time. Getting your first link is like getting your first sale. It is just as hard - and just as satisfying.

I drew from these sources when creating this post:
Content Is King, But Linking is Queen
Content is King: Online Content to Attract More Consumers to Your Website

Why Proper Staging Is So Important

[click on image to view large version]

If you're not staging your homes these days, you may be losing out on sales...


Ok I admit, this is pretty much just a shamelses excuse to plug one of my favorite web comics (The Unfeasible Adventures of Beaver and Steve) but staging IS important....