A property website
Text from 2015. Laws, rates and prices may have changed since then. Ask an agent
If you are planning to sell a large, expensive and exceptional property, an ordinary listing may turn out to be insufficient. Potential buyers may want more detailed and refined information. In such a case, you should invest in a website that will present the property as it deserves. What should such a website look like?
An ordinary property listing may contain a few or a dozen or so photographs, a short description and technical parameters. And in the vast majority of cases that works. But not in the case of large, expensive and unique properties – whose purchase carries great responsibility and requires very thorough analysis, both financial and legal. We are talking here about, for example, tenement buildings, factory buildings, warehouses or exceptional old houses with what people call "soul".
For such properties it is worth creating a dedicated website that will help present the house, flat, commercial unit or plot much better and in more detail. And also convey the unique atmosphere of the place.
How to organise a property website
The first step is to write down, point by point, what information we want to convey on the site. The list may well include the following:
- A general and detailed description of the property
- A floor plan of the property together with photographs
- Technical specification of the property
- Legal status of the property
- History of the property
- A map with directions and photographs of the surrounding area
- Prospects for extending and creatively using the property
- A virtual tour of the property
The next stage is to create the information structure of the site – that is, to determine what the main menu will look like and what information will appear on individual subpages.
Here is some important advice. When designing the structure of a website, two approaches often clash: deep and wide.
The deep design provides for a small number of menu items, but a deeper structure – for example a drop-down menu or a lot of different information on a single subpage.
The wide approach, on the other hand, suggests placing as many items as possible in the main menu and a fairly shallow site structure – where a relatively small amount of information appears on one subpage.
We recommend the wide approach to designing the structure. Why? Because – once analytics are connected (e.g. Google Analytics) – it will be easier for us to determine exactly what information interests visitors most. We will clearly know which subpage is visited most often.
It will then also become clear whether, in the house being sold, visitors' attention is caught by, for example, the swimming pool in the garden, or perhaps some other asset of the property.
What is the advantage of a website over an ordinary listing
The advantage is enormous.
A website – at today's transfer speeds – makes it possible to include far more multimedia material: promotional films, virtual tours, interactive maps or photographs, contact forms, calculators and many, many other things. Next to such enormous possibilities, an ordinary listing seems very modest.
Creating a good property website is, however, quite an art and requires close cooperation between the seller, the agent and the web designer.
What requirements should a property website meet
First of all – it should be legible and aesthetically pleasing.
This means that a single subpage of the site should not contain too much information, and all information elements (paragraphs of text, icons, illustrations, etc.) should be separated by clear white space, which will ensure the legibility and clarity of its layout.
You should also make sure the font is the right size and properly formatted. Nobody – not even people with absolutely perfect eyesight – likes small fonts. Just as nobody likes long paragraphs of text.
Short paragraphs get read.
Anything longer than 4 lines gets "scanned".
The longest ones (columns of text) get skipped.
It is worth remembering this when formatting the text on your website. And that the optimal number of words per line is 12.
Secondly – you should ensure good navigation.
The main menu should be visible at first glance and contain clearly labelled items.
In general, at no point in their journey through our site should a visitor ask themselves: "What will appear on the screen when I click this element?". Such a question means that the element is not well described and should be improved.
The third issue is optimising the site properly for the Google search engine.
A website will serve no one if nobody visits it.
So you must make sure that the site has code that is readable for search engine robots, and also contains the necessary keywords that will make your site appear in search results for specific key phrases (e.g. "villa for sale Katowice").
However, if you do not want to bother with the technical and marketing details of building websites, and you wish to promote your property by means of a website – come to me with this problem. I will propose the best solution for you.
Have you already come across websites promoting a property? What appealed to you or put you off about them? Please share your observations in a comment.
