What do you feel are the 5 most important elements of a real estate website...FOR CONSUMERS! Below is what I was thinking. I would love your thoughts and opinions.

1) Search homes for sale/IDX
2) Find out what your home is worth/comps
3) How to avoid foreclosure
4) Market Stats
5) Community info/events

I'm not sure about the avoiding foreclosure, but I agree with the other 4 on your list. I'd say the 5th would be your own commentary on your area (in the form of a blog) to help people better understand the ins and outs of the area.

Great points! I would add #6 - GET THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION!!!

#1) Easy navigation.

If they can't easily navigate the site, they aren't going to stick around to discover the other important elements you may have there. People are very impatient on the Internet.

I agree with Peter, there has to be easy navigation! Also, set up some way to capture the lead. On my site, after 5 home searches, the site prompts a sign up form that allows the potential client to create an account where they can save searches and what not. This sends me the lead info and I had my first website generated lead a couple weeks ago!

You have to have a squeeze page to get your visitors information. IDX search and MLS feed would help a lot also.

I'm sure this is a term for something I'm already using, but what is a "squeeze page"?

like a landing page, to get your visitors to leave their phone number/email address etc. - you can dangle something for them but they have to register to get it..

OH yeah, I have that. Thanks.

I'm working on better CTAs and revamping my website. The more I look at it the more I hate it and I loved it two years ago. lol

Here is a great tool for feedback forms / contact us forms:

http://www.jottform.com - love it cause it's very flexible and does not corrupt your form with a bunch of advertising.

#1 wins hands down - at least in my experience. I help a brokerage manage a bunch of real estate sites and it seems that consumers ignore everything but the home search and MLS search.

Aside from that I agree with REOBrokerDan - the consumer wants to get to know YOU.

I agree. A squeeze page is essential if you want to widen your network of clients.

The five most important elements of a real estate website would have to be:

1: Home Search IDX – people come to your site to find homes for sale

2: Valuable Content – to keep people coming back

3: Lead Capture – You need to capture the leads that come to
your site to find homes

4: My Homes Value – provide content for sellers with some lead capture

5: Community Information – Provide the users of your site with more tools like community information

If we are just talking about elements of a site then that would be the top five. However, all of those elements don’t do very well if you don’t get traffic to your site. Things like quality content, Meta tags, keywords, etc. should be looked at first and then build your site around it.

The most important elements of a real estate website really depends on how you plan on using the site - i.e is your purpose for having the site to acquire new leads from the internet or is it to be used in conjunction with your conventional marketing to process signups for your database marketing strategy?

There are site packages out there that are pretty much all squeeze pages ("get this report") and IDX and while they may deliver names and email addresses for your database (what some may call a lead)- many who use such packages have found that that leads are non-existent unless people are driven to the site through extensive conventional advertising.

Many of the "leads" are not so much from the internet but the internet is used to process leads that are really initiated elsewhere.

Depending on your style of doing business, you may not consider a bunch of names and email addresses a lead. Perhaps a lead to you is someone that has contacted you after finding you on the internet through a search engine and you have actually initiated a relationship with through email and/or have talked with on the phone.

If that is your idea of a lead then perhaps your website needs to be set up a bit differently - geared more to a personal response rather than acquiring email addresses.

There isn't a definitive list of the most important elements of a real estate website that applies for everyone.