I am currently working on my website but I have a hard time figuring out what I should put over there. I can't put that I have 15 years of experience and sold $150 million worth of houses. Or can I ;) What are you suggestions? I also want to insert some local market statistics from trulia (graphs) and a search box. I found one on trulia as well but maybe you know a better one. I also made a contact box on http://www.jotform.com/. It looks great. Recommended. Any suggestions that will help me not to repel future business from my website are welcome.

My suggestion is not to use Trulia for market statistics...your MLS data should be far more accurate..at least it is in my area.

You can tout your office's statistics - "We sold blah blah blah" and were in the top 2% of offices for the last 10 years" etc.

Some MLS boards do not allow publishing of statistics except to give to individual clients on a one-by-one basis. (my board does is like that.)

If your board does not allow it, or even if they do, consider offering it as an incentive to get their contact info.

"Monthly Market Updates, Customized to Areas you Are Interested in, sent to your email! No hassle, no obligation!" or something like that. then you can get people in your database and each month you send them the report you are showing them that you are the go-to real estate agent for the important stuff they want. With each report you could include a call to action for them to contact you if they are ready to buy or sell etc.

Honestly, nobody cares that much about you personally when they hit your website. They usually just want to find a house or sell their house. So first and foremost, you need a robust IDX capability prominently displayed on your home page. It should be fun and easy to do that one basic thing, find a house in your market area. The rest of the ego stroking is superfluous and even counterproductive. Leave out your kids and your dog and your hobbies and your church attendance and your PTA memberships. Nobody wants to see any of that, it's a bore.

Your website should back up your farms. If you are farming an area, your website should be an encyclopedia on that community. Nobody will think to ask if you are new if they see an organized and functional website that helps them 1) buy a house or 2) sell a house.

Start with that.

People don't search real estate on the internet to find real estate agents any more than cars for sale to find used car salesmen.
The vast majority are searching for real estate for sale, so you need a good IDX feed as well as compelling reason to keep them coming back to your site to search again.

Talk to some more established agents in your office and get their ok to profile some of their listings on your site. Most agents should be ok with that since it gets them more exposure for the home or condo they are listing.

Great point. I will put some more info about the company. I also found a website called Listing Book.It allows you to create your own personalized website and give access to search MLS to your clients/prospects after they sign up for it. You can see what they're searching for and you can set up an automatic e-mail updates for them as well. It looks pretty cool and it's free for our MLS users.
It looks like this http://realtyofpbc.listingbook.com/

I think the least useful piece of info that people put in their marketing material is, "We're number one," We sold X number of houses," etc. Instead, I echo what other have said. People are looking for properties and information about how you can address their specific needs. So seriously consider the IDX suggestion, but also read the NAR Profile of Buyers and Sellers to gain valuable insights into what buyers are seeking online. Also make use of the Google Keyword Selector tool to see what terms are being used in RE searches.

One thing that I have not seen mentioned in this thread, but is vitally important, is to include a clear way to contact you from your site. Users should be able to contact you through some type of form. DO NOT put your email address anywhere online or you will be overwhelmed with spam.

And if you are new and have a sign-up form to get MLS access you will quickly notice that nobody is using your site. There are unlimited sites where they do not have to sign up so the few users who do stumble on to your new site will go bye-bye as soon as you hit them with a sign up form.

Yes I know, someone will post that they are getting 31 new sign ups a day and converting 16 of them for an annual income of $600,000 so far this year, but it's all bull. Go ahead and do it, put a sign-up requirement on your MLS access. See what happens, or more accurately, does not happen.

Also, listingbook websites are generic, bland, boring, and amateurish. You've seen one you've seen them all. Cliche after mind numbing cliche. As soon as a potential buyer hits the first page and is faced with a "create account" situation, and yet another smiling agent promising premium service but not specifically defining what premium service means, that buyer will flee to one of your competitors who has a real website rather than a hum-drum template site, and unrestricted MLS access.

[quote=navarac]Yes I know, someone will post that they are getting 31 new sign ups a day and converting 16 of them for an annual income of $600,000 so far this year, but it's all bull. Go ahead and do it, put a sign-up requirement on your MLS access. See what happens, or more accurately, does not happen.
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I'm sure there are people getting leads from the Internet. What I want to do is to offer a pdf file with some valuable information about the local market. The information that I've been personally collecting and it's not available anywhere else.
I want to give it to people in exchange for their e-mail address so at least I might get some leads. I think it's worth a shot. I may consider running an AdWords as well.

Put up your services and list of properties that you market right now.

I am going to answer this more from a point of view of an IT person than a realtor (as I'm not one just yet).

Before you even start on your site you must have answers to these questions...

1. what is the purpose of my site? do you plan to use it as a full-fledged marketing tool or is it just something you want to put up because everyone seems to have one?

2. who is your target audience?

3. how much time/resources will you spend updating it and how often?

Once you have these clear (at least in your mind, but better yet, on paper ;)), try to put yourself into the shoes of your target audience. Why do you think they would visit your site? What do they want to find there? How do you think they would get there (search engine? your business card? link from your brokerage?)

You have to keep in mind that the web is different from other marketing mediums... People don't spend much time looking at it, and easily switch to something else if they cannot find what they are looking for. Make sure that the writing is done specifically for the web (no long paragraphs or articles).

Some things that would be useful to include would be your current listings, area information, your background (not on the first page, a sub-page of the site, in case they do want to find out more about you), benefits you can provide for your customers, etc. This is where you woud come in thinking like your target audience...

As for some general advice that works for any site:

- Make sure that the navigation is clear, and there are few visual distractions (many realtor sites I've seen have text running through the site - this is really distracting, too many different colors at the same time, too many pictures).
- No dead links
- Current information
- Make wise use of the "above the fold" space - the part that is visible on the screen when the page loads (keep in mind that computers have different resolutions, so different amount of space is visible for different people)
- Contact info that's easy to find
- Do not make extra long pages
- Do not ask for more clicks than are needed (i.e. don't put everything on one page, but don't make people click through 10 pages to find your contact info, for example)

When the site is done, test it at least a bit. You can even use your friend. Ask him to complete a couple of tasks that would need to be completed using a site - for example, ask him to find a home that you have listed in a certain area. Or ask him to see if he find your contact info. Time him. See if he's able to complete the tasks. Ask someone else to repeat what your friend has done (without watching your friend first, this has to be a first visit to your site). If you can find someone who is not web savvy - very good, as you will the most obvious problems (i.e. some people may not know where to type the URL of the site, and if you want them to go to it from your business card, they may have a hard time doing it).

Thanks NJCanuck, this is a very helpful post for us newbies.

Thank you NJCanuck! I'm also trying to set up my website with WordPress platform.

Anyelina, as far as I know wordpress is more of a blogging tool... so a site there would have somewhat of a different focus and content, though the main things (i.e. no dead links, etc.) would still hold true...