I have a friend who would like to build me a site in order to build her web design portfoilio. I am going to meet with her soon to discuss pricing and what I want for the site, but I don't know what I want.

I assume that I will want to be able to integrate leads with my contact management software (TP)...

I would want to be able to add and edit listings without too much trouble.

I would want to be able to easily add content.

Any suggestions? I'm new to the business and would like to get what I will need now and what I'll need in the future...

I suggest looking at other agents sites and seeing what you like/dislike. That should get you off to the right start.

You'll need to make sure you have a sitemap that lists all of the urls on your site. Link to this from the footer of your pages.

Search engine bots will crawl and index the other pages of your site from your sitemap and it helps visitors to find their way around too.

Make sure you don't use any drop menus because SEs can't index anything from those.

Make sure any JavaScript you use, also uses noscript tags to put the content there for users with JS disabled, and so bots can index that too.

You'll need solid navigation from one area/page of the site to the next in order to make sure your site is accessible to bots and users.

Your designer friend can make some forms for you that interface with MySQL and you can store all page data in MySQL. You'd need to use PHP on the pages to call the data from MySQL into the page.

It's really VERY easy to do.

Also, if you're going to use MLS on your site, you can call that into the pages with PHP also because it's stored in MySQL as well.

hope this helps

Hello RoundRock Real Estate and All

As a Real Estate Marketing Consultant, I would highly recommend you use a real estate marketing solution firm to develop your website. Not to say your web design friend would not do a fantastic job, but these real estate marketing solution firms can provide you with intelligence on what other real estate agents and brokers are doing with their sites so that you can better position yourself in the market and be competitive. Not only that, they can provide you with advice on what other agents and brokers plan to implement into their sites or the way they are doing it which your web design friend cannot probably provide. To select a firm that has expertise in the industry is a bonus. Not only that, a professional firm can help you with the requirements gathering process and point you down the right path.

Real Estate Broker websites should concentrate on lead generation, search engine optimization, and professional looking graphic design. I know cost is an issue with many, but if $800 is all you have to spend on a website to date and after your research you can't find a web design firm that can put something together that reflects what you are selling I would hold off until you can afford to spend more and get what you want. If you are going to do it, do it right the first time.

I would definitely ask for a content management system (CMS). If you can't manage your own content you will need to hire a webmaster to do that for you which will cost a lot more in the long run.

I would go with a content management system with built in real estate tools. Focus on getting leads than on the technology.


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