Rob McCance posted an article on Agent Genius blog last week, which discusses real estate websites and how they can impact your credibility as a real estate professional among an ever-increasing Internet audience.

“Whenever I see a really bad real estate website, what that says to me is that the person behind the site has a very low attention to detail. Also, they are apparently not overly concerned about their on-line credibility, as is being conveyed by their website.”

McCance goes on to describe 4 basic elements for an agent website to convey a high level of credibility:

Navigation – Is the content on your website easy to navigate?

Most visitors will be looking for one thing, and one thing only – listings!

One option is to make your property search functionality front and foremost on your website.

Don’t make your visitors have to think about where to find your listings or make them click too many times to get to what they really want.

Design – Real estate professionals are operating in an industry where first impressions are critical.

With so much competition out there, it is important to make sure that your website is clean, attractive, and has well-designed elements.

Visitors to your website will quickly pick up on design flaws, sometimes subconsciously, and formulate their opinion of you based on these flaws.

Error-free – This seems like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many people post content to their website without first running it through a spell-checker.

Other things like broken links, missing images / documents, and inaccurate or out-dated information on your website will have a negative impact on people’s perception of you as a real estate professional.

Brand – Most sales representatives and brokers are obligated to display their brokerage logo somewhere on their website.

However, you do have a certain amount of freedom to promote a personalized brand, either through a customized logo, caricature, tag line, and/or the overall look-and-feel of your website.

This personalized brand should be something that will leave a positive and lasting impression.

The Internet quietly turned 40 years old last month, as Leonard Kleinrock and others at the University of California celebrated the first time they (or anyone) got computers to ’speak’ to one another.

It was on October 29, 1969, that Kleinrock and his team are credited for giving birth to the Internet by getting a computer at UCLA to “talk” to another one at a research institute.

One small step indeed, considering where we are today, with the proliferation of online social networking and content sharing that is now commonplace in society.

But Kleinrock is quick to note that, although 40 years have past, the Internet is merely coming of age in terms of its impact on society.

 ”It’s a teenager now. It’s learned some things but it has a long way to go. It’s behaving erratically, but it’s given enormous gratification to its parents and the community.”

Interestingly enough, this view is shared by Gary Vaynerchuk, who is currently leading the way for a new wave of individuals leveraging web 2.0 and the whole social networking movement via the Internet.

In a recent speech, Gary proclaims ‘the Internet hasn’t even had sex yet!’

Not sure how this applies to selling real estate?

Check out this video of Gary’s speech, where he describes his ability to successfully “scale up” his customer service and brand building by networking with people across the Internet using web 2.0.

The legendary real estate blogger Teresa Boardman of Saint Paul, Minnesota gives us the goods on the power of content in developing community connections.

Posted on ‘The Real Estate Tomato – Juicy Blogging Advice for Realtors’ blog, Boardman highlights the multiplier effect that creating unique and interesting content can have on your business as a real estate professional.

We all know that measuring the actual return on investment for social networking is difficult, if not impossible.

However, anecdotal evidence from ‘veteran’ real estate bloggers, such as Ms. Boardman (4 years!), are a great motivator to get out there and own your niche!

New to real estate blogging? Check out the Saint Paul blog and do what they do….seriously.

Check out Jack Hillman, owner of Jumber Jack Photography in Ottawa.

He does great work and specializes in real estate.

He was also featured recently on the local news describing his business success as a real estate photographer.

As reported on BuzzBuzzHome blog (weird name, great blog!), a new study shows that higher levels of ‘walkability’ are directly linked to higher home values.

The report, “Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities,” looked at 94,000 real-estate transactions in 15 markets across the U.S.

The report was commissioned by a group called CEO’s for Cities and uses the Walkscore web service that we have integrated within all of our UniqueHomeSites.

WalkScore allows you to view the ‘walkability’ of any known location, drawing in community points of interest from Google’s vast directory of local stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. to calculate a walking distance score.

You can even interact with Walkscore to improve the walkability of your listings.

To improve your listings’ Walk Score, you can easily add and delete amenities yourself.

1. From the local amenities link on your UniqueHomeSite click on the “bigger map” link in the top right corner of the Walkscore box.

2. On the right, above the list of amenities is a link titled “missing something“. Click on this and follow the instructions to add the missing amenity to Google maps.

For any point of interest, you only have to add it once. It will be available for all your future listings for that neighbourhood. 

Its a great way to provide potential homebuyers with valuable information and perhaps fetch a higher price for your listings!

Real estate professionals looking for content to add to their marketing material should check out this comprehensive list of informative handouts for buyers and sellers, courtesy of the National Association of Realtors).

According to the NAR website, anyone is free to print copies of the handouts or customize them with their own branding. These handouts are perfect for newsletters, Web sites, and promotional kits.

For Canadian real estate professionals, keep in mind that the information is from an American perspective and may need to be modified slightly to reflect the Canadian marketplace.

Nonetheless, this is a great resource!

If you are a Canadian realtor in need of a website for your business, give us a call or email and ask about our UniqueHomeSites website product and services.

1-866-9UNIQUE or sales@uniquehomesites.com

Get Ready for Homeownership
10 Ways to Prepare for Homeownership
5 Common First-Time Home Buyer Mistakes
Why You Should Work With a REALTOR®
Questions to Ask When Choosing a REALTOR®
7 Reasons to Own Your Home
Tax Benefits of Homeownership
Take the Stress Out of Homebuying

Finance Your Home
Specialty Mortgages: Risks and Rewards
Loan Types to Consider
6 Creative Ways to Afford a Home
Lender Checklist: What You Need for a Mortgage
Get Your Finances in Order: To-Do List
Budget Basics Worksheet
What You Can Do to Improve Your Credit
5 Factors That Decide Your Credit Score
How Big of a Mortgage Can I Afford?

Buyers: Find the Right Property
8 Tips to Guide for Your Home Search
How High Tech is Your Home?
5 Property Tax Questions You Need to Ask
10 Questions to Ask the Condo Board
Your Property Wish List
Tips for Finding the Perfect Neighborhood
Tips for Buying in a Tight Market
Pros and Cons of Going Condo
10 Questions to Ask Home Inspectors
What a Home Inspection Should Cover

Buyers: Prepare for Closing and Beyond
5 Things to Know About Homeowner’s Insurance
Tips for Lowering Homeowner’s Insurance Costs
5 Things to Know About Title Insurance
What’s a Home Warranty?
What Not to Overlook on a Final Walk-through
Common Closing Costs for Buyers
Moving With Pets
Closing Documents You Should Keep
17 Tips for Packing Like a Pro

Sellers: Before You Sell
Does Moving Up Make Sense?
8 Reasons Why You Should Work With a REALTOR®
12 Questions to Ask When Choosing Your REALTOR®
5 Things to do Before Putting Your Home on the Market
Understand Agency Relationships
What is Appraised Value?

Sellers: Get Ready for Showings
Simple Tips for Better Home Showings
How to Improve the Odds of an Offer
How to Hold a Successful Garage Sale
Prepare Your Home for a Virtual Tour
Low-Cost Ways to Spruce Up Your Home’s Exterior
12 Tips for Hiring a Remodeling Contractor
5 Feng Shui Concepts to Help a Home Sell

Sellers: Prepare for Closing and Beyond
Understanding Capital Gains in Real Estate
What to Leave for the New Owners
10 Tips for Moving With Pets
Moving Checklist for Sellers
Forms You’ll Need to Sell Your Home
Checklist: 17 Service Providers You’ll Need When You Sell
Open House Safety Tips
How to Prepare for the Open House
Is Your Buyer Qualified?
Tips for Pricing Your Home

At UniqueHomeSites.com, we like to share ideas regarding real estate marketing on the Internet.

Today, we want to discuss something that many in the industry seem to ignore - great real estate marketing begins with great photos!

For consumers, there is nothing more frustrating than finding a listing through a search portal that passes the initial search parameters (i.e. price, location, size, etc), but fails to offer additional photos.

The typical reaction to a lack of photos is that something is wrong with the property.

In some cases, the listing agent may do this on purpose so that only the most interested home buyers will contact them personally for more photos.

Regardless, we feel that properties listed for sale on the Internet with only one or two photos are missing out on a huge opportunity to present their listing to as many Internet eyes as possible.

This is particularly true in today’s Internet age, where web surfers are becoming accustomed to open and instant access to information on-line.

One expert in this area is Larry Lohrman, operator of the Photography For Real Estate blog.

He offers some great tips and techniques for real estate photography, including the following tidbit:

“…the front shot is THE most important shot for marketing purposes.

Not only because Realtors have to use the front shot in all their marketing, but because of web site designs that make the thumbnail of the front shot the “lure” (as in fishing lure) that usually motivates the potential home buyer to take the first action (a click to look at more photos) that leads to a home buyer towards a home purchase.”

Fish on!

We are often getting requests from our user community to develop a single property website template that matches their personal brand as a real estate professional.

This is why we have introduced our Custom Branding Solution!

Upon request, we will engage our team of Graphic Designers to work with you to create your own unique and completely customized property website design.

Need an agent site? Hey, we also do that!

They come equipped with a powerful control panel, and are completely integrated with our UniqueHomeSites product… but that’s another blog post altogether.

Check out a few of our custom property website designs:

Jim Cooper, RE/MAX Metro-City Realty Ltd. – http://www.1111waterpark.com/

Sean McCann, Royal LePage Team Realty Ltd. - http://www.282friel.com/

Andrea Morrison, Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd. – http://www.8lessard.com/

An interesting article appeared on the New York Times website the other day.

It discusses the trend among real estate professionals to ’syndicate’ their listings for display on other websites, such as Zillow.com, as a strategy to increase their online presence.

Listing syndication is nothing new, but the trend towards more liberal distribution of listings is not without its critics.

In response to the article, real estate blogger Dave Phillips from Charlottesville, Virginia, explores the question of whether it makes sense for local MLS systems to send their listings data to listings aggregators.

Acting as somewhat of a devil’s advocate, Mr. Phillips presents arguments against syndication, stating concerns about Internet market dilution with so many sites doing the same thing.

In Canada, only Realtor.ca and some local Canadian real estate boards can claim that they are the sole source for ALL realtor listings within a particular market.

Meanwhile, listing aggregators such as Zoocasa.com go above and beyond for online consumers, offering a richer search experience including neighbourhood descriptions (from wikipedia), school information, home price comparisons, and even a commuter cost calculator.

At UniqueHomeSites.com, we want to know what Canadian real estate agents, brokers, and owners think about listing syndication.

Please feel free to comment below… we want to hear from you!

Also, check out this video from Greg Afarian from Zipvo Corporation.

The folks over at 1000 Watt Consulting placed an interesting post on their blog the other day, which we believe hits the mark for real estate brokerages operating in today’s Internet age.

The post discusses 5 things that brokers should do to improve their marketing.

Here is a summary:

1. Start thinking like a media company

   Listings and Market Knowledge = Content… Start broadcasting them!

2. Perform a vendor audit

   Costs for things like bandwidth and online storage have dropped significantly in recent years, and new web-based applications are increasingly available at a fraction of the cost.

   Have a look at new technologies and services and compare them to those offered by your existing vendors. 

3. User Testing

   Conduct live user testing on your website to discover what they like and dislike.

   Also, use free analytics software to analyze and track the performance of the content and design of your website. 

4. Perform a website makeover 

   Do some research and you will find that many of your competitors have poorly designed websites.

   Stay ahead of the curve – Consider a redesign or cosmetic upgrade to your brokerage website.

5. Differentiate! 

   Stay abreast of new applications or tools (i.e. Twitter, Facebook) and give consumers something to talk about!

   Try to set yourself apart from the competition by offering something different.