How to Build a Real Estate Website
In the competitive world of real estate, high-quality websites can be powerful differentiators. For brokerage firms, websites provide prospective and existing clients with essential information. For individual agents, they demonstrate the professionalism, competence, and polish needed to propel them to top-performer status.
Real estate websites aren’t just opportunities for brand development. They’re highly functional tools that can showcase new listings, recent sales, and services offered, generate new buyers and sellers through search engine optimization (SEO) and AI search, and reinforce relationships, referrals, and repeat business through email marketing. With integrations like Acuity Scheduling, visitors can schedule appointments and connect with agents. Plus, add-ons provide tools for property management, help visitors browse multiple listing service (MLS) listings, and more.
Types of real estate websites
Your clients in the real estate industry can benefit from professionally designed websites for marketing their business, connecting with clients, and showcasing their expertise. The following are some of the most common use cases:
Real estate brokerage website
Showcases the brokerage, its story and leadership, its agents and their credentials or specialty services, and a selection of available listings or recent sales.
Real estate team website
Features the team of agents, their expertise and credentials, services, and a selection of available listings or recent sales.
Real estate agent website
Highlights an individual agent, their expertise and credentials, and a selection of available listings or recent sales.
Real estate listing website
Shares listing address, property details, availability, and other relevant details.
Property management website
Includes the property’s address, availability, and other relevant details.
Whether your client is a rental company, property management firm, listing service, brokerage, team, or individual agent, Squarespace offers industry-specific templates and integrations that you can use as inspiration for building their website.
Establish the purpose of your client’s website
During the consultation phase, work with your client to define what they’re hoping to accomplish with their website, and identify how you can design it to meet their goals. For instance, a brokerage firm will likely want to generate interest in listings and connect site visitors with agents. In this case, you’ll want to ensure that visitors have simple and intuitive ways to do both by including clear calls to action throughout the website, such as “Contact our agents,” “View properties for sale,” and “Sell your home with us.” Learn more about crafting effective calls to action.
For an individual agent, a website may simply include a high-quality headshot, professional bio, and contact information. Agents typically have similar goals to full-fledged brokerage firms and can benefit from the same suite of website features, provided they have the resources and support to practically manage them.
Designing a website that attracts real estate clients
Real estate is highly visual, emotional, and aspirational. Because of that, real estate websites benefit from high-quality imagery that reinforces these aspects. Some clients may be better served by designs that signal luxury and exclusivity, while others may benefit from a more casual and accessible approach. Either way, your client’s website should be designed to enhance their brand identity and appeal to their target audience.
Learn more about helping your client establish their brand identity.
Add clear contact information
A well-designed contact page is essential to facilitating a connection between your client and their potential customers. This page should include general office phone numbers and emails, as well as those for particular agents or departments. Agents and brokerages will likely want to get potential leads on the phone as early as possible, so keep that in mind as you design.
Contact pages can also include form blocks to collect customer phone numbers and email addresses. Depending on your client’s goals, it may make sense to prompt site visitors to include information about their reasons for reaching out, as well as their prequalifications, timelines, budgets, and other pertinent information.
To help your clients manage appointments and consultations, set them up with Acuity Scheduling. Integrated with Squarespace websites, the scheduling solution makes it possible for buyers and sellers to schedule appointments with the click of a button. With Acuity Scheduling, your client can also send intake forms to collect the aforementioned details prior to meeting.
Build trust by sharing your client’s story
Real estate is an industry where individuals, families, and businesses make some of their most important financial decisions, so trust is paramount. Telling your client’s story can be a great way to establish confidence and familiarity.
Include any details that signal trustworthiness, such as their values, mission, voice, and brand identity. This is also a great place to share your client’s involvement in their community or in local or national charities.
When it comes to giving potential buyers and sellers the utmost confidence in working with your client, share reviews and testimonials. In doing so, you can add personality to your client’s past experiences and infuse humanity into an otherwise highly transactional business.
Feature the team
The about page is an ideal place to highlight credentials, accolades, awards, and track records that can help convert the casual site visitor into a client. Include professional headshots or photos, short bios outlining agent credentials, and agent phone numbers and email addresses. To help build even more rapport, share personal details in team bios, such as hobbies, interests, or community involvement.
Showcase listings
Listings are enticing for buyers and sellers alike. Recently sold listings demonstrate your client’s past experience while providing vital information about the market. Plus, featuring recent sales is a great way to entice a homeowner to work with your client on selling their home.
Showcasing available listings can increase site engagement, connect visitors with their future homes, and drive deals directly. When featuring listings, include addresses, property details, availability status, and contact information for an agent with knowledge of the property.
Pro tip: Advanced designers can even add a code block featuring an MLS search so buyers can find listings in their area directly on your client’s website. Discover how to add custom code to a website.
Connect to social media
Real estate brokerages have a treasure trove of shareable content, from snapshots of clients buying their first homes to breathtaking properties that have just hit the market. Help your client maximize their social media presence by adding social icons to their website.
Optimize for traditional and AI search
SEO and AI optimization (AIO) can help connect buyers and sellers with your client. Since both have the potential to drive just as much traffic as paid advertising, it’s an area where you can really add value. Squarespace provides numerous built-in SEO and AIO capabilities to kick things off.
Start by developing a keyword strategy that makes sense for your client. What markets do they serve, what services do they offer, and in what neighborhoods are they the expert? Your client may also have insights about what buyers and sellers are seeking in terms of properties, whether it’s proximity to certain schools, house types, home features, or other variables that can inform a localized SEO and AIO strategy. From there, include keywords in key areas, like titles and headers, and mention any specialized services.
Because real estate professionals serve local markets, you’ll want to highlight their office address—for customers, search engines, and AI chatbots. Consider using map blocks and business information settings to help the site perform locally. Signing up for Google Business Profile can also help with local search rankings.
Expand the site with a blog
Blogs can reinforce efforts across multiple aspects of your client’s website. Blog posts make great content for newsletters, email blasts, and social media. They can also strengthen SEO and AIO performance. Agents and team members have a wealth of information that can provide ideal blog content, from their familiarity with the best local eateries, parks, and attractions, to their knowledge of the complexities of the real estate market and homeownership.
Discover tips for starting a blog on Squarespace.
Set up email marketing
For brokerage firms and agents, staying top-of-mind is vitally important, as even their happiest buyers and sellers go years without utilizing real estate services. Email Campaigns provide opportunities for your client to stay in touch by highlighting recent sales and successes, sending holiday wishes, providing local real estate news and market reports, introducing new team members, and more. Newsletters and other email communications can help build a customer base that sets your client up for long-term success. Meanwhile, built-in analytics tools can help refine email marketing efforts as they go.
Learn more about working with Email Campaigns.
Building sites for real estate agents and teams
As the world of real estate expands, a well-designed website has the power to set your client apart from the competition and drive more business. With Squarespace, build them a customized website that showcases their services, experience, and past work, highlights listings and updates on the market, and attracts and converts new visitors.
This article was originally published on March 22, 2023. It has since been updated.
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