The real estate industry in Dubai and in fact all around UAE is a very competitive market. It is crucial for a business to provide excellent user experience to obtain maximum user satisfaction. The internet penetration in UAE is 99% and the mobile phone usage is also very high with almost 96% of the population owns a smartphone or mobile device. Therefore businesses started benefitting from the internet and digital platforms. A website is considered to be the center point of all online activities for a business. For a real estate business its website is even more important comparing to other industry sectors. Studies have shown that a user takes only a fraction of a second (almost 50 milliseconds) to construct an impression of the brand in their subconscious mind. The first impression is extremely important. In order to improve user’s perception the next step is the web design and its functionalities. For a real estate business the website is not just a marketing tool in fact it is its complete inventory. It should offer features and functionalities that help users to find the relevant information and properties in the simplest and easiest way possible. In this blog we will enlist the most important features and functionalities of a real estate website that can help businesses to boost their online leads and conversions.
The Purpose of a Real Estate Website
The real estate website is more than an advertising platform. The real estate businesses must know that they can attract tons of interested prospects with their website and they can provide them necessary information and functionalities to generate quality leads from their real estate website and digital marketing activities. The real estate website can also collect user data which can be used for re-marketing activities as well. The real estate website is a great tool for marketing and promotional activities and it can be used to offer various online services to facilitate user interaction and experience with the business. Here are some key objectives of a real estate website that can help real estate businesses to generate quality leads and conversion from their website.
- User Journey: The user journey is extremely important for online leads. If a user journey is complex the online leads and conversions would be less. The best way to optimize user journey of a real estate website is to simplify it as much as you could. The content, information, multimedia, navigation and other features form a user journey. Once a user acquire interested information only then they will explore the website further and after that a prospect could be converted into a lead or sale. All this depends upon the user journey.
- Customer Engagements: The web design is the most effective aspect of any website to increase customer engagements. The color schemes, branding elements, designs, navigation and the entire UI is part of the web design. No matter how good the content is if it is not presented in a user friendly manner the user might not check it. An engaging web design help businesses to effectively project their value proposition and highlight key selling points to drive leads and conversions.
- Content & Information: Whoever is coming to a business website, they are seeking information that can solve their problem. In case of a real estate website the information is about the properties and also some additional information about the business itself. Too much information will distract the user and too little won’t be sufficient to convince them. A perfect balance should be achieved. The textual and multimedia content should resonate with the web design to add value to user experience.
- Marketing & Communication: The real estate website is a great tool to market your products/services and to communicate with your targeted audience. The real estate website can be used for various online marketing activities and can support the entire digital marketing strategy. It could be a great tool to add more to the marketing funnel. The digital marketing have already surpassed the conventional marketing and majority of digital strategies heavily rely on the website.
- Offer Features & Services:A real estate website is also used to offer online services and features that can help customers and visitors to perform certain tasks and access to the updated information 24/7. For example a real estate website can offer customer portals for customer relationship management activities. Customers and prospects can use interactive features to easily find search desired properties. The websites can also be used to aid various business processes for the real estate businesses and much more.
The purpose of a real estate website is to digitalize user experience and to aid various customer journey steps and relevant business processes. A real estate website is a great tool to boost your digital marketing and online brand image. For that a real estate website needs a certain set of functionalities and features to achieve all those objectives. Here is a list of all important functionalities that a modern real estate business website should have:
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 1. User-Friendly Navigation
The website navigation is the most important functionality. A website is user is coming on a website for information, all the information cannot be provided on a single web page, there must be several other pages which could contain relevant information. The website navigation is the mechanism to provide user a way to navigate through all these pages. The goal is to design the real estate website’s navigational structure in a way that every visitor can easily access all the required information. Acquiring information is crucial for conversions and lead generation. Once a user got all the information they need, only then they will check for other things and proceed through the customer journey towards the CTA (call to action). The website navigation is not only limited to the top menus, in fact the modern web designs offers a great navigational structure with the help of widgets, side panes, quick links, icons, interactive elements of the web design and the hyperlinks in the textual content or at the multimedia content. Here are some important elements of the navigation:
- Top Menu or Primary Navigation: The top menu comes in the header area and it have menu that contains links for almost all internal pages and important categories, in some cases sub-categories can also be added in the top menu or primary navigation. The top menu contains links for Home, About, Listings, Buyer, Seller, Testimonials, Contact, Blog, FAQs etc.
- Widgets: Widgets are distinguishable design elements, usually in the form of a box and contain information about a particular topic. These widgets can be linked to the relevant internal page or category page from where the user can explore all the relevant information. For example a widget that provides short description of “Luxury Properties” or “Office” etc. can take your users to the respective listing page of all properties under that category.
- Side Panes:The side panes are used to provide links for all most important or most frequently used links. For example a side pane can have a link to mortgage calculator, enquiry box, company address, etc. Usually the side panes are set of icons stick on the side of each web page on the website.
- Quick Links: Usually the quick links are the most frequently used pages of the real estate website. The quick links are added in the footer area or at the bottom of the web page. The footer is universal for all the internal pages and all these quick links are always available for the users at the bottom of the web page. The quick links could be the links of categories, user account related links for buyers and sellers, FAQs, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, About, Contact and such links.
- Clickable Icons: The clickable icons are usually added in a set of multiple icons which are related to all the relevant pages or functionalities. Such icons can be used at anywhere on the web page. Some web designs also use sticky icons which remain available all the time. As most of the web pages are longer than the screen, in fact double or triple the length of the screen that is why the sticky icons are used to provide easy access to important pages and functionalities regardless of where the user is at the page.
- Textual & Media Hyperlinks: The hyperlinks are the links that are embedded in text or multimedia (image, video, animation, etc.). These links are usually used within the content of the web page and are used to increase user’s engagements. But it is important to link only the relevant pages otherwise the users could get distracted from the original subject and are more likely not to convert.
Moreover real estate websites also use dynamic content to provide links for the relevant pages or for promotional and marketing purposes. For example let say I am searching for an apartment, while I am at the detail page of the property, at the bottom of the page just above the footer a dynamic content widget can be used to load relevant content dynamically. This way the business can increase exposure of listed properties and it also help improving the conversion rate.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 2. Advance Search Facility
The search engine is the most used feature on any real estate website. In fact most of the time when a visitors land on a real estate website, they start with the search engine. Once they found out their desired property only then they explore more information about the business. An advanced search engine is absolutely necessary for a real estate website. The advanced search engine is a search engine where users can put their queries and also set various filters to increase the relevance and accuracy of the results. For example, if I am looking for a flat in Rashidya area and I used a traditional search engine tools, it will return me results from all areas that contain the word “Rashidiya” in their name. However, if I am using an advanced search engine, which allows me to select the location while searching with my query, I will only receive the flats that are located in my selected area. This makes the search simpler and faster for the users and help them quickly find available properties in their desired location.
Now if we take the example of a flat search, the area along might not suffice. The advanced search engine also allow a user to select various parameters such as a user can also select the required accommodation size, they can select the flats with parking or without parking, even minute details such as the flat size and floor number can be searched if needed. The advance search engines are used to produce highly accurate search results. As too many irrelevant results distracts the users and mostly if that happens the users quit and move on to the next website. Another important thing to consider is that the advanced search should be designed to facilitate the users, too many filters or too many options will make it complex and it can get your visitors confused and you will lose valuable prospects.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website:3. Integrated Maps
The navigation and maps are very popular among residence of the UAE. As most of the people are expats, so they use navigation very frequently. So everyone is familiar with Google Maps and GPS navigations. In fact most of the time real estate website users expect Google Map based location for the property. This helps them to understand the neighborhood. People do consider nearby facilities while selecting a property. Almost 95% of the real estate website users like to have a grocery store at walking distance, people also consider schools, healthcare and entertainment facilities while selecting a property. The Google map provides a familiar and trustful user experience with detailed information which is extremely difficult to provide with static maps or aerial view photographs. It also provide real estate business a chance to leverage Google places and increase their visibility on the Google Maps relevant networks. The interactive features of Google Maps are a bonus for the user experience. Such features help improving customer satisfaction which help improving brand reputation.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 4. Separate Internal Pages
Having separate internal pages for a real estate website or in fact for any website improves user’s experience and build trust. From a real estate website’s prospective when a user finalizes a property or some even before that would like to know about the real estate business. For that the About page is used. This page is used to provide all the basic information about the business as well as their future vision and mission statements. Some real estate businesses also add management and teams’ bios on the About page which is a good practice and help gaining user’s trust. Similarly the FAQs pages, dedicated buyer & seller pages, blogs, testimonials, contact page, services, news, and dedicated search pages are used to enhance user experience. Moreover the dedicated pages are also good for the SEO (search engine optimization) and can help improving the overall website value and credibility. The dedicated search result page and dedicated property pages such as property listing pages and property details page is a key to generate online leads and conversions. The dedicated property pages or landing pages can also be used for digital marketing activities. Well-organized information are also great to improve customer experience and help generating more leads.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website:5. High Quality Content & Photos
The layout, design, features and functionalities help building user’s interest. However, it is the content and photos of the property that will play the main role in converting a prospect into a quality lead or sale. It is crucial to have updated information on the website and all its internal pages. The property details and content on property detail page should be accurate, simple and easy-to-understand, short and very to the point. The photos and galleries are absolutely necessary for a real estate website. Everyone would like to see the real photos of the property. Some businesses also add short video clips of the property and its surroundings which is a great way to excite visitors’ interest. The real estate businesses uses different interactive tools to improve the user experience such as allowing them to view the property from different angles, images with zoom capabilities, videos and integrated maps. The content and all these additional details about the property are very helpful to project value proposition and to satisfy the customers and visitors. If prospects found all the details they need from the website they are most likely to convert. Another very attractive feature for content and photos is the capability of sharing them across popular social media platforms. It also improve user experience and it attracts more traffic to the website.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 6. CTA or Call to Action
The CTA or call to action plays a crucial role in online leads and conversions. For a real estate website the CTA is used on multiple places, as a user can decide to convert at any stage of the user journey. Sometimes the website visitors want to send enquiry or contact the business without looking up for properties or spending any time exploring the website. For such visitors it could be hard to know how to contact you. A CTA or call to action button can help them to reach you out straight away. The enquiry form or the contact form can be used at any place in the web design. It can be embedded in sticky icons, or side pane or even in between different section of the page body. The call to action button always require the users to perform an action it could be filling up an enquiry form or providing the contact details or it can be a bit more out of the box and excited such as “I want to Buy It!” or “I am interested” etc. The real estate website should use multiple CTAs to increase the chances of conversion. The message or title of the CTA button is extremely important, it should be appealing and simple to understand. The CTA and call to action buttons can be placed at prominent spots within the design to encourage more users to click on them. Which will definitely increase your online leads and conversions.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 7. Mobile Experience
The internet penetration is 99% in UAE and the 96% of the population is mobile users. The studies and statistical data from all over the world have shown that the mobile searches have surpassed the traditional desktop/laptop searches. People spend too much time on the internet whether it is for work or for entertainment, people tend to spend hours on the internet on daily bases. Using a smartphone or mobile device while relaxing on a couch is more convenient than sitting on a chair in front of a computer. For most of us mobile phone are primary device to communicate and access to the internet for all activities except work. That is why for a real estate website it is extremely important to offer a splendid mobile experience. The mobile friendly or responsive web designs is a technological feature that enables a website to render itself as per the screen size it is being opened from. The responsive web designs have capability to detect the screen size and platform from where it is being accessed and it happens within a fraction of a second and the users only see a mobile compatible web design. The responsive web designs also assure that all of the desktop features will be available on the mobile and the customer journey wouldn’t be changed. This enhances user experience and help you cater the needs of mobile traffic.
Best Functionalities of a Real Estate Website: 8. SEO Friendly
The SEO or search engine optimization is a combination of programing, designing and ability to add certain features that are required by a search engine to read the web page. The most popular search engine in UAE is Google with 96% of the search market share.Google have its own standards and guidelines that are designed to ensure good user experience and quality content on the website.That is what everyone is doing, however, it is not only about content and user experience. The search engines read a web page with automated software tools, called spiders or data crawlers. These spiders have limited capabilities, hence the technology that is used to design and develop the real estate website must be friendly towards those data crawlers and spiders. There are only a few technologies that are incompatible with search engine data crawlers, and those can also be avoided with the advancements in the web technologies. Apart from that there are certain markers and indicators that can be added to a web page’s source code to help Google and other search engines to effectively read the content of the web pages. The search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. index this content into their data repositories and once a search query is requested the search engine consult with these data repositories and on the bases of relevance and quality they produce the search results.
There are several external signals too which Google and other popular search engines scan to determine the quality and relevance of a website. For example, the backlinks, social bookmarks and third-party endorsements are a few important external signals that are used to weigh the quality and relevance of the website. If done correctly the SEO alone can bring more than double traffic to a website comparing to all other digital channels. This is huge and all that traffic is completely organic which means it is completely free. So if a real estate website is designed to be SEO compatible and SEO friendly, it could get higher ranks in the Google and other search engines. When someone will search for a property and your website appears on top of the search result page, the users are most likely to visit it. The internet users in general tend to trust and rate those website higher who appear on the top of the search results.
Read More: How Fashion and Beauty (F&B) Business can Boost Sales with a Customer Centric Web Design?
Conclusion
The real estate sector is a very competitive industry in Dubai and in fact all around the UAE. The real estate sector in the country is considered to be the largest in the region. Due to excellent government policies and favorable environment investors from all around the world are coming here. This also create opportunities for national and international real estate businesses to flourish here. That is why the real estate sector in UAE is one of the most competitive industry in the country. Competition eventually favors the consumers or customers, it raises industry standards and it also increase customer’s expectations. In general the marketing have transformed a lot over the couple of decades and now a days the digital marketing have emerged as the most effective form of marketing. The digital marketing industry have already surpassed the traditional marketing industry. A business website is considered to be the center point of its digital efforts. That is why it is extremely important to use the digital channels effectively with the help of a website. For real estate the website have become even more important. As most of the customers prefer to search online before making a decision.
A website could attract millions of prospects who will be seeking information and solution to their problems. For a real estate business a website is not only limited to a communication and advertising platform in fact it has become more like a service and a 24/7 reception to the customers coming from different targeted audiences. The user experience for a real estate website is depending on the interactive and useful features that you offer along with the relevant information that can convince a prospect to convert. In this blog we have listed the key functionalities a real estate website must have. If you add all those functionalities you can gain competitive edge and build long-term trustful relationship with your customers. If you need to learn more about the subject or want our help to improve your real estate website and user experience, please feel free to reach us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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