Does Your Real Estate Investment Website Suck? A Covid-19 Audit

A bad real estate investment website sucks leads, deals, money and profits. A great website delivers leads, nurtures them to close deals with you, generating money and profits while saving you time and effort.

We’ve been selling real estate investment websites for 16+ years and investing in real estate for almost 20 years. During this time, I’ve seen a wide variety of changes in internet and real estate trends.

But one thing remains the same – the success of your real estate investing business is closely tied to your real estate investor website. A competent real estate investor MUST have a good – no, GREAT – website.

Attracting leads is critical in this ever-competitive market. Closing deals makes or breaks most real estate investing business models. A good website does most of the heavy lifting for you.

Plus, when it draws leads in your sleep, it definitely helps you close more deals, making you more money.

We’ve already seen that not just any “off the shelf” website will work. You need a website that attracts leads, captures those leads and nurtures them down a path that leads to closing more deals.

The covid-19 pandemic has also brought about opportunities for real estate investors. If you are ready for it and equipped accordingly, you’ll come out of this better off.

Anyone who’s serious about real estate investing has a website – but more often than not, we’ve found that most websites just don’t measure up.

If you have a website, this audit will help you decide if to keep it, or switch to a better performing website.

If you don’t have one, it will help you choose the right one.

Does your website suck money, suck time, and ultimately suck profits and potential out of your business?

These factors determine if your website sucks:

1: Does it look & feel dated?

People get turned off by an outdated look and feel, and they click off even before they read anything. This is true especially on mobile devices.

QUIZ:

THE LOOK:
On a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with your website look?

THE FEEL:
When you visit the website, does it instantly convey a clear message and quick course of action? Or does it have clutter with various messages that confuse visitors? On a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with its feel?

A website that adapts today’s look and feel adds to your credibility and will convert visitors to hot leads you can do business with.

Verdict

ANSWER:
If you answered below 3, you are wasting time and money sending people to your website. Your website sucks leads and profits from your business! Get a better website first!

2: Does it generate leads?

An effective real estate investment website attracts leads for you. It must be “conversion optimized” to compel each visitor to take action – such as call you, or sign up.

A visitor that leaves your website without taking any action might never come back. A lead is someone you can contact.

QUIZ:

T or F:

1. My website INVITES visitors to share their information and offers tangible benefits to do so.
2. It also offers multiple calls to action – easy to use actions for contacting me.

An effective website captures leads for you, delivering them to you for follow-up that leads to more closed deals.

Verdict

ANSWER:
Lead capture is your basic fodder for a successful real estate investing business. Without leads, you have nothing. Just an empty website.

So if you answered F to either question – your website sucks!

3: Automation

Lead generation is not enough. Then what?

Most people are not comfortable doing business with you when they see your business for the first time? They need 5-12 exposures before they warm up enough to close a deal with you.

A good website AUTOMATICALLY nurtures leads by follow-up email so they can do business with you.

Successful investors spend most of their time closing deals, not chasing people. A good real estate investment website does the hunting for you and delivers leads, encourages social sharing, and also helps you manage those leads.

QUIZ:

Does your website: (Select all that apply)

A: Send you an email or text every time you receive a lead?

B: Automatically follow up with your leads by offering helpful information at carefully timed intervals to  warm them up to do business with you?

C: Send you reminders if you need to make personal follow-ups?

Too many investors spend a lot of time scrubbing to find leads, only for them to slip through their fingers because they don’t have an effective follow-up system.

A website that doesn’t suck includes built-in software that follows up with your leads and helps you track and manage your leads from the first contact to closing.

Verdict

ANSWER:
A, B & C are MUST HAVES. If your real estate investor website lacks any of these, it sucks big time –  and you’re likely losing leads along the way, and losing business because you can’t follow up effectively.

4: The tech

Not only does your website have to look good, but it also has to perform – and the technology behind it must run the show.

QUIZ:

Check all that apply

A: My website is optimized for SEO and shows up in search engines

B: My website is responsive and works well on both computer and mobile devices

C: I don’t know, but I get lots of leads

D: None of the above

An effective real estate investment website will show up on the search engines without any input from you. With a little nudge, it will rank well in your local market.

It will also be optimized for mobile devices – in fact most of your leads will come through mobile devices.

Websites that are well optimized for mobile devices also rank better. If you can’t show up in the search engines, you won’t be closing a lot of deals.

Verdict

ANSWER:
A & B are the best answers. C can work too, but you should know where your leads are coming from.

If you chose D, your website really sucks – it sucks leads, deals and your money! Get another one.

4: Videos

Video is proven to get more attention than other content. A website that employs video in its marketing gets more conversions than one that doesn’t.

This means you’ll get more leads if you employ video. More leads = more closed deals

Does your website employ marketing videos?

QUIZ:

T or F

1. I can load video to encourage visitors share their contact information
2. My website has an option to enable a video speaking model on my website

Verdict

ANSWER:
If you answered F to 1 or 2, your website sucks leads from you. If you have to hire someone to create videos for you for basic lead generation and conversion, you’re losing money.

Get another website.

5: Sharing content

A website that allows you to share information seamlessly makes you job much easier. Buying and selling real estate is a numbers game. Sharing content from your website exposes it to more eyeballs – hence more buyers and sellers.

QUIZ:

Y or N:

1. I easily upload properties to my website for sale, wholesale or rent. The website allows me to add descriptions, virtual tours, pictures and documents as I need.
2. I can share my properties on social media with one click. Website visitors can share with their friends.
3. I can email my properties to by my buyers list with a few clicks. All my property details are pre-loaded by default so I just have to click send to send it out.

A website that doesn’t suck talks to other websites. It makes it a snap to market properties for sale. When you it can do this, you can spend more time closing deals and making $$$.

Verdict

ANSWER:

If you answered N to any of the questions, your website sucks time and effort from you. It also sucks money from you because you potentially lose deals to a poor performing website.

6: Ease of use

Nobody wants to have technical expertise to manage a website. Getting a real estate investor website should not enroll you into a technical project where you spend time working on your website.

Instead, your website is supposed to make it easier to manage your real estate investing business, and help you close more deals using less time, money and effort.

QUIZ:

Y or N:

1. My website supports any real estate investing business models – such as buying houses, selling, wholesaling or renting houses.
2. I have full control of my website from a simple virtual back office.
3. It’s delivered with pre-loaded content. I can add or edit content as I want. I have full control of forms to collect any information I need.
4. My website is easy to set up or change. I can make most changes in under 10 minutes.
5. If I need to change my design, I can do so in a few clicks.
6. My website captures and automatically follows up with visitors.

A website that doesn’t suck is easy to set up, offers a wide variety of responsive templates and content. It should also offer pre-loaded ready-made marketing messages and efficient customer support.

Verdict

ANSWER:

If you answered N to any of the questions, your website sucks time and effort from you. You probably spend a lot of time managing your website and your business. Your website is supposed to make your work easier and more productive.

Does your real estate investment website Suck?

So how did your website do? Does it check all or most of the criteria for a good website?

Bottom line – your real estate investment website needs to work for you and help you close more deals using less time, money and effort.

If you don’t have to the right kind of website that targets and reaches a certain kind of audience, you’re committing suicide for your business.

If it doesn’t grab your visitors’ info for follow-up, and you just have people browsing without taking any action on your website, you’re losing deals and it’s sucking money from your business.

Interactive real estate investor websites have all the qualities above plus a lot more. They’re built from the ground up by real estate investors for real estate investors with one basic goal – DELIVER MORE CLOSED DEALS.