What’s the ONE THING you must do if you want to capture real estate leads?

You must build a conversion focused website.

I see it every single day, real estate agents working on “the perfect” real estate website. Agents spending hours of time trying to find the all-time best site, whether they build it themselves, use a template site or have someone build it for them… it’s an area I see agents spending hours upon hours of time.

Here’s the problem:

Agents are spending hours upon hours of their time focusing on the pretty design of the site (under the guise of user experience) and absolutely nothing focusing on whether that site will actually WORK.

I’m not even talking about writing the content that’s on their website pages, or even writing regular blog content to keep the site fresh and ranking in Google, Bing and Yahoo.

I’m talking about the simple aspect of whether the website will actually do what it’s supposed to do.

Everyone in the real estate industry thinks they know what the website is supposed to do… bring in business… but they have no idea how that actually works. They are working from the “branding and exposure” mythology.

There is this prevailing myth that if you build a beautiful website with gorgeous pictures of homes and tons of blog information, then guess what, you’ll get leads.

Of course, people like to spout the “if you build it they won’t come unless you focus on SEO” blather… so they can sell you SEO services.

However, that’s not what I’m talking about either.

See, it’s insanely easy to drive highly targeted traffic to your website now days. Crazy easy. You don’t need SEO to make that happen.

But, getting lots of traffic does absolutely nothing for you if your website isn’t built to capture… and no, I’m not talking about having a home value form, or a message us form, or a phone number, or a home search on your site.

In fact, if you have those forms, it’s likely you are repelling hundreds of prospects simply because those forms aren’t built to convert!

I’m talking about actual conversion. Having a website that is focused on conversion. Converting traffic into your database.

This is your number one focus with your real estate website… to drive the opt-in. If you don’t drive people into your database, you have a worthless website.

I’ve seen some sites move, slightly, into the right direction. But, I don’t know if it’s the lack of conversion knowledge from the vendors or the fact that they are fighting what real estate agents think they want… it’s still not even close to what it should be.

So in that vein, I’m going to give you 3 things your site must have in order for it to convert, to drive the opt-in:

• Your home page needs to be distraction free, without automatic slide scrolling photos and a plethora of links.
• Your design should convert quickly and not confuse and overwhelm, essentially leading them on a direct path to a single opt-in.
• You must have several effective, problem solving, lead magnets and use one in every blog post, on every page, etc.

Again, every single thing on your website, including the site as a whole, must lead them into your database.

If your website isn’t getting opt-ins, you have a problem, and you need to look at it from a conversion mindset, not an “is it prettier or does it have more features than my competitor” mindset.

I created the successful website “roadmap” as a starting point for you – so you know what 5 elements your website absolutely needs to succeed.