With so many agencies available for buyers and renters to choose from, a strong online presence can really make all the difference towards becoming the ‘go-to’ provider.

A study carried out last year found that four in five – 81% – vendors would not contact an estate agent if their website looked dated. However, it’s not just about having an up-to-date site for the sake of keeping things fresh – the experience of using a website should be intuitive and easy to keep prospective clients browsing comfortably for as long as possible.

From UK-wide enterprises to local, independent agencies, it’s incredibly important to make sure that your website isn’t getting in the way of your sales. To that end, there are a few factors to consider when it comes to website development:

How often should I think about refreshing my website?

There are varying levels of updates that can be made to a site – from spring cleaning to full rebuilds. It’s often tempting to entirely change a website, and some are in the habit of doing this every couple of years, but there’s every possibility that doing this can seriously harm your user experience, familiarity and continuity.

In an ideal world, your technology should be built to last, and you should take an iterative approach to UX, or ‘User Experience’. Rather than thinking about web development as cheap and frequent, think about it as an investment with progressive changes. Users should be able to return to a website, feel familiar, but also enjoy improvements each time they visit. And each of these improvements should be made based on evaluations and learnings of how your site is performing and what people are enjoying or just not gelling with.

Use tools such as Hotjar and Google Analytics to uncover issues and opportunities, and then from these learnings you can integrate small changes to the site that make things better over time. This will help to build a highly optimised platform that’s familiar and enjoyable to use.

If you’ve not kept on top of how the content on your site is structured, it can become very messy and Google can become confused about your expertise and main subject matter. Sometimes a re-organise of your content can do the world of good in helping Google to rank your website and also helps users navigate the site easier. A content spring clean, if you will.

On top of this, every 12-24 months it’s a great idea to have a wider review of the journey users need to take to get to the golden content/actions they may be looking for. This can be a good opportunity to build new journeys and test them, potentially changing the ways things are currently done.

Finally, speed and website performance are really important these days, and increasingly so. If you’re working to optimise a website for speed, the first place to start is to evaluate it in Google PageSpeed Insights to see how fast it’s running. If you’re not happy with the results, start with some of the basic optimisation that Google suggests. But if that’s not returning high PageSpeed scores then it may be time for a more critical look at the underlying technology, or indeed consider a rebuild.

 I’m evaluating my website, what do I need to consider?

Firstly, think about how long it takes to create and publish anything on your site – if this process is slow, cumbersome and fiddly, then you’re very likely to be wasting company resource on something that could and should be quick and easy. Estate agencies are often made up of very small, very busy teams who may not have the time and resource to devote a lot of attention to website design and maintenance, so it’s important that the back-end processes are efficient.

When it comes to the content itself and the listings on your site, learn what the pain points are for potential buyers, and what would benefit them to discover about a property or about buying, selling and renting.

Pay attention to the most intuitive and well-known examples in the property industry. What’s the experience that everyday website users are expecting? If a site doesn’t match at least some of these expectations and experiences then there’s every possibility that users are getting frustrated. More specifically, look at how easy it can be to search for a property, or how few details are needed to get indicative mortgage figures.

Accessibility is also a huge consideration and is often underrated in the current market. In 2021, it was reported by the UK Gov that 22% of the UK population are registered disabled. This means if your website isn’t accounting for impairments like vision, hearing and movement, it’s potentially excluding a significant 22% of consumers. For that reason, it’s vital that you use something like WAVE to evaluate your website and address any accessibility issues at play.

What kind of user-friendly tools will make my website stand out?

If you have a web developer on hand, there are lots of features that can improve the experience for users. Some are becoming more and more common, for example virtual tours of properties and finance calculators that can help with affordability when comparing listings.

Others offer added value for buyers and sellers that we see less frequently, such as local amenities maps that show not just the transport nearby but also shops, restaurants, schools and more. With more people working from home than ever before, you might also consider building in the ability to see the Wi-Fi connectivity/internet speeds and mobile signal strength for each property listed.

Lastly, don’t underestimate sharing tools – especially WhatsApp. If users can quickly and easily share with their friends (without much effort) then your listings and brand name can spread further and wider than you thought possible.

Scott Jones, founder and CEO of UX Agency Illustrate Digital