Real Estate Websites are Not One Size Fits All

Real Pro Systems builds highly flexible websites that are easily tailored to an agent’s needs.  There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace about terms like “template” website, “cookie-cutter” website, “custom” website, and so on.  Here’s how we see the world of websites.

To us, a “cookie-cutter” website is a derogatory term, referring to a website that is not configurable; they all look alike, and the content is fixed.  For agents on a budget or with no budget, it might be the only alternative.  Sometimes these are free sites provided by a broker or offered as an add-on to a service such as an IDX.  Let’s face it; even with the lack of flexibility it’s better than no internet presence at all.  But all they offer is a “business card in cyberspace.”

Template sites are formatted with pre-defined templates.  You can sometimes add pages, but you have almost no control over the layout of the page or the formatting of the content.  These are primitive, but nevertheless, expandable websites. Generally, no content is provided, and creating your websites is a “do-it-yourself” project.  Frequently, you use an automated online system to build your website, and you have no support from a service department; you are on your own.

Production websites are mid-priced websites that come with some amount of content pre-populated.  Usually, you choose a design layout from a gallery of choices, and the company produces a website with that look and feel.  You could argue that these are “cookie cutter” in that each one is initially populated with the same content as a starting point; in order to maintain a price point, there is no choice.  But these production sites range dramatically in cost and capability.  Ironically, some of the most expensive websites in this category are the LEAST flexible!

Custom websites are just that- no strings attached as to what design elements or layout can be implemented.  Unfortunately, there’s also no limit as to how expensive they can be.  Agents often turn to a custom designer because they believe it is the only way to get the branding and look and feel that meets their needs.  It seems that most of the time, they spend $3,000 – 5,000 with a local vendor and end up with a website that is attractive and unique. There are vendors in the real estate space who will charge you $10,000-15,000 for a custom website, with unexceptional graphical design, so you don’t always get what you pay for.

Unfortunately, when you buy a custom website it typically requires you to keep going back to the designer every time you need a change made to a page because there are no built-in tools for website maintenance.  This is a terrible situation to be in because change is key to keeping search engines interested in your site.

It is essential to consider the importance of tools for extending and maintaining a website.  We need to make a distinction between website look and feel (the “skin”), the content, and the related internet marketing tools that must be integrated with a website for it to contribute to your business.  When you buy a custom website, it simply is not economical for the web designer to build a lead management system, a drip email campaign system, and email blast tool, a monthly newsletter, and the like.  And these are the very tools that comprise your internet marketing foundation!

So where does that leave us?  Real Pro Systems builds a powerful set of website management and internet marketing tools as part of the systems we offer.  The website doesn’t exist in isolation, it is part of an integrated system.  This is economical, because the cost of developing these tools is spread over thousands of clients, making it cost–effective for a beginning agent to get a powerful set of tools.  The custom website developer may only have a handful of real estate agent clients, and cannot afford to be building production software which is what these related marketing tools are.  So custom website design is not software tool production, and leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to internet marketing.  A gorgeous custom website may make a good impression, but without effective internet marketing tools integrated, it will not be nearly as effective at generating business as a modest production website system.

When we look at production website vendors and their tools, it is eye-opening to see the fundamental differences in what they offer.  Even our entry level Real Pro Silver system comes with a rich lead capture and follow-up system that rivals products costing five times as much.  And users of all of our systems including Silver can easily add as many pages of content to their websites as they wish.  The menu choices and arrangements (“navigation”) can be completely customized so it doesn’t even resemble the original production website.  SEO settings are completely configurable too.  We have had clients use our websites for niche marketing, recruiting agents, and even for a political campaign!  A “cookie-cutter” or “template” website doesn’t offer this range of flexibility.

Even with other prominent production website vendors, you don’t have this flexibility.  With some, it requires a call to customer service to get any changes made.  That might be OK if they offered good response to these requests, but unfortunately, that often is not the case.

The other factor that plays into this (and is invisible to the real estate agent) is the website’s architecture.  This ultimately is what drives the degree of flexibility in the system.  Many websites “hard-wire” the website look and feel into the “back end” code of the site, making changes nearly impossible.  Real Pro Systems’ Web 2.0 architecture decouples the look and feel of the website from the operating code of the internet marketing system.  This means that the flexibility of the website look and feel goes beyond adding and formatting pages, and goes beyond choosing a design from a gallery of layouts.

With Real Pro Systems’ architecture, you can commission us to create a completely custom look and feel for your website, but still retain all the benefits of the product-quality tools built into our systems!  Whenever we release a new version of our tools, you get those changes, just as if you had a production website, because it is built on our system.  No one else offers this flexibility.

In contrast, with every other company in the real estate web space, you get a limited set of choices- run with a production or cookie-cutter website and use the tools they provide, or go to a custom website designer and forget about the benefits of integrated tools.  At Real Pro Systems, our ever-expanding range of solutions enables you to choose the solution that best meets your needs, and your growth path is assured from Real Pro Silver (your internet foundation), to Real Pro Gold (advanced internet marketing) to Real Pro Platinum (the ultimate internet marketing and business management system).

Any of our systems can support a fully custom website, and as your needs grow, you can upgrade from one system to the other, retaining your custom website look and feel!  When you buy from Real Pro Systems, you not only get a great system with flexibility, but you have great flexibility across a range of systems.

Have you ever wished that leads you generate with another company’s tool could somehow automagically load into your Real Pro Silver, Gold, or Platinum system so you could send drip messages, newsletters, etc.? We are developing technology to make that easier. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but you can help us get it there!

We would like to know which lead sources are the most important to you, and then we can develop a priority list for implementation. Our solution “reads” the lead notification messages generated by other tools. We will provide a special email address for you, and you set up your other tool to send the lead notification emails to that address (in addition to where they go now). So when you think of lead sources that you wish could feed directly into our products, be sure to only tell us about lead sources that generate a lead notification email.

Send a message to us at marketing@realprosystems.com, and tell us what are your most important lead sources that you wish could just automatically go into your agent system. We’ll let each of you know as we complete our support for a lead source you mention!

When it comes to marketing online you have two distinct audiences:

• Potential leads and clients
• Search engines

Do you want to increase your online marketing power? Make sure your listings are visible to search engines! The foundation of a Real Pro Systems website is an architecture that is extremely “search engine friendly.” All of the content on your website can be readily indexed, including your featured properties.

Some websites don’t do a good job at this even when listings are loaded directly onto the site. But what’s more, many websites rely on an IDX service to present an agent’s listings.  These websites present this IDX information inside “frames.” Even though you can see your listings on your website, since search engines can’t see what’s inside of a frame it cannot index your listings. And if that’s the case, your most important website content is being ignored.

Our approach is to fully integrate with an IDX. This not only means enabling site visitors to search all properties in the MLS, it also means we automatically load your listings onto your website so the content can easily be seen and indexed by search engines.

With an IDX that is truly integrated, your website visitors have a better search experience. Framed information often is presented in a way that is clunky and confusing, and in a style that looks very different from your website.

Our IDX integration means that when the listing information is loaded onto your site, you get SEO credit for the content, and you can market your listings with confidence. As a result, the listings on a Real Pro Systems website are not only indexed but come up in the top of the search engine results.

Since integration means that your listing information is pulled directly from the MLS to populate on your site it means no more loading listings to the MLS and then entering them a second time on your website! Are you tired of setting up visitors on recurring searches day in and day out? IDX integration automates the process of setting up of recurring searches, so you don’t have to!

Here at Real Pro Systems we know how valuable it can be to have a truly integrated IDX solution available to you. For the month of October we are offering special savings on our IDX solutions! From now until the end of October, you will save $300 on the set up of a Real Pro Gold agent system when you add the Integrated IDX option. (*Savings of $300 can be achieved by combining a Real Pro Gold and IDX offer; $200 off Gold setup/$100 IDX setup). This offer will NOT last, to take advantage of it call a sales representative today.  541.743.8500.

We pride ourselves on our innovative approaches to online marketing for real estate agents, so we’re not resting on our laurels after rolling out Gold3. The team is hard at work creating a new system that will be introduced later this summer. Our focus for this new offering is to meet a broad set of needs for upper-end agents, agents with teams, and small brokerages.

We’ve heard about terribly expensive lead generation systems out there and know we will offer most of the benefits they provide at about 20% of their cost! But our system under development goes way beyond lead generation.

We decided to tackle the business problems agents are grappling with including managing lead and prospect data across multiple systems, managing lead distribution and follow-up across a team, and managing business performance. We will provide oversight of the business pipeline from end to end, and immediate insight into what’s working and what isn’t.

If you are looking for all the advantages of Real Pro Gold coupled with full team support, advanced lead generation, and unprecedented visibility and control of your business, this might be of interest. A version for single agents will be offered as well.

We are in the early testing process with this new system now. As we move into summer you’ll be hearing more about it!

After introducing Real Pro Gold3 last fall, we offered our clients the opportunity to get a website makeover which provides a complete website transformation from Real Pro Gold version 2 to the newer version, and also includes completely new layout and branding. To date, nearly 1/3 of our clients have opted for the makeover and are enjoying the updated look and feel of our new designs.

However, we remained committed to providing the benefits of Real Pro Gold3 to our loyal clients who preferred to stay with the website design they already had. By the end of May we completed the conversions for all of our clients keeping their older designs, and are pleased to report that the conversion process went very smoothly.

To the extent the technology of the “classic” designs permitted, all of the features offered in Real Pro Gold3 are now available, with only a few exceptions. New features available include vastly improved SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools, listing syndication, blog syndication, and far more flexibility for creating new website pages. We hope you all are enjoying the advantages of Real Pro Gold3!