Website for a real estate agency

A real estate agency website has one main job: someone looking for a flat, an office or a plot should find a suitable property in minutes and ask about it straight away. For that you need five things: current listings, each on its own page, with great photos and a clear price; a few simple search filters; agent pages with a face and a phone number; an enquiry for that specific property in one tap; and a fast site that works well on a phone. Below we go through each of them with practical advice you can use whether you have two agents or twenty.

The listing: one page per property

The listing is the heart of the site. On your own site, every property can look better and be described in more detail than on a big portal. Each listing needs its own address (for example /properties/two-bedroom-flat-75sqm) so you can send it in a message, share it on Facebook and have it found on Google.

What every property page should have:

1. A title that says what matters: type, area, size. "Two-bedroom flat, city centre, 75 m²" is clearer than "Unique offer!".
2. A price, written clearly, and whether it includes VAT where that matters. If the price is "on request", at least give a guide.
3. Key facts in one line: floor, construction, year, orientation, furnishing, parking, completion status.
4. A short, human description: what is nearby, how the light is, who the place would suit. Do not repeat the table in words.
5. A map of the area. It does not have to be the exact address if you would rather not show it; the neighbourhood or an approximate pin is enough.
6. The agent handling the property: photo, name, phone number.
7. An "Ask about this property" button that sends an enquiry with the listing number already in it.

To check whether a page works, ask yourself: could someone decide if a viewing is worth it without calling to ask the basics? If not, add what is missing.

Photos sell the viewing

With property, the photos are often the first thing people look at. They are also why someone asks for a viewing or closes the page. A few rules:

• Shoot in daylight, in tidy rooms, from the corner of the room.
• Show every room, the bathroom, the balcony, the view, the entrance and the building from outside.
• The first photo is the best one, not the one that happened to be first on your phone.
• Add a floor plan if you have one. For many people it says more than ten photos.
• Never use someone else's or stock photos of interiors. If it is not from this property, leave it out.

Google advises giving each photo alt text that describes what it shows, a short but descriptive file name, and placing it near the text it relates to [1]. Instead of IMG_4532.jpg, use two-bedroom-flat-living-room.jpg, and for the alt text "Living room with a large window opening onto the balcony". The same page says something every agent knows from experience: high-quality photos appeal to people more than blurry ones [1]. More on taking the right photos in what photos to use on your website.

Search filters: few, but the right ones

Filters let a visitor remove the properties that do not match what they want. Nielsen Norman Group explains that filters only help if they match the things that matter most to people, and that a simple filter is often easier to understand and faster to use than a complex system with dozens of options [2].

For most agencies these are enough:

• deal: for sale or to rent;
• property type: flat, house, office, shop, land;
• city and area;
• price from–to;
• number of rooms or size.

Show the filters at the top of the listings page, and on a phone behind one clear "Filters" button. Instead of an empty page when the criteria are too strict, show a message, suggest loosening one of them, or invite the visitor to leave an enquiry so you can let them know when something suitable comes up.

There is also one technical detail to ask whoever builds your site about. Every combination of filters can create a new page address, and Google warns that this leads to a very large number of possible URLs, which its crawlers can waste time on instead of discovering your new listings [3]. A well-built site deals with this from the start.

Agents: the people behind the listings

People buy property from someone they trust. Make a team page: photo, name, the kind of property and the areas each agent works in, phone and email. On each agent's page, show their current listings too.

Add a short page about the agency itself: how long you have been working, in which cities, how a viewing works and what your service includes. How to write that page without empty phrases is in what to write on your About page.

A good listing shows the property. A good website also shows the people you can call about it today.

An enquiry about the specific property

The most common mistake is a general contact form where the client has to describe which property they mean. Put these on every listing:

• a call button that dials the agent in one tap on a phone;
• a WhatsApp or Viber button with a message that already contains the listing number;
• a short form with name, phone number and a convenient time for a viewing.

The fewer the fields, the more people fill it in. More ideas for turning visitors into clients are in how to turn website visitors into customers and a small business website that brings enquiries.

The name, phone number and email in an enquiry are personal data. The European Commission explains that personal data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living person, and lists a name and surname, a home address and an email address as examples [4]. So the form should have a short line on how you will use the data and a link to your privacy policy. This is general information, not legal advice; check your exact obligations with a lawyer.

Up to date and fast

Nothing is more annoying than calling about a property and hearing "that one has already sold". Take sold and let properties down, or mark them, on the day of the deal. If you want to show them as proof of your work, gather them in a separate "Sold" section, clearly apart from the active listings.

A site full of photos easily becomes slow, especially on a phone. One simple fix is lazy loading: photos far down the page only load when the visitor gets near them [5]. The one thing to avoid is lazy-loading the first large photo that is visible straight away [5]. More on speed in why is my website slow and how to speed it up.

Getting found in your town

People search for "property for sale in [city]", "estate agent [neighbourhood]" or "house to rent [town]". Make separate pages for the areas you work in, with real information about each: what kind of property there is, what the neighbourhood is like, what is close by. Fill in your Google Business Profile so you show up on the map, and go through the local SEO checklist.

A short checklist before launch

1. Every property has its own page with photos, price, facts and a map.
2. There are no more than five or six filters, and they work well on a phone.
3. Every listing has an agent with a phone number and an enquiry button.
4. The form is short and has a line about personal data.
5. Sold properties are not mixed in with active ones.
6. Photos have descriptive file names and alt text.
7. The site loads quickly on mobile data.

If you would rather have someone else take care of the design, build, hosting and maintenance, Studio V1 makes websites for small businesses for about €50 a month, real developers review every site, and the first version is live within 7 business days. See what the plan includes or get in touch and we will tell you how your agency's site could look.

References

1. Google Search Central. "Google image SEO best practices." developers.google.com/search
2. Nielsen Norman Group. "Filters vs. Facets: Definitions." nngroup.com/articles/filters-vs-facets
3. Google Search Central. "Managing crawling of faceted navigation URLs." developers.google.com/search
4. European Commission. "Data protection explained." commission.europa.eu
5. web.dev (Google). "Browser-level image lazy loading for the web." web.dev/articles/browser-level-image-lazy-loading