I have recently been doing a lot of thinking about web sites.
As a Realtor and more importantly a real estate practitioner, I am starting to wonder the strategy of putting so much time, effort, and money into my web site. The facts say that I/We need to have a web presence. But why? What is the purpose of a web site? My thinking used to be to provide the consumer with information, provide the consumer with the ability to search for property, provide me with a way to capture that consumer.
The reality of the situation is there are a number of sources the consumer is going to find and visit before they find my littler corner of the Internet.
May it not be a better approach to have a web site that gives the consumer the opportunity to get to know us as first people first, secondly as agents/brokers, and third as service provides they can count on for professional service?
My new thinking was reinforced tonight as I visited this
http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html
Of the top 20 real estate sites only 6 are actually real estate companies. Two are essentially the same company (Realogy). That leaves us with 5. Meaning 75% of consumers are searching for property everywhere but real estate web sites.
It seems like once again we are behind the consumer wants and needs curve.
I don't have the answer but I look forward to your comments.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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1 comments:
Great post Jeff,I think you are right, and we have been wronged. What I mean by that is the old complaint that we are practioners go out and get the "product" that makes our industry run. Then in order to better serve our customer, we put their properties into our MLS which then feeds through to Realtor.com. Now, we all know that most digital services out there have a huge profit margin, probably better than 75% which is fine (if not gouging) for a commercial venture. However, as I understand it NAR created Realtor.com and it has morphed into a quasi profit machine/member service. So it goes something like this: Realtor gets listing from consumer for a traditional fee that is under pressure from the consumer, the Realtor posts the property on Realtor.com and other consumers are attracted to the inventory that is there, Realtor.com now has so many listings and visitors that they put a premium on the top spaces and the ability to add additional information/photos so the consumer gets even more information. So, let's review, the Realtor is charged to join the MLS where Realtor.com is populated from, then charged to customize their inventory on Realtor.com so that it get's more attention by the consumers who are drawn there by the inventory created by the members of NAR. Does this sound like there is something backwards? It's the same with Trulia or Zillow, we give them their most valuable content for free and Realtors who are paying into services like Reply! lead generation are paying for access to the customers who visited those sites to see content posted by Realtors. Backwards? I say yes; what say you?
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