Why your outdated website is hurting you more than you think

You might not think that your website has a large impact on your business but you would be wrong - perception matters and outdated websites could spell trouble for your real estate business.


An outdated website - which includes not having a responsive website - creates a negative perception of your business. We take a look at some of these perceptions and how you could address the issues before they affect your bottom line.

They are going out of business
An outdated website creates the perception that your real estate business is going out of business - this goes as far as updated news or press releases displayed on your website. If you have old news or press releases on your website, customers are going to think that you are either going out of business or even worse that you are already out of business.

Luckily, with Entegral’s Office Management System (OMS) you can easily load news and press releases that will feed to your website. You can even schedule the news so you don’t even have to load new news on a daily basis!

No support

A website that has outdated information will most definitely cause you to lose business when it is hard for visitors to find phone numbers or email addresses, broken contact forms and confusing navigation will only further frustrate visitors.

“78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience.” (Source: American Express Survey, 2011)

This is not only a frustrating experience but also creates the perception that this is the type of service that they can expect from you offline.

New buyers, new approach

Let us just be honest here - the future is now and even the older generation wants to have the type of online experience that is “with it” (as the kids say)

Being “with it” could have a few different meanings - and although this might seem like trivial teenager speak it is far from it. For practical reasons we will focus on the design factor of the website - which is a significant factor in persuasion of perception.

Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab found that almost half (46%) of people say a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning credibility.

Entegral’s Flex responsive real estate website solution not only adapts to any device it is viewed on, it is also a testament to clean, simple and modern web design.

Technophobia?

A recent WSJ study found more than half (54%) of small to mid-sized businesses are concerned with “technology outpacing their ability to compete”.

On a website, technology cannot be ignored and websites that run old technology creates the perception that the company as a whole face similar technology incompetence and in a fast-paced world nobody wants to deal with that.

Because our Flex websites are hosted on the cloud and are constantly tweaked and updated to ensure you are always on the leading edge of web technology no visitor will be able to blame you of being a technophobe.

Security

Most outdated websites, unfortunately, create the perception that if a visitor enters their details into a contact form for example, that it won’t be kept safe and they could expect spam emails to flood their inboxes as soon as the press submit.

We take every possible precaution to ensure your details and your clients' details are kept safe. If you are using our newsletter and property alert functionality we use the latest best practices to ensure you are not flagged as a spam account.

Do they even care?

Websites are your online reputation of your offline reputation and if you have an outdated website visitors are left wondering if you even care about your business.

Recruiting talent

Lastly, we look at a factor that not many people have even considered. Recruiting future employees - your outdated website might actually be causing you more damage than just losing clients.

If don’t care about how your website looks it could create the perception that you won’t care about your employees

The answer

As we have mentioned before our OMS and Flex solutions has many features that could help you address all these issues and if you would like to explore this further please don’t hesitate to contact us

Popular posts from this blog

Easily link Base with external CRM systems

Property24 acquires Private Property, what do estate agents think?

US trends show more buyers come from internet, less from print