Fight High Bounce Rates with WordPress Real Estate Sites
WordPress real estate themes can provide new life to an old real estate website, especially when it comes to improving the rate people leave your website. We’re talking about bounce rates. If you look at Google Analytics for any website, there’s a column designated for bounce rates. Bounce rates are basically the percentage and number of people who enter a website and then leave – hence the term “bounce.” A high bounce rate, not good. A low bounce rate, excellent.
Here’s the bottom line – a broker or agent does not want to go through all that trouble creating a web site, providing content on a website and marketing that web site only to find people coming and pivoting away like they are on a trampoline.
Even if you believe you have a decent bounce rate on your website, you can always make improvements. Because the longer people stay on a website, the more likely they are going to engage in that website and head down the sales funnel to making a call, filling out a contact form or signing up for an email newsletter.
Talk to experts who develop real estate websites (such as Home Junction). Find out from them what is a decent bounce rate for a typical real estate company. This is critical. For example, if an agent is marketing a $800,000 property and then promotes that listing on social media or in advertisements, they certainly don’t want potential prospects coming to that page and then taking off. Something is probably not right.
And one quick solution is to consider using WordPress Real Estate Themes that are already built to maximize real estate websites. (At least from a reputable and experienced real estate web development company). Those pre-built real estate themes come with improvements already coded into the software. Already designed to address readability, usability, navigation, lead generation, etc.
All a broker or agent has to do is make the switch. If you are not currently using WordPress, consider making the switch. WordPress is currently the No. 1 Content Management System in the World. There are several reasons why and we’ll point those out below.
Back to improving bounce rates and engagement with your prospects. Below are some strategies to help.
Site Speed
As we all know, a slow website is a dead website. In today’s digital world, you have from 3-5 seconds to grab someone’s attention. If your website takes too long to load, people are going to bounce. WordPress developers know this. That’s why they’ve developed a content management platform that is built for speed. Choosing the right WordPress Real Estate Theme can help speed up that load times.
Mobile Responsiveness
Sit in any coffee house today and what are people doing? Surfing on their phones! Studies show that more and more people now cruise the web on their mobile devices: iPhones, Android smartphones and tablets. In fact, experts say now almost as much as 60% of web traffic takes place on mobile devices. That means your website must be “responsive” and able to adapt to all those different mobile devices with their different size screens and operating systems.
That’s a big job. Again, guess which company is fully aware of this? WordPress. Adding a WordPress Real Estate Theme can quickly make your website mobile ready. That means the website will adapt to different devices and will present your pages quickly, with easy to find navigation and search, readable fonts and correctly sized images.
Content
If you present visitors with a page filled with content that is relevant to their needs, they will tend to stay on that page and website. It’s that simple.
So, you want pages with big, high-quality photographs. Add videos. Those are always strong pulls for engagement. Make sure you have plenty of in-depth content. Not just listings, but related content such as real estate market data. Show information for recent home sales, price trends. school data, maps, maps with local points of interest such as restaurants and fitness facilities, neighborhood demographics, crime ratings, etc.
Again, the beauty of WordPress is that there are real estate plugins available that can immediately supply this data from a reputable data provider (such as Home Junction). The more information on a page, the more likely that visitor is to stay. And the more relevant that information to specifically what the visitor is searching for, the more likely they are to be engaged in the website.
If someone is searching for golf club communities, be sure to provide them with a page filled with information about golf communities in your area. Don’t promote golf communities and then send consumers to a catch-all page about a bunch of communities. Many of those visitors will be disappointed and bounce off that page like a golf ball hitting a cart path.
Updated Designs
One of the great things about the web and one of the negatives aspects about the web is that it changes constantly. With a brick and mortar storefront, it’s a big deal to redo the exterior, add new paint or change a sign. With the web, changes can be made quickly. And for that reason, change is constant. To keep up, it’s smart to refresh and upgrade the look and feel of your website. Again, this is where pre-designed WordPress Real Estate Themes can be super handy.
For example, notice how many websites now have a simple call to action on their homepage with a photo in the background? That design almost mimics Google’s home page. There’s a reason for that. Many web designers are mimicking Google’s home page. Why? Because they know that simple and minimalist design is effective. Who knows what the trends will be in 2020.
Here’s the point. To keep up with all these advancements in design and to keep your website fresh, consider those WordPress Real Estate Themes to give your website a makeover. Add some excitement. Change the format. Brighten up the colors. Spiff up your photo galleries.
One thing you probably don’t want to do is redesign an entire website from scratch. Because, by the time you are done, it might be 2021. But with WordPress Real Estate Themes you can make changes quickly.
Go and check out your bounce rates. Consider all the strategies above and pre-made WordPress Real Estate Themes to improve those rates and keep your prospects right where you want them – on your website.
