If you’re considering a new website for your estate or letting agency, WordPress is inevitably a name that you’ve come across. And if you are looking for a website which is flexible and easy and quick to update and upgrade, I’d recommend it to nearly any agency owner.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS for short). It’s a robust tool for creating and managing your website.
Out of the top 10 million most visited websites on the internet, WordPress is the CMS of choice for 38.2% of them, and the brand holds a 63.5% share of the CMS market.
In 2020, it’s estimated that more than 455 million websites use WordPress.
How much does WordPress cost?
WordPress is free to use and this is one of the primary reasons why it’s become so popular; it effectively lowered the barrier to creating a high-quality, professional website.
It is important to clarify that only the core software is free. Any themes or plugins you install may come at an additional price.
Can any developer work with WordPress?
WordPress is also open-source, which means its creators have made the software’s source code freely available for others to change and adapt for other purposes, including commercial purposes.
This open-source nature has allowed a vast community of WordPress contributors to grow and flourish over the years. Their ultimate goal is to continually innovate WordPress through core software improvements and the development of ancillary software like themes and plugins.
WordPress uses Plugins
WordPress plugins are pieces of software that extend the functionality of your website. There are many types of plugins out there designed to meet a wide variety of needs — from page builders to contact forms.
Plugins may be free or paid, and while many of the free plugins get the job done, for estate and letting agency websites there are some paid, property-specific plugins that may be worth investing in.
Why is WordPress the ideal CMS for estate and letting agents websites?
There are many reasons, but I will try and list the key ones:
- Estate agents need a website which is well optimised for ranking – after all, if local vendors and landlords cannot find your website in the Google search, they will be going to your competitors. WordPress is coded with ranking in mind and with the help of the Yoast plugin, agents can further optimise their pages.
- WordPress offers one of the best blogging systems and estate agents rely on content marketing to engage with their prospects.
- WordPress allows the use of plugins and there are already many property-related plugins available out of the box.
- It’s cheaper and quicker to develop in WordPress, which means agents can have a top-class website for a smaller investment.
OK, now lets have a look at our top 10 estate agents and letting agents websites built in WordPress:
1. Saxe Coburg
2. Harding Green
3. Hemmingfords Estate & Letting Agents
4. Story of Home
5. Stone Real Estate
6. Pearson Ferrier Estate Agents
7. Mountgrange Heritage
8. Miller Metcalfe
9. Foundation Property
10. Charters
What is important in an estate agent website design?
What makes a really good website design for estate or letting agents?
There are several things that estate agents should demand from their web provider:
- A website, which is optimised for mobile devices. There are more people using their mobile phones when searching for estate and letting agents today than ever before. In many cases, over 50% of an estate agency’s website traffic comes from mobile devices, so having a well-designed, responsive website is a must.
- Clear calls to action (CTA). An estate and letting agent’s website should work 24/7 in attracting and converting leads into enquiries. Without proper CTAs, positioned throughout the site with the user intent in mind, you will not be converting as much as you could be.
- Short sentences and sections. Who likes to read paragraph after paragraph on an estate agency website? Exactly, no one. So, a good website is split in sections with small chunks of text, giving enough information to take the user to the next logical progression.
- Good use of images. Think of your vendors or landlords – who are they? What are they looking for? Then, choose images that relate to their needs. Avoid splashing images of your office and logo everywhere.
- Speed of loading. Websites today should be loading quickly as users and search engines do not have the patience to entertain slow websites. So, make sure your web designers know how to optimise your website for speed. This is another advantage of WordPress as you can install a caching plugin that will improve the speed without a big development cost attached to it.
- You want a website that is designed to change as your agency needs change. Can you create new pages with sections suitable to your user’s intend? Can you add CTAs in every section of the website?
