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Is your Real Estate Website Committing This Conversion Killer?

Peter Kolat
3 min read

Note from the editor: We at BiggerPockets.com don’t believe that there are ANY real estate “secrets.” While the headline suggested below is great for marketing purposes, in reality, all the real estate information that exists is out in the public realm. You just need to know how to find it. Our site is a great place to do just that. Enjoy the article, as Peter is a pro when it comes to website marketing, but keep in mind what I said before – there are NO SECRETS!

Over the last couple of weeks, I wrote couple of articles on real estate website mistakes.  These mistakes are pretty serious.  Hopefully, you were able to read them and correct them, that is if you had them in the first place.

Men and a woman reading headlines posted in st...But we are not done yet.  This past week, while talking to one of my customers and doing our one-on-one 1 hour consultation, I went ahead and checked out his website.  The minute I hit his URL, I saw a big problem.  This single problem, that can be fixed in a matter of minutes, is costing real estate websites hundreds, if not thousands of visitors.  Are you curious as to what this mistake is?  Well, I won’t keep you waiting.  Here’s the problem.

When I arrived at his website, I saw something that many real estate websites do; it’s one of the biggest conversion killers you can have and one of the first things your visitor sees when he/she arrives on your website.  It’s the first sentence which in most cases reads:  “Welcome to YourWebsite.com! (or whatever that websites’ name is).

Does your website say that?  If so, then keep reading.

Why “Welcome to my website” is one of the biggest conversion killers

Imagine this scenario for a minute.  You are heading for foreclosure and looking for that ultimate solution on the internet hoping that someone out there can help you.  You go to Google and type in “how to save my house from foreclosure.”  Google returns thousands of results and you click on one of the top returned results.  You arrive at the website hoping that you are going to find the solution to your problem.  You arrive at the site and it says:  “Welcome to…”

What do you do next?  You click the back button and look for another website.

How do you solve the “Welcome” conversion killer on your website?

Here’s the solution.  You need to present the visitor with a powerful headline.  Remember, you only have few seconds to catch that visitor’s attention and you don’t have the time to do it with an ENTIRE web page.

You need a catchy, mysterious, psychologically infused headline that will drill down to your visitor’s deepest problem and force them to read the rest of the page. How do you do that?

Most powerful headlines have three ingredients in common.  They ask a question, stir up curiosity and present a problem to your visitor.  For instance, instead or writing: “Save your house from foreclosure with Savemyhouse.com,” you can inject this headline with something much more powerful.  How about this headline:

“Discover How You Can Stop The Creditors Harassing You During  Dinner With These 7 secret Methods You Can Use In The Next 15 Minutes…for FREE”

Isn’t that headline much more powerful than Welcome to…?  (I just came up with that headline while writing so it’s not as good as it could be.  By the way, you can use it on your website if you like.  Just make sure you deliver on the promise.  One last thing, I can already hear some people saying that my headline doesn’t work because there are no easy secrets to solving someone’s foreclosure problem.  Just use your imagination and work the example to your advantage.)

Now, Let’s analyze that headline.  First, they can discover how to do something.  These 2 words are very powerful and they trigger curiosity.  Next, the headline paints a familiar, yet very painful picture for them creditors harassing them during dinner time.  Then, the headline tells them how to solve that problem with your 7 secrets.  And last but not least, the headline tells them that they can use these 7 secrets fast and for free.

Now, if you were heading for foreclosure, wouldn’t you take 5 minutes to read what’s on that page?  Better yet, wouldn’t you give that website your name and email address to find out how you can solve your problem with 7 simple methods you can implement fast and for free?  You bet you would.

So there you have it.  use a headline on your home page and every other page on your site.  Remember, not everyone arrives on your home page.  Most of the traffic will come through your internal pages.

One last thing, your headline should be in the biggest font on your web page, inside the H1 tag.  The color should be red or blue (sometimes blue color works better so test it out on your own web site).  The headline should be centered with quotes around it.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.  As always, I’m here for you on BP site so take advantage. 🙂

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

Photo Credit: Flikr

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.