Stop Making These Real Estate Microsite Mistakes & Sell More

We love microsites. They make lead generation for realtors much easier. And over the years of building them to suit the many campaigns and projects of our clients, we can proudly say that we’ve mastered the art of creating a result-driven microsite. So, we thought of putting together this article to help property agencies out there who are struggling to get the attention of buyers. 

Without further ado, let’s jump straight into things! 

Common Mistakes For Real Estate Microsites:

Since you’re here reading an article on what pitfalls to avoid with a property microsite, you’re probably aware of what it can do for your brokerage. But just in case you need a short refresher of the benefits of a microsite for your real estate agency, they include; 

• A rapid growth and build speed (Your property microsites can be built within a couple of weeks, rather than the months that websites usually take) 
• Significantly improving your site’s SEO for better search visibility 
• More cost-effective option compared to websites
• High suitability for short-term projects as well as campaigns (depending on your intent, you can even carry on using a microsite for long-term purposes)
• Perfect experimental tool (Not sure if a set of property listings might sell? Test and gauge buyers’ interests without shooting off your budget)
• Helps you better target varying audience groups (This is best applicable when your new condo launches are marketing to a specific group)
• Boosts your real estate agency’s awareness and engagement
• The ability to generate more leads to sell or lease property listings at a faster pace

1. Duplicating content from another website

Copying content is never a good idea.  And yes, the answer is still the same even if you’re taking it from your own website. Once you’ve already posted your content on the Internet, duplicating it on another page might leave both the sites flagged by Google as spam. This will cause your SEO rankings to drop and buyers to overlook your microsite. If you absolutely have no choice in the matter, at least remove the original content from your website and replace it with a link that would direct visitors to your microsite for the information. 

But, if the original content is from another site unrelated to yours, we recommend hiring a property digital marketing agency to take the task of producing new, fresh, and unique content off your hands!

We can’t stress this enough: There is no point in creating your property microsite if you’re just going to leave it without proper content optimization. Including the right keywords in your content and keeping up-to-date with its optimization is how you speak Google’s language. You’re basically telling the search engine, “Hey, my page is relevant to this buyer’s search, give it one of the top ranks”. 

While we’re on this topic, make sure to not ‘keyword stuff’ as well. If you’re making the mistake of squeezing too many keywords in every other sentence, it’s not going to be long before your content starts to sound forced. Instead, aim at hitting that sweet spot of just enough keywords and you’ll be on your way to getting the conversions you need to close a listing.

3. Poor content planning

Content is key. When it doesn’t stand out to clearly highlight what you’re selling or isn’t organized in order of importance, you might not receive much leads. One of the most vital portions in your property microsite is the call to actions (CTA). If this section is not obvious or powerful enough, you’re definitely losing a prospect and the chance to make your comms. With so many different types of campaigns and agendas, there is no one answer to what your CTA should look like. We recommend trying an A/B testing where you can compare 2 versions of something to learn which is more effective in generating the leads you need.

Here are a couple more crucial real estate microsite content features;

• Map or location of the property

• 3D tours 
• Floorplans
• Agent profile 
• Agency branding

This one is quite simple and straightforward, yet it’s also a mistake we often see happening in many microsites. This is because business owners refuse to hire experts with proper digital coding knowledge. DIY-ing something or hiring cheap is fine, but when it starts jeopardizing your real estate leads, it might be time to hire professionals who know what they’re doing. There’s no harm in spending a little more to get attractive and functional designs on your property microsite that is more likely to lead generation for property. 

5. Lack of mobile optimization

4. Lack of Mobile Optimization

Singaporeans mostly use their mobiles when browsing the internet. If your property microsite is mostly designed for laptop users, your content would look overcrowded and ill-fitting in the smaller screen of a handphone. If this happens, there’s a high chance that your mobile visitors would choose to go back to the search engine to try another property agency website or microsite instead of yours. 

Another reason why you should never skip mobile optimization is because Google prefers mobile friendly pages. This happened in 2018 when Google figured out that more than half of their daily searches were made from handphones users. Since then, the search engine has been prioritizing mobile-friendly microsites for its top ranks. Once your property microsite is mobile optimized, you can expect more visitors, leads, and eventually comms! 

Nobody wants to buy an ugly home. This is where your image galleries and videos would come in handy. Realtors understand more than most that when you sell a home, you’re selling more than just the property – but a lifestyle. Instead of only painting the picture of the life they could be living with words, give them a taste of the master bedroom, bathroom, surrounding landscape, and nearby amenities in high definition. Clients may be put off if a condo unit is listed without any images of the actual unit. In today's world, walk-through videos of properties can be extremely useful in giving your clients a better sense of how a property feels overall. This would make them more likely to schedule a booking to view the home!

7. Cramming In Tables

Tables might look like an organized way to present your information without looking messy. But putting too many of them in a single site is a recipe for disaster. Not only will it leave your page looking unattractive, but tables are also not very mobile-friendly. And as we have already covered, this basically means Google won’t be happy enough with your microsite to offer it any of the top search result spots. Without this exposure, you won’t be getting any property leads or comms from the site.  

But that’s not all, tables also make updating your content for SEO much more difficult. The reason for this is because there’s only so many alternative words you can use to replace the ones you have in the table before you run out of options. And once you start slacking on updating that content, your Google ranking will drop. Also, the search engine bot looking through your page actually doesn’t see the horizontal and vertical lines of the table. Meaning it’s actually seeing a bunch of jumbled up words in your page that doesn’t make sense. Once again, this won’t make a good impression on Google. 

User experience is one of the most important, yet overlooked aspects in a page – especially when business owners only choose to focus on parts they think would bring them more leads. But what most don’t know is that great UX leaves you with better business results. If you’re wondering what this has to do with getting real estate leads, then let’s start with defining what user experience design (UX) means. Simply put, it’s a term used to explain the interaction a ‘user’ or site visitor has with the page. The goal here is to make sure their experience is easy, comfortable, and pleasant. Think of it this way, would you bother using or even returning to a page when it is complicated or designed poorly? We’re betting that’s a no. It doesn’t matter how good your videos, early bird promotions, or images are, anything short of a smooth or enjoyable experience, will result in your visitors clicking out and a lost chance at earning comms. 

A simple way to avoid this from happening is by putting yourself in the shoes of your microsite visitor. Do you find the navigation difficult or confusing? Is the information you came for readily available? Is the next step you need to take if planning on purchasing the advertised home obvious? If the answers to those questions are a yes, then go ahead and launch your property microsite. Alternatively, you could leave your page designing in the hands of experts of the field who will ensure your page ticks all those boxes. This way you can focus on closing your deals worry-free! 

Are you looking for microsite experts to assist you with real estate lead generation? Look no further than Sell More Condos (SMC)! We've spent years experimenting with, testing, and perfecting digital solutions to help property agencies in Singapore generate over 1000 high quality leads. We also take pride in offering top-notch digital marketing services, ranging from Google ads, to landing pages, and more, to help realtors not only outperform their competition, but also dominate their local market. Ready to take your brokerage to the next level? Wait no longer – get in touch with our helpful staff right away!