Back to Real Estate Web Design

Real Estate Web Site Design:
Basic Do's and Don'ts (continued)

Do spell check and have at least two people who are qualified in the English language proof your textual copy. Sloppy proofing, grammar and spelling makes you look less than professional. 

Don't use background colors or 'wallpaper'.  Often they will reduce the readability of your copy.  What you perceive to be a muted, tasteful golden color may appear to be a garish pumpkin shade on your prospect's screen. 

Don't use very small text.  If text is formatted smaller than 10 point (this is 10 point) it may appear miniscule if your prospect is using high screen resolution.  Format your page to appear well on a monitor set to 800 by 600 pixels but also be sure to look at it with a monitor with a setting of 1024 by 768 or higher.  "Tiny Text" may also cause the search engines to think you are using it to "spam" their data with useless phrases that you are hiding from users.

Don't depend on unusual text font styles for impact. The font that looks cool to you on your screen may look uninteresting when your prospect's computer defaults to another font because the one you designated is not in their system. 

Do check to see how long it takes for your page to download by hitting  the shift key and clicking your cursor on 'reload' at the same time on Netscape or shift key and 'refresh' on  Explorer after you have downloaded your site. This will force your computer to reload all of the page including the graphics as if for the first time and will give you an idea of how long it takes. Remember that you may have a much faster modem than your prospect/visitor. Many people still use slow modems so your real estate web design should consider the lowest reasonable denominator.
(2006 note: connections are mostly faster now, but the principle still applies.  Determine what your lower speed user access is and design for that where possible.)

Don't make the first page your 'resume' page.  Make the resume a secondary page that your prospect can choose to examine or ignore. Remember that the object of your site is to sell a prospect the idea of contacting you for more information --not to impress the world with your accomplishments. 

Don't put a site on the Internet unless you plan to do it very well. Having a plain vanilla, flyer type page that really doesn't offer much of value, will actually diminish your prestige as a real estate professional.  Would you pick up your million dollar buyer in a 1980 VW Bug, or  a battered Ford Fairlane?  Remember the (very true) cliché, "You only have one chance to make a first impression."