You are here: Home / Blogging / Agent / WordPress Wonder! Realtor’s Website Impresses.

WordPress Wonder! Realtor’s Website Impresses.

Posted by on June 22, 2010 · 7 Comments 

If you aren’t proud of your real estate website, it isn’t going to yield you any business.  Realtor Amanda McMillan certainly has plenty to be proud of with her real estate website ChicagoHomePartner.com.  The site is visually attractive and greets visitors with lovely scrolling images reflective of the Chicago lifestyle she sells.  But beyond being visually attractive, the site is effective for three main reasons which reflect outstanding comprehension of real estate marketing in a web 2.0 world, and have made her site worthy of this week’s agent applause.

Here is why ChicagoHomePartner.com is and effective real estate website:

Website Organization

The content of the site is well organized (an often overlooked element in the website design of Realtors).  More is not always better.  ChicagoHomePartner.com has clear navigation that is not overwhelming to consumers (and has an informative – and cool – rollover feature).  There are apparent (and selective) calls to action on the home page.  The site does not appear cluttered, despite the rich amount of information that is available.

Relevant and Current Content

The content of the site focuses on relevant information that matters to home buyers and sellers.  This includes property search, recent area news, Chicago real estate statistics, home buyer information, home seller information and testimonials about the service that Amanda provides.  It also provides great detailed neighborhood information, presented on a clickable map.

Noteworthy is that even though Amanda is not a frequent blogger (she appears to blog once or twice a month), her site content appears very timely and fresh.  This is due to IDX integration allowing for current listing inventory, a well positioned integration with Yelp on the community detail page which provides local business information and reviews, and the neighborhood explorer which ties to not only current market statistics, but also news stories and area events.  As a result, the content on the site is current and isn’t all up to Amanda to create via blog posts – a big time saver for any Realtor.

WordPress Platform Using Thesis

On a more technical note, the real magic in the site is that it is built in WordPress, which by design, positions the site to perform beautifully in this Google driven era of business (see prior post featuring The Good Life Team which dives deeper into the benefits of WordPress as a platform for building your real estate website).   The site also makes use of the Thesis theme which has a reputation for being one of the most SEO friendly WordPress themes.  ChicagoHomePartners.com is successful in having the feel of a customized site despite being a site built from a theme template.  (One SEO note – The flash images on the homepage is a balance choice between attractiveness and effectiveness.  It doesn’t help the site at all in search engines, but it certainly looks nice.)

ChicagoHomePartner.com is a great example for Realtors who are serious about their web strategy to pay attention to, and it illustrates what is possible with the WordPress website.  It’s a site to be proud of and we applaud you.

Print or Share:
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • email
  • PDF
  • RSS
  • Twitter
Share

Filed under Agent, Blogging

  • http://www.dakno.com/staff-detailed.php?a=208 rewebcoach

    This site gets several kudos for ease of navigation off the homepage and the visuals are very nice. When it comes to hyper-local neighborhood content, this offers tons of neighborhood content. While I didn't check the content of every neighborhood details page, the ones that I did check had the same content at Wikipedia. :-(

    The homepage offers most of the tools and resources consumers want from a real estate website in the first place… search for homes, market facts, neighborhood content and easy access to the blog.

    Here are couple of other observations. First, the reverse text (white text on black background) is not reader friendly especially for folks over 40. I'd watch my bounce rates as a cue for this issue. Reverse text pretty tough on the eyes. Second, if there was a way to have the MLS search content attributed to the URL and not iframed in the site I'm sure the site would perform a better on the SERPs.

    With the recent Google Caffeine initiative, site load times are more important than ever and the scrolling images need to be static and maybe rotate when the homepage refreshes. It would be a shame to forfeit SERP's just for a fancy slide show in the header.

    Last, if you watched the early June Google I/O conference YouTube video by Matt Cutts and team, in the site reviews Matt emphasizes the need for copy on the homepage of many of the sites he reviewed. I would seriously take Matt's suggestion for other sites and add some indexable, keyword-rich copy to this homepage with some deep links to other internal pages in the site for SEO and stickiness.

  • Takesunset

    Who provides the IDX listings?

  • http://www.AgentApplause.com Agent Applause
  • http://www.AgentApplause.com Agent Applause

    Great comments Bobby. Thank you for sharing your well articulated perspective with the Agent Applause community. I think you bring up some very valid learning lessons for all to consider when they design their sites and some great points for Amanda to consider if she's interested in evolving her site.

  • Loren Nason

    Thanks Bobby for the compliments and observations.

    The Black with white text and flash was a request of Amanda and Matt. The potential hits to the SERPs and also noting that the readability for some clients was considered but in the end they decided on keeping it this way.

    Also, this wasn't a design from scratch but instead was taking of current site hosted on a non-wordpress platform and re-coding into a wordpress site.

  • Loren Nason

    Thanks Bobby for the compliments and observations.

    The Black with white text and flash was a request of Amanda and Matt. The potential hits to the SERPs and also noting that the readability for some clients was considered but in the end they decided on keeping it this way.

    Also, this wasn't a design from scratch but instead was taking of current site hosted on a non-wordpress platform and re-coding into a wordpress site.

  • http://www.MaineHomeConnection.com Michael Sosnowski

    I agree with the text comments – that is easily fixed. I did feel that maybe there was a little too much going on. A little lighter might be good. Also, some neighborhood pics might be a good touch.