2nd Website Participant for Geek Build 2012 – John Womeldorf "Mr Williamsburg"
My name is John Womeldorf and I have been working in residential real estate in the Williamsburg and Hampton Roads Va area for about nine years now. Prior to real estate I spent 15 years in the wholesale floral distribution business as a supplier to Costco , Whole Foods and numerous other retailers.
I have had a Word Press site since 2009 at http://williamsburgsrealestate.com that averages 30k visitors a month. The problem is that most of those visitors are simply reading about area events and not real estate — as a result, my conversion is minimal.
I feel I need to deploy a new niche site more clearly focused on real estate in the area. I created a brand (Mr Williamsburg) but the current mrwilliamsburg.com website runs on Point2 and is horrible.
The new site will focus simply on neighborhoods in the area and their amenities. Consumers want details and in depth coverage of places they are considering for a home purchase.
My knowledge of real estate websites has been assisted with multiple RE Bar Camps, two trips to Inman Connect, and following a number of blogs written by industry leaders.
I’m looking forward to participating in this project and look forward to working with the Geek Estate community to build a fantastic site.
Summary:
- Redesign or New: To Be Determined
- Geographic Focus: Williamsburg, VA
Question for the Geek Estate Community:
Given that Mr Williamsburg is my primary brand, should my primary domain be MrWilliamsburg.com? Or should I 301 redirect that domain to http://williamsburgsrealestate.com and simply redesign that site with the new branding in mind?
Note from the Editor: Not sure what Geek Build 2012 is? It’s building a few real estate websites from scratch publicly with the help of the Geek Estate Community and overseen by an experienced steering committee. Read more about Geek Build 2012 here, or view all posts related to Geek Build 2012 here.
**Geek Build logo designed by Dominic Morrocco at M Squared Real Estate.
emarketing-manager
Posted at 04:30h, 17 FebruaryI’ve visited your site and there’s far too much going on. Before you go totally mad and change the site, you need to do the basic analysis of the site, keywords and what works and what doesn’t. Before you go for a redesign you really need to get someone to do an
analysis of your site and analytics, maybe as well to do some
heatmapping. This ought to show you what you’re doing right and wrong.
It will enable you to structure the new site using the positives from
your original site.
Next I would perhaps consult an SEO agency to advise you what pages are
working and which can be best altered to match keywords and push link
juice to your property pages.
In this forum I’m unsure if you can get that help. The amount of visitors you get is very good however you need to identify the buyers / tenants / owners!
One thing I immediately notice is that you need to push people to product while being compelling at the same time. Your call to action needs to be clear and simple. So, contact me, book a visit etc needs to be bigger, clearer and preferably on the right hand side and near the photos.
You want top drive conversions, then add in what people NEED to know, while leaving enough to WANT to know. This solicits calls to ask for information. This is your lead!
You may wish to use better use of iconography in the re-design as its text heavy. Perhaps have sub elements which people can click to find. This will keep your site cleaner and look higher-end.
If you have great existing content you ought to look how this can benefit your listings.
You don’t seem to optimise much on soliciting listings/inventory.
Don’t forget with the new design to make it mobile compatible. This works for tablets and phones. Good programmers ought to do this for a little more cash when they make the new site. Making them both live at the same time will save you future investment.
I hope this helps and gives you a few ideas.
Best of luck!
Bob Wilson
Posted at 21:53h, 17 February”
The problem is that most of those visitors are simply reading about area events and not real estate — as a result, my conversion is minimal.”
You are making an assumption here about your traffic that you should not be making. Odds are that your conversion is low because you have made it difficult for them to take the action that results in conversion, not because they dont want too.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 08:52h, 19 FebruaryThe steering committee has discussed the domain question amongst ourselves — I’ll post our decision in a blog post soon.