Who are the best website providers in 2016? Who do you use? What do you like? Not like? Do you go full custom, semi-custom, or template? Do you pay for IDX separately? What do you spend monthly? What are you looking for in your next vendor?
I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
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Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 10:10h, 11 MayI go full custom for $560 per month and host with https://www.armor.com/. They are more expensive, but worth it because they really offer great support where others take a more hands off approach. I pay another $78 per month for the RETS feed. I am not looking for another option as this one is working well.
graymoment
Posted at 00:00h, 12 MayIs your monthly service the fee for content updates, or does it somehow factor in for the initial development costs?
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 00:12h, 12 MayI do all my own development, so that cost is for hosting the site only.
graymoment
Posted at 00:59h, 15 MayAh, there in lies the rub. I need to find a Bryn.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 09:35h, 15 MayLOL. The challenge I would think is we are always improving, so to pay someone could get very expensive. Perhaps you could find a good developer off shore to keep up with everything at a lower cost.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 09:41h, 15 MayI wouldn’t recommend very many people to build/maintain their own websites. Unless you are an engineer by trade and you really think that’s fun…it’s probably not a good use of your time.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 10:46h, 15 MayI agree you have to think it is fun. That is exactly why I do it, playing with technology and doing development is what I like to do. As I do not meet clients this, marketing, and problem solving is all I do.
If you enjoy it then I think it is a good use of your time, but agree if you don’t enjoy it don’t force it.
graymoment
Posted at 18:30h, 11 MayI’m looking for the answer to these questions as well. I have yet to find a great provider that doesn’t brand the footer. Which screams,
“Hey everybody! This is just a a site I rent from this other company for a monthly fee. Click on over here to see how I’ll use it to lead follow up with you.”
There’s no question that full custom would be the best choice for me to get what I want, but then it comes down to finding the right developer that can pull it off. And then there’s the ongoing content changes. It would seem some sort of custom WordPress site with a custom RETS/IDX feed would be a potential solution to make it easy to upkeep.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 18:35h, 11 MayIf you pay them enough, I bet any provider would remove the footer link. Just realize you’re asking them to remove their best source of new leads/clients.
graymoment
Posted at 23:51h, 11 MayI’ve asked Real geeks about paying to remove the footer, and the response was “go have your own custom site built.” I’ve thrown it out there to Curaytor, and didn’t get a response.
Sam DeBord
Posted at 13:58h, 17 FebruaryThere are so many other things you can do to improve your lead capture, generation, and conversion with content and design. The footer is such a minor thing to be worried about.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 18:52h, 11 MayI don’t think buyers and sellers care about the company on the footer. I think that is more for Realtors who want to know who you are using and might contact the company too.
graymoment
Posted at 23:55h, 11 MayI would posit that they do, especially the ones interested enough in your website to find themselves at the bottom of your website interested in what you’re all about. You probably have a better grasp on this than I do from your experience with your own successful consumer focused site, but when a a company balks at a discussion about paying 50% more to remove a footer, you have to wonder how much value they are getting out of it.
Nate Duhe
Posted at 05:01h, 12 MayI went with Real Estate Webmasters (aka REW). I decided to go with the semi-custom. (I forgot the start up fee maybe $4000-$5000). I pay $200 a month and IDX is included. Check out what it looks like at http://www.buyingmyrtlebeach.com/. Their customer service is great and easy to access as they understand what you are trying to accomplish on the backend. The only negative is that you have to pay for some customization, if you are not able to create what you want. They also do not use wordpress as they have created their own format. The system format to keep up with leads is very user friendly. I am very satisfied.
Tony
Posted at 11:09h, 12 MayI’m curious to know people’s opinion about getting a native app to go along with the website. Are there good web providers that also offer an app? Good app-only providers that work well with your current web provider? Is there even value in having a website and an app? Thanks.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 15:48h, 12 MayHow do you plan to get consumers to use a mobile app? That’s the core question you (and others) need to answer before you invest money to deliver one.
Sam DeBord
Posted at 13:49h, 17 FebruaryAgreed–it’s really hard to get mobile app adoption unless you have some sort of a unique feature there. If it has built-in collaboration, you can get current clients to use it, but organic traffic is tough.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 14:11h, 17 FebruaryTwo providers to take a look at if you’re intent to go down the path of giving your own audience/clients a branded experience:
https://www.realscout.com/
https://homestack.com/
LottyDotty42OH
Posted at 12:37h, 17 FebruaryI was curious if anybody has found the magic bullet yet?.. I have tried many IDX solutions as well, but most of the “good” ones don’t focus on SEO. They just want you to spend more money with them on PPC / Facebook ads.. I have good SEO Domains, I just need a good IDX/CRM to go with them.. I have a RealGeeks site at http://www.columbus-homes-for-sale.com that is really good for SEO but the CRM lacks a few features and unfortunately they don’t feel the need to update their product. I thought Kunversion was the answer so I put my http://www.TheBuckeyeRealtyTeam.com domain on that but their SEO is horrible and my leads have dropped by 75% since switching over to them. I am getting about the same amount of traffic but the traffic is not converting to leads because of how bad their SEO pages are designed.
Can someone please make a good IDX Solution that is SEO Friendly, Lead Capture Friendly, and has a good system for follow up? Why is this concept so hard for these companies?
Sam DeBord
Posted at 13:56h, 17 FebruaryIf you’re talking about traffic that is already on the site, the SEO doesn’t matter anymore. It is content and lead capture/conversion you’re looking for. The domain may be great for SEO, but that is a tiny portion of SEO. None of these systems will get organic search traffic unless you build out quality content and get it shared and get a network of links pointing back to it. There is no simple way to build organic search placement. That’s why everyone uses pay per click options for traffic, because only 1% of brokers and agents have the time or patience to do a real search engine optimization. It’s not the platform.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 14:05h, 17 February“That’s why everyone uses pay per click options for traffic, because only 1% of brokers and agents have the time or patience to do a real search engine optimization. It’s not the platform.”
Yup… most brokers won’t have the time/patience/money to do well with SEO. And, frankly, it’s getting harder by the day to compete — there’s a serious early mover advantage. You can’t replace time.
@lottydotty42oh:disqus, You may find some value in these posts I wrote several years ago:
https://geekestateblog.com/attn-real-estate-brokers-whats-the-cost-of-neglecting-seo-now/
and
https://geekestateblog.com/builders-strong-foundations-and-seo/
Drew Meyers
Posted at 14:08h, 17 FebruaryHow are things going 9 months later? Any further details you can share?