We are entering a new era of using the internet to sell homes. Home buyers are getting younger and the numbers who are not online is dwindling to almost zero.
This new generation of home buyer online has higher expectations than buyers did just a few years ago. That’s because technology has advanced and so the internet surfer expects the search engine experience to advance as well.
One way you can easily meet these expectations of a great online experience is by creative uses of advanced digital photography. A picture is worth a thousand words, but advanced digital imagery can be worth a thousand single digital photographs.
It’s time to think about adding some excitement to real estate websites in the form of beautiful and compelling images.
The first thing to think about is a virtual tour. Online tours have been around for years, but are you using them to maximum advantage on your website? Are you allowing the home buyer to sit in their current homes and picture every nook and cranny of their future home through the virtual tours on your website? If you choose the right images combined with great graphics your visitors will love your website and want to return.
A more creative approach to virtual tours is to use them to show the prospective buyer what the neighborhood and community look like. How great would it be to see not only the home but also the view from the home to the street or neighbor’s yards and houses?
You can go one step further and do a digital tour of the drive from the home to the nearest school, shopping district, or recreational facilities. You’ve got small children and you want to see what the streets look like surrounding your future home, and what the walk will be like to their new elementary school. You want to see what the bike ride will be like to the neighborhood pool. You want to see what the commute will be like to your downtown office. There is no end to the uses of digital imagery to communicate fantastic information to prospective home buyers. You may even be able to get photographs under different weather conditions, and during different times of the year. In fact you may be able to do a virtual tour of the school itself, and the neighborhood pool.
I’ve visited a lot of Realtor websites and I don’t remember any of them doing something that could really knock the socks of prospective buyer — an individualized tour of homes.
For example, you work a lot in the niches of first time home buyers and families with small children. So create a tour online of the top five or ten best homes on the market that would appeal to this target market. You can do it in the form of a slide show or even a more creative presentation.
This will save your future customers a lot of time by limiting the number of images you show for each home. You can show a curb shot, a kitchen and/or bathroom shot, and one or two other features of each house. This could be thrilling for the young couple moving from far away who is now able to see all the best available homes for them to buy in their new location.
When this couple visits your town for an actual showing, the groundwork will have been laid. All those pretty pictures have been working very hard for you, and greatly increased your chances of making a sale. custom socks with logo