Back to Basics: Is Your Website a Billboard or a Resource?

This is the first in a four-part series from WebsiteBox on the basics of creating and managing a real estate website that generates sales leads that result in commissions.

How many photos of yourself are on your website? How prominent are they? How many statements are there about your production or "top producer" status? Where are these statements and self-portraits, on your home page and in other places?

This article is about the difference between a billboard and a site that generates business. Self-portraits and top producer statements have a place, but they're billboard items. They will do their job on your About page or Contact Me page, because the visitor that visits those pages are wanting more information about you.

However, up until that point, the vast majority of them are not interested in what you look like, if you love your pets, or if you do a lot of business. They've arrived at your site with a need for information, and they simply want to satisfy that need. They may stay and read more, and they may return often for more information. However, until they want to DO something, they are still just satisfying their desire for information.

How much screen space or screen real estate is there on a desktop monitor? It can be a lot of space in square inches, but no matter what the resolution, the visitor is still only going to see a limited amount of your content on the screen. It just gets bigger when the screen does.

Now take a look at the content available without scrolling on a tablet and then on a smart phone. What are you placing in that highly valuable "above the fold" screen real estate? Newspapers call the information printed above where the paper folds "above the fold," and it's important because the reader can view it without taking other action, like turning it over or changing pages. Headlines and important text go above the fold.