Q&A With Seth Siegler about the Redesign of his ShopCharlestonRealEstate.com Web Site

With a fair number of agents and brokers likely planning web site redesigns in 2009 in order to stand out from the competition, I’m going to start spending as much time as I can gathering insights from agents and brokers going through the redesign process (if you or someone you know is in that boat, please e-mail me). I’ll post best practices, lessons learned, and available data sources here on Geek Estate Blog. With that said, I tracked down an agent in South Carolina currently going through the process, Seth Siegler from Carolina One Real Estate, and had a chance to ask him a few questions via e-mail regarding his motives and goals for his redesign. Below are my questions with his responses:

Q: What was the biggest factor in your decision to undertake a web site overhaul?

A: I decided to look into overhauling my website after seeing other agents and brokerages coming out with new sites with new features. After seeing a few of them in action, I started to feel like I was getting left behind! Although my Charleston Real Estate site is still pretty cutting edge for my market (Charleston, SC), I saw the new ideas and concepts as a way to gain an edge. I’d be the first one around here with some of the new toys.

Plus the whole internet has changed and a lot of real estate websites look REALLY dated now. Also, as soon as my new search was finished last year, I already had a million new ideas for how I would do it differently. I learned a LOT from that first development process…

Q: What are you aiming to accomplish with your new web site?

A: I’m hoping for weekly truck deliveries of large denomination cash….

Besides that….I’m hoping to have a website that is so useable and helpful that it becomes an address that people bookmark and reccomend to their friends. I’m working on TONS more content, video and feature ideas. I’d like it to make it to page one on Google too. I’m currently on page two of “charleston real estate”. I have a few friends who are on page one, and that’s all the difference in the world, traffic-wise.

Q: What data sources have you been looking at to help you accomplish your goals?

A: There really are a lot of API’s out there now. I’m looking at using the Zillow.com API for past sale data and Zestimates. Education.com for schools and of course, Onboard Informatics has all sorts of data for sale but that is not free…..At all……

Q: Talk a little bit about the decision of a template site versus a completely customized web site.

A: I think template sites are a great business idea….For the companies that sell them….

For the agents, I think it is a waste of money. You have no chance of being “the” site that people are going to use and you have no chance of really climbing the Google ranks. You’re site will obviously look like the other sites using the same template and really if you are hoping to use your website as a lead capture device, then you need to have something custom built.

You are definitely going to spend some money but if you are committed to that particular business plan, then it may be worth it.

Q: Are there any really good agent or broker sites that you have used for ideas?

A: I remember really looking into other brokerage and agent websites when I was coming up with ideas for my current website. I was always really impressed with the amount of information that Redfin manages to put onto their listing detail pages and the clean-cut look of sites like Estately.com.

But after a while, I found myself getting an idea from here and another one from there but then eventually my home page looked like a circus…waaay tooo much to look at.

I crumbled it all up and threw it away and started with a fresh sheet of paper. I started asking my friends (who were not in the business), about what they would like to see on a real estate website. That’s when I really started getting good ideas. Everyone had SO much to say about that. They were frustrated about all sorts of kinks in the road. Basically I found that people do not want to talk to a Realtor until it’s time to see a house in person.

And you know what? Thanks ok with me! And that really got the wheels turning.

If you have suggestions for Seth’s web site redesign, please leave a comment. I’ll try to get him to do another round of questions once his website is completed to discuss his lessons learned from the process. Thanks Seth — and best of luck with the web site redesign!