Landing Pages 101: How to Convert More Leads with Your Real Estate Website

This post was contributed by Tyler Zey.

Real estate landing pages are crucial to any online strategy today.  These pages are dramatically different than typical website pages in that their sole purpose is to get contact information out of visitors.  Unlike blog pages and IDX listings, these pages give a value proposition and then ask the visitor for their contact information.

Today, I’m going to cover the exact things you need to be aware of when using landing pages on your real estate website. I’ll guide you through what to include on three different types of landing pages. This should help you increase the quantity and quality of leads you get on a daily basis.

Let’s start with a simple example that you should have on your website:

Example #1: Seller Lead Home Evaluation

One of the most essential landing pages you should have on your website is a seller lead page.  This can feature a free home evaluation or a value report. There are several things you should include when making this landing page:

1. Focus on simplicity: Landing pages with less language convert better.  A really good example of this is the seller landing page you can see at Trulia.com/sell.  That page is incredibly simple with it’s value proposition.
2. Focus on not being automated: I encourage REALTORS® to not have an automated valuation tool.  The purpose of the landing page should be for you to schedule an appointment and actually go to their house to evaluate it.  There are many tools online that help automate the process for you, but in my experience, these lower the conversion to appointment.
3. Study the language used on other websites: Big real estate websites spend a lot of money on advertising and split testing their landing pages. You should take screenshots of these pages before making your own. Study the words they use and consider using similar offers on your own pages.
4. Stay away from forms: Forms are the enemy of conversion.  You want as little information as possible. I suggest only asking for a phone number and email address.  This will typically increase your conversions. And Googling the email address can help you find the name of the prospect.

Here’s an example that you can copy:

I built this landing page using LeadPages. They are probably my favorite landing page tool. You can also use Unbounce.  Finally, your brokerage may have a landing page tool built into your backend system.

Example #2: Welcome Gate

Where do most people enter your website?  Your home page! And, over 85 percent of this traffic never does anything for your business.  They passively view your website and probably exit the site in under one minute.  That does nothing for you! This landing page solves that problem. The welcome gate is a tool that shows itself to first-time visitors of your website. It only pops up when a visitor goes directly to the home page.  Here’s an example:

This type of landing pages helps you control the traffic flow on your website.  Those buttons can either redirect people to a landing page, properties, or can serve as popup contact forms.  I find websites that control traffic this way generate close to 10 percent more leads from this simple page.

Now the traffic that would otherwise have to find your seller lead landing page on your website is simply profiled immediately upon entry.  This is a powerful tool in online lead capture.

This is really easy to setup with LeadPages.  Here’s a video showing you the step-by-step process:

Example #3: Freebie

Finally, the staple in real estate landing pages is the free giveaway page.  These pages offer visitors free content in exchange for their information.

In 2013 and 2014, this free giveaway was typically something like an eBook.  I’ve found that eBook conversion rates have dropped off lately.  Now, I recommend offering a video series featuring reviews and tours of local attractions. Or a cheat-sheet that educates potential buyers and sellers, such as: “The Top 10 Ways To [INSERT VALUE PROPOSITION].”

Here’s an example of a page that would work for this:

Real estate landing pages are really just another tool for you to use online.  They work really well in combination with social media, blogging, SEO and ads.  After you setup your landing pages, the task then becomes driving as much traffic to them as possible.

How do you use landing pages in your business to generate leads?  Let me know your thoughts and questions below in the comments! I’ll try to answer them as quickly as possible.

Tyler Zey writes real estate marketing tips for Easy Agent Pro.