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US specifics for real estate web sites

         

rodion

7:23 am on Nov 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi everyone.
My company develops and sales real estate listing script, which includes classifieds and cms functionality. The most traffic to our site is from US. But most of clients who actually bought our software are not from US (Australia, Canada and etc), that is rather odd for me.
So what do you think, are there any US specific features that real estate web site should have? Or any other reasons for that?

jtara

8:56 pm on Nov 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I don't think it's odd at all. The U.S. is the 800-pound gurilla of Internet traffic. I'd expect the U.S. to represent a huge chunk of your traffic.

But if your product isn't specifically designed for the U.S. market, I'd expect visitors to quickly leave.

U.S. buyers tend to be more than a bit xenophobic. It's unusual for a U.S. consumer to buy goods directly from another country, and it's even more unusual for a company to buy software from another country. People in other countries (particularly, less populous ones) can't afford to restrict themselves so.

In addition to that, the U.S. real estate market is highly competitive, a great deal of money is spent on marketing, and web sites tend to be very feature-rich. 360-degree "virtual tours", etc. are the norm and expected.

Have you looked at some U.S. real estate websites?

jtara

3:27 am on Nov 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Some more thoughts:

- Who are your customers? Real estate agents, agencies, technology companies that sell to them, technology companies that provide hosted services? Perhaps the appropriate target audience is different in different countries.

- In the U.S., we have a small handful of large national agencies, plus smaller local ones. Almost all agents, though, are essentially independant small business-people, though they may operate under the "umbrella" of a big company or a local agency. While agents make heavy use of technology, they are not themselves terribly tech-savvy. They use it, that doesn't mean they understand it. :)

- I can't imagine a real estate agency or agent in the U.S. that doesn't already have a web site. While I don't know the details, I would guess that these are provided by the large national agencies, and others probably tend to favor hosted services. I'm not sure that the typical agent or agency would know what to do with a script. Anyway, I suspect the market is already pretty well saturated. Perhaps that is one of the differences in other countries, where the real estate business may not already be using the Internet to maximum advantage.

- The U.S. real estate market has crested, and number of sales has dropped pretty significantly. The number of agents certainly must be in decline. A large number of part-timers entered the market as agents (it seemed for a while that every hair-dresser and cab-driver had become a real estate agent...) but I doubt there is much business for part-timers today. So, you're not likely to do much business with new agencies/agents. There aren't any, as the business is currently in decline.

So, everybody who needs a real estate website already has one, AND, the number of agents and agencies is shrinking.

- You're probably asking in the wrong place. Ask your visitors. Run a poll. What did they come looking for, and did they find it?

rodion

4:40 am on Nov 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks jtara,
Your information is very useful.
Regarding you question about our customers. In most cases they are webmasters or small web studios who create real estate web sites.