Real Estate Forums

frobn

I originally posted this in another forum in respose to a question by a new Realtor and thought might be of interest to others:

Web site tips for a new Realtor.

Whatever your needs in a website are today you can be assured they will grow along with your growth as a Realtor.

Build on a solid foundation that lets you prepare for the future. If you are planning to build the site yourself, don't waste a time on flash and eye candy. Use standards--css/xhtml--anything less is pre 2000 and in the technology age it is pre-historic.

If you plan to hire someone validate their site for html/xhtml
at: http://validator.w3.org/

and for css at: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

It's acceptable to have a few errors.

Content is extremely important and you need a framework that allows you to add pages easily. Add at least a page a week about your community, local schools, neighborhoods and real estate related topics.

Add a blog

Add a framed IDX (its usually free from your local MLS)

Display your contact information prominently and have easy to use forms for visitors to ask questions, make appointments, get a CMA, etc.

Add listing management to your site

When you are ready add an integrated IDX.

Here is information that describes the proper use of templates. http://cssdesignmagic.com/template-modules.htm

SEOWolf

Excellent advice frobn.

However, I see few sites in the Top 10 of the SEs that are W3C compliant.

While I think it is a good practice, I’m not sure that it is worth the extra effort.

~VegasMack

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Providing IDX/RETS Services for the Columbia Missouri real estate market and Las Vegas real estate websites too.

frobn

You are correct, standards compliance alone will not propel your site to the top 10 stratosphere. Yet there are many other tangible reasons why one would take the "extra effort." For myself, the main reason is accessibility and usability, any additional advantages are by-products.

A more compelling reason for many ...web standards bring real tangible benefits to business

jora

I'm not a pro, so thanx for advices)

SeriousPHP

Sorry Frank. That article is simply a disinformation article with quite a political bent. It really is a shame that the making of claims that the table somehow is not valid xhtml is acceptable. I mean when you lie like the author of your link does about screenreader accesibility or pda issues regarding tables you are discredited entirely. In fact the moan is about the demise of these devices which cannot do a $500+ job for the user in favor of, you guessed it, MS products that handle the content rather than illuminate the deficiencies in the sites the guy who paid $500+ is trying to visit. Why does he do this? Well in the business we all know why. It's part of being in the anti-Microsoft clique.

There is an interesting history behind the entire matter of "web standards". Most people do not realize that Microsoft was the pioneer in css. In fact when I started doing web work as opposed to terminal work the competing browsers had no idea of even simple concepts like absolute position. After MS had taken the lead in not only defining but also implementing both html and css along came a group of academics hateful of corporate America declaring a standard. Of course they had no authority to declare a "standard". What they did have was a presumption that the company that made the PC useful should not have a say in this standard. Interestingly enough the W3C actually sells links on their web site. Kind of a cottage industry growing up out of dictating a standard from a appropriately windowless university office. Therein lies the rub and the anti-MS crowd will say anything to make their case.

Tables are in the xhtml spec. I-frames, on the other hand, are gone by xhtml 1.1. This becomes a problem for many realtors saddled by MLS rules and technology that make this their only real choice for displaying idx. In terms of usefulness "web standards" serve as a throttle to bring us all down to the level of the least useful software available. There can be little argument that MS J-Script is vastly superior to the amatuer Javascript.

For those who feel I'm making something out of nothing here is an example. The "alt" attribute of an image has traditionally been used to produce a tooltip. Actually this is not the "correct" usage of the "alt". It is meant to produce something useful for non-graphical browsers such as text based and screenreading browsers for the blind. The correct attribute to produce a tooltip is the "title" attribute. When the Firefox browser came out the decision was made to teach people a lesson by taking away the tooltip function from the alt attribute so as to force the use of the title attribute. This did not serve the user. A japanese fellow came along and made an extension for the ole fox to show the alt tag as a tooltip in FX. He was made into a pariah and his extension broken and dropped from the directory at every opportunity.

Here is another example of the political war. Since no one but MS was writing implementation of elements and tags like my personal favorite the fieldset MS figured their own way to render it. Years later the W3C dictates a "standard" and MS becomes a villian for not abandoning its customers who came to rely on its rendering engine. Tainted statistics from dishonest sites all across the web suggest that the "Firefox phenomenon" is sweeping the world at an amazing rate when the truth is many segments of the web have seen nearly no increase in alternative browser traffic. It is an incredibly bold statement to say that anyone will lose business by not bowing to the W3C dictates without consulting the individual site logs first.

Am I anti "web standards"? Of course not. In fact seriousphp.com is 100% pure xhtml 1.1 and CSS2 with the little click on icons on the bottom that will take you to the validators showing NO errors at all. In this case I did not need the extra power of the MS browser. The point is that the "web standards movement" is much more than an attempt to come up with a set of standards. It is an attempt by a group of people who have never sold anything more than links on their web site to define a set of edicts meant to level the field at its lowest level. Do you need to roll your site to this standard? Have a look at your logs. If you have few non-MS browsers visiting your site spend your money improving your site elsewhere first.

frobn

Serious, perhaps you misread the intent of my post. Obviously political maunervering is part of the mix, it always is, but I am not as concerned with that as I am with usability and accessibility. If there is misinformation in the article it is unfortunate that it may be obscuring information about the tangible business benefits of css/xhtml. Re: tables, I believe there is concensus that tables are the preferred formatting for tabular data but not for layout.

Buy New Tampa

I think the most important item was missed from the original set of tips... have a plan on when and how to update the site and stick to it. Also, make sure that plan is something that someone with enough SEO knowledge will approve as a good plan.

I became a licensed agent in the beginning of 2005 and did not have a website until I opened my own brokerage in 2007. Was that because I did not need one? No. It was because I did not see a good method for a website to assist me in my business. I launched my business with a website I built from scratch and designed on my own and over 75% of my business has come from the website. Needless to say, I had a plan and implemented it, and it has driven my business.

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artiny

Aye thank for your time and efforts .

dubaiprop

Also never put up a lot of videos or sound. This slows down the download speed and visitors often just leave without waiting for the site to open up.