Customize Your Mobile IDX!
Making Your Website Mobile. A Real Estate Must!
The image shows the desired result of a mobile-friendly IDX search utility with lead capture features. Once you receive an email like this, you’re ready to do your follow-up marketing to move this prospect from a mobile searcher to a transaction and commission.
Before you dismiss mobile for your real estate marketing focus or relegate it to a lower position on your to-do list, check out these recent mobile usage statistics:
1) 87% of American adults own a cell phone. (Source: Pew Research Center)
2) 51% of mobile traffic is sent from mobile video. (Source: Cisco)
3) 29% of Americans say their phone is the first and last thing they look at every day. (Source: Qualcomm)
4) 44% of cell phone users have slept with their cell phone by their side so they didn’t miss a notification. (Source: Pew Research Center)
5) The average age for a person’s first cell phone is now 13. (Source: Qualcomm)
6) 31% of adults own a tablet device. (Source: Pew Research Center)
All of these statistics are interesting, but they become crucial when you apply them to the real estate industry. Real estate is fixed in place, requiring that the potential buyer visit the location to really see what they may be purchasing in the future. For this reason, a great deal of the time people spend on researching real estate is spent in a mobile pursuit of information; they’re driving around checking out real estate and neighborhoods.
If your prospects are mobile, is your web presence IDX search utility where they need it when they need it? Or, is your mobile version of your website and IDX search just a tiny depiction of what’s seen on a large monitor? If so, it’s a total waste on a mobile device and will drive away the mobile visitor quickly.
Doing Mobile Right – dsSearchAgent Mobile
Making a site, and especially an IDX search utility, mobile-friendly is far more than just shrinking it to the size of the device screen. Doing that simply makes it impossible to read and makes tapping for navigation a frustrating experience. Mobile-friendly design requires a complete re-design of navigation and display, but it also must be “responsive” to the device screen requirements.
dsSearchAgent Mobile Puts You in Control
There is a whole lot of technical stuff and programming involved in providing a user-friendly interface on tiny screens, and we do that stuff for you. However, there are other considerations you may want to take into account, and we provide customization settings for you.
From a home screen image that presents your market area best to showing off your best personal photo, you can customize your home screen to make that very important first impression. You can also enter your Google Analytics ID, as you will want to track your visitors, their mobile page views, and other activities on the mobile site.
You can even designate the search results and listings your visitors see on the home screen. If you’ve created special searches with results for popular areas, you can elect one of those for your home screen display. Of course, they can change the search parameters and look for their desired criteria from there. Maybe you want to feature your listings, or those of your brokerage, and that’s easily set up here as well.
For lead generation by prompting registration, you can restrict certain information from view to only those registered. By requiring login for specific information fields, you will not discourage visitors who want to remain anonymous, but you will encourage registrations for those who really want to see things like days on market, price changes, etc.
It’s simple; when buyers and sellers are on the move, they’ll use their mobile devices to search real estate listings, and you want their search-of-choice to be your website IDX search through dsAgentSearch Mobile.