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Common Customer Complaints About Real Estate Websites

Keeping your real estate website updated has never been more important as more and more people are transitioning online in response to COVID. As of 2018, millions of people use real estate websites when searching for important information about purchasing their homes.

Website usage will only increase as the year approaches its end, so you want to make sure that your website is easy to use. Especially for real estate websites, one bad experience can convince your customers that you are not worth their time.

As such, this article will compile a few common customer complaints as well as how you can address them and make your website the best that it can be.

The Information is Outdated or Listings Are No Longer Available

First, you want to make sure that your customers are using the relevant contact information. If you have a customer trying to call a phone number that no longer exists, or they follow an address that leads to an empty building, then you risk wasting their time and destroying your reputation.

To avoid these potential customer complaints, you can make sure that your contact information is updated. If you want to add a more personal touch, then you can have your company’s phone number correspond with a specific employee. Provide their name and a brief bio. Let your customers know who they will be talking to and try to build trust before they chat with you.

While you are updating your contact information, also take down the listings that have already been sold. Nothing is more frustrating for a buyer than finding a home that resonates with them only to discover that it has been purchased.

In this scenario, you are wasting your customer’s time and even potentially breaching the privacy of those who purchased the listed property, as you may be publishing interior images of what is now someone’s home. Thus, avoid this outcome by taking old listings down promptly, or at least including a small message saying that it has been sold.

The Contact Page is Hard to Find or Navigate

The worst thing that can happen is if one of your customers has a question or needs to contact your business, but the website’s contact information for them is inefficient. Luckily, there are multiple ways to make this page stand out and potentially make it the best part of your site.

Start with making a contact form page that only provides necessary information for your customers. Do not bog them down with unnecessary details, as too much content can deter them from asking for help.

Secondly, try designing something sleek and minimalistic for your website. This will make the page easy to navigate as well as significantly decrease the amount of time it will take for customers to send out a help request.

For more tips, check out our blog about modernizing your contact forms.

The Company Offers No Case Studies, or Seems Otherwise Untrustworthy

When customers are comparing multiple real estate websites, one way to stand out from the competition is by including a service page or case study page. Service pages show your company’s clients as well as a brief explanation of the kind of work you have done for them, often in the form of a case study.

By having service pages, you can show off your company’s history and convince your customers that you are the best choice. A wonderful example of a service page done right is the service page of Duemelands, a website built by us here at OnSharp.

The service page is divided into three categories: The company’s work with (1) tenants, (2) sellers, and (3) purchasers. As such, they are marketing their business to three different audiences, thus expanding their company’s reach.

If your business is small, or just starting out, then try to include specific examples. Get permission from homeowners you worked with in the past and include their sales on the service page. You can consider naming this section “Our Services”, which adds a personal flair to the website.

The Website’s Photos and 360 Tours Load Slowly

Always take care of the technical aspects of your website. Without the proper content management system, having too many pictures on your website can crash everything, potentially warding off new customers. This is especially common for real estate websites because they tend to include many photos and virtual tours.

You can avoid this problem by choosing the best content management software for the job. There are many factors when considering which CMS software will best support your site.

For example, there are two different kinds of CMS software: Open Source and Closed Source. The former makes it easy for website creators to edit any part of their content, while the latter leaves control of the site’s maintenance over to a professional third party.

Choosing a CMS is not an easy ordeal. In Duemelands case, we built the website but gave the creators freedom in editing their content to make their information relevant. This may work for you, or maybe you prefer another type of CMS. If you want to learn even more about how content management systems work, then read our following blog post about how the right CMS can make or break your website.

No 3D Images or Virtual Tours

While photos are a great way to sell your property, another element to consider is utilizing 3D real estate virtual tours. By using these tours, you can avoid customers’ complaints when they want to see the property but do not want to leave their homes due to COVID.

There are many great examples of 3D Tours, but some of the best come from Apartments.com. In their listing, they include a variety of photos as well as multiple 3D tours. For each tour, they allow you to view each room by rotating the camera and zooming in on specific details.

Furthermore, you can always refer back to the floorplan for a better idea of how the apartment looks. Some tours are virtual reality home tours, in which the customer can use a VR headset of their choosing and experience the tour as if they were there.

There are many tutorials you can use when creating 3D tours. For more information, check out our blog post on incorporating 3D tours onto your website.

Conclusion: Common Customer Complaints About Real Estate Websites

There are many features that you can include in your real estate website that will alleviate any potential customer complaints. Alas, nobody is perfect, so you may still come across problems as you are building your website. Just know that OnSharp is always more than happy to provide any assistance at all. You can request a consultation here.

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