Spanish Real Estate forum - Spanish property - Estate agentsSpanish Real Estate forum - Spanish property - Estate agents

Matthew King · 10-07-2007, 03:42 PM

This question is targetted towards agents, not web developers - who choose to create their website themselves, rather then employing a professional to do the job.

I can understand the case of the agent trying to run their business as cheaply as possible, working with contacts, car as an office etc.

But for agents that have a physical presence e.g. an office or a shop, and run advertising in newspapers and publications - why would you try to do the website yourself?

Is it that you believe web developers are ripoff merchants? do you believe its easy to do it yourself?

For one of the most important assets of a Spanish Estate Agents business, I can't understand why you would choose to spend years learning the ropes of web development, while you could just invest from the start, have a professional website that builds trust, spreads your brand and gains instructions and leads, and leaves you time from the start to do your own job, which is selling property.

I don't mean this post to be a rant, im just interested to understand the thinking and reasoning from the other side. Anyone care to share their thoughts?

Almeria Property Place · 10-08-2007, 09:29 AM

i can share my thoughts with you no problems, the reason i decided to do it myself was that the company we were using looked to charge 2 800 euros for the website design plus hosting DB etc(150â‚¬pm) then if we wanted to make changes he was then asking a ridiculous 450â‚¬ an hour( and when i say changes i mean just in the wording of a sentence or adding a sentence or some other trivial chang)so this P****ed me off big time so i just started to do it on my own , bought a couple of books and spent a good few hours on line and gave it a go. Ok it isnt perfect but it is working.
i have a Page 3 on google.co.uk for almeria property.(since May, which beats the original company as they didnt even get us to the top 30 pages in 6 months).
So i suppose what i am saying is i had a bad experience and afterwards couldnt afford to do it again professionally and at the moment things are so slow i cant afford to pay anyone else. As soon as things pick up i will probably look for someone else to do the site for me but until then i need( out of financial necessity ) to keep on " Doing It Myself" and trying to improve and add extra features for usability of the clients.

Broke
Almeria

NotWebDesign · 10-08-2007, 10:11 AM

Matthew, very interesting question. I hope more agents will answer.

I think Broke's answer boils down to "ripoff merchants" and it certainly sounds like he did encounter one such. Although the initial quote does not sound too far off the mark for a quality web site.

But I am also confused... you would never attempt to build your own house or car? Why create a "do-it-yourself" job out of something that you hopefully have discovered is the most mission critical part of your business? It is easy for me to see what web sites are home made and which are not - granted it is my profession so I might be more observant than others, but some of your clients will surely also be able to see this as well?

Would you trust a mechanic, plumber, carpenter, builder who had clearly made his own tools?

Almeria Property Place · 10-08-2007, 10:23 AM

If i came across any tradesman who was capable of making his own tools i would be most impressed by his skill !!
I know all the reasons that you mentioned and I agree with you but since april I just dont have 3k to spend on a website or 150 euros a month for hosting, at the moment i have paid 166 euros for 2 years hosting with a great company, i dont get charged for making adjustments to text etc, in fact the whole website with hosting and domains( and a couple of scripts) has cost me less than 300 euros. So until the market picks up, unfortunately i cannot spend the money on a professinal web design project. It was originally the web company that p***ed me off which made me do it(well i do come from Yorkshire Stock) but at the moment it is purely financial, let me tell you i would love to spend the extra hours i spend messing around with the website, with my family instead, I also want a Porsche but cant afford that either!!!!!!

NotWebDesign · 10-08-2007, 10:35 AM

Wow, that is some pretty steep hosting prices: http://www.notwebdesign.com/hosting.html

Almeria Property Place · 10-08-2007, 10:42 AM

well i thought it was fairly reasonable for 2 years platinum pak

http://www.bluehost.com/

but then again i am not a professional just a real estate agent trying to survive in these dificult times!!!

still broke
Almeria

NotWebDesign · 10-08-2007, 10:54 AM

Well their "platinum" package is right in between my Medium and Gold packages. I doubt you would need more than my Medium package and probably not even that.

But, they are actually quite fair priced if you need all that space and bandwidth and from what I hear not a bad hosting company either.

Richie · 10-08-2007, 10:59 AM

I know of dozens of companies that have been ripped off over here by web design companies and so called "SEO firms", I think alot of people may have lost trust by paying over the odds for a site that could have cost them next to nothing if they did the work themselves.

This is a good point that has been brought up and I also would like to hear more from other agents experiences.

Budget is another thing that becomes a stumbling block, you have to sell it to the agent, but they need examples that it works and they are going to make the money from it - from my experience it works and I have saved Estate Agents thousands and thousands of euros per year from using my services.

Some of the companies that I do work for only have me as their ONLY over head along with taking clients out...when you used to spend thousands on other staff, offices, print media, exhibitions, branding and so on.

Basically, there is only one way of producing the business that is really important to agents and that is through the web, okay and also collaborating with others.

It is okay having an all singing and all dancing fancy site but it needs to be seen and SEO is the most important thing to generate the business that your site requires.

Too many don't have a clue, but that is fine with me, the less that know and want to know about it is less competition for my clients.

Great thread Matt...Probably the best so far on the forum.

Keep them coming...

Almeria Property Place · 10-08-2007, 11:12 AM

So i havent done too badly then,

oh well, "this time next year Rodney"

NotWebDesign · 10-08-2007, 11:20 AM

Great post webmaster. I totally agree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by webmaster

It is okay having an all singing and all dancing fancy site but it needs to be seen and SEO is the most important thing to generate the business that your site requires.

SEO is an ultra important but also an either very time consuming task or very expensive. And all you are doing is clawing away at your competitors to get a higher ranking than them.

I could risk shooting myself in the foot and ask: Do you actually NEED a web site? I would like to know if there are any agents who have contemplated simply not building a web site of their own and only advertise on Kyero and the likes.

In a few years time this will be the norm as I see it because it will not be feasible for the standard agent web site to compete with the big portals for SE position. What are your thoughts on this?