This is part 7 of a 7 part series entitled 7 Website Best Practices for Title Agents.
Today embarks the last day of our training (as a tear falls on my keyboard) but I really hope this series of emails has helped and provided value to you.
Moving on, today I want to talk to you about being accessible to your customers 24×7.
But no, I don’t mean that you have to live at the office.
…And no, I’m not saying you need to sleep next to your phone and answer it at 3 AM on Sunday morning.
What I’m talking about is making your website accessible to everyone, no matter what device they are on.
It is no surprise that today’s successful real estate agents are mobile. They could be on their phone in the car, or at a Starbucks on their iPad. They could even be on their laptop but they are probably not at their office.
…Drumroll please…
As a result your contact info, your resources, your tools, and your website all needs to be accessible from anywhere that they are from whatever device they are on at the time – a Mac computer or an Android phone.
The good news is that there is now something called “responsive design” which, without boring you with the technical jargon, means that when your website or tool is opened on a small device like a phone, it automatically re-formats for that specific device.
And if the same website or tool is opened from a Windows computer, it automatically re-formats for a larger screen.
In simple terms it is like having a website AND a mobile app at the same time.
Pretty cool stuff…
So basically, when you are ready to re-design your website make sure that whoever you pick practices “responsive design.”
This is important to know because in 2013 adults actually spent more time on their mobile phones (19.4%) than on a computer (19.2%).
And both mobile phones sales and mobile internet usage is outpacing computer sales and internet browsing from a computer.
Both of these figures are growing exponentially whereas 10 years ago this wasn’t a problem.
That is why you want to be sure your website, resources for customers, whatever tools you give them are available on any device – not just computer screens.
[Update] This is no longer optional
Starting in April 2015, Google will now start penalizing Title Agents and other companies whose websites are not mobile friendly.
USA Today sums it up like this:
“A website ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in a search query could hypothetically fall to ninth or 10th place, causing a loss of thousands of dollars in potential business…”
Read more about this new requirement here and learn how to resolve it quickly and easily.
To check if your website is mobile-friendly, visit Google’s free mobile-friendly checker by clicking here, then simply enter your website URL.
Photo by sterlic