Home Builder Websites for Build Expo by Terry Zelen Part 2

Here Terry Zelen presents the importance of home builder and developer websites for the Build Expo in Tampa, Florida. During his presentation, he mentions the security of websites, use of templates and marketability.

Security of websites is important because it prevents malware and scammers from entering your website. Some security features include hosting with a reputable firm and incorporating HTTPS into your website domain.

Templates are built by developers to perform functions and to lock down code. Terry recommends to not use a template because it can be hard to work around the template code.

Marketability refers to people being able to find you online. With over 1.94 billion websites out there, you need to market your website to gain qualified traffic. You can market your website by SEO, PPC, social media and retargeting.

More about Terry:

Terry is a member of the Tampa Bay Builders Association, Urban Land Institute, Leadership Tampa Bay, Economic Club of Tampa and Florida SMC. He has free online resources for you to learn more about digital marketing for home builders and developers, here they are: www.the-punch-list.com, a Real Estate Marketing Strategy Group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12308... and www.TheSEOCamelion.com.

#DigitalMarketing #Webinar #HomeBuilders #Developers #TBBA #TerryZelen #TampaBayBuildersAssociation #SEO #PPC #Retargeting #Google #WebsiteDevelopment #Marketing #Marketingsolved #HomeBuilderMarketing #RealEstateMarketing

Transcript:

Depending on the original site design, but when I started in the industry we were one of the first firms to really start developing websites in the market. Back then, you know, it was a modem and it was a dialog so to get anything to come up was almost impossible.

You had to slicewhole pages into pieces so that they would load in bits.And today you have live video going on websites so everything has changed. And so it's important to think about the things that affected a design to is really changed.

Just a few years ago we had smaller sites now we have full frame, because they have to work on multiple forms of devices, and it's just critical that you keep up with the standards. You don't want your website to look dated because you don't want people again have that perception that your product is dated as well.

The use of templates and the template trials and tribulations. And what we found is we have a client. We came on board with, they had an existing website, and they wanted to add something which which should have been relatively simple. It was a video, and they wanted a video running on their homepage, and they use the template and templates are built by the developers to do the functions that they want them to do. And they're also built so that they lock down portions of the, of the code, so that you can't break.

So you go into the site you're not allowed access to certain areas because they want to make sure that nothing gets broken so that the template stays solid. However, if you're a good coder and you actually want to add functionality to it. Now you have to figure out how to code, around the template. So what should have taken us about a half an hour to do actually to this, which, again, from updating your website, it's critical to make sure that you're using, you know, a developer that understands how to write a site.

And then, step number five is marketability you properly promote your homes and your website and. Excuse me. So www who you built this with great website. And is it actually visible can people find you. If you aren't doing any marketing, you're gonna get no visibility online. And I like to use the line when I speak to clients is build it and they won't.

You spent a lot of money on a website, and then you're not going to promote it. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, you spend all this great money on a website it's a beautiful site, and then nobody sees it because they're aware that it exists, and especially here in Florida, we have roughly 1000 people a day moving into the area, Tampa Bay it's seven minutes.

So you may think you were really well known builder and that might have been five years ago with such an influx into the, into the area. There's a lot of people who are not aware of your product so marketing your site is really important. And when we did some research as of the beginning of the year there were actually 1.94 billion websites on the internet for them to find you in that sea of websites is nearly impossible about marketing in some form or fashion.

And you want to make sure that you're meeting Google's standards and their standards are for speed for the mobile devices security of the HTTPS site, making sure that you're locked in, and also from searchability. When you build your website in the back end, it should have a basic site dying. It's not visible to the consumer.