Last modified on April 24th, 2018
By Aimee Miller

Is it saying what you want prospects to hear?

Your website is a representative introduction to your property. It can be a warm, welcoming handshake, so to speak, or leave your page visitors wondering about your property – and your motives.

Like other relationship building tools, first impressions matter. How do you build an inviting, informative website that doesn’t overwhelm prospects with too much information, or worse, leave them feeling like they still don’t know anything about you?

Building Your Property Brand

Modern renters expect a website to capture and hold their attention. It should be well-organized and easy to navigate. One of the most important features of an engaging site is a prominently displayed logo that accentuates the overall tone and mood of your site.

Whether you are a property manager bringing your property online for the first time or thinking of adding new features and content to an existing property management site, answering the following questions will get you started.

• Does your website have a clean, professional layout? Font and color choices make words lift off the page without shouting.
• Can visitors search your listings and move back and forth between pages quickly? Broken links and slow loading time signal your property might be slow to tackle repair and maintenance for tenants, too.

• Can MAC and PC users browse digital brochures and infographics on a variety of browsers? Graphics and images render differently on some browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. It’s important to make sure as many home shoppers as possible gain access to your offerings.

Avoid Costly Internet Faux Pas

Most property managers want to attract highly-qualified residents and most prospective renters are looking for a property with plenty of amenities that complement their lifestyle. Finding that best-fit requires having a conversation about expectations. Here’s a quick checklist to make sure your online advertising efforts start that conversation on the right path.

Punctuation and spelling are important. A website littered with inappropriate or misspelled words is a sign that you don’t value your residents’ time enough to deliver clear, concise information. Respect is a two-way street. Take time to proofread evergreen content and blog posts before you publish information.

Put control in the hands of your visitors. Using auto-play music and scrolling text? It might be time to think about redesigning your display. Music is personal. Auto-play music is akin to telling your visitor what kind of music he ought to be listening to while browsing the web. Want to add music to your site? Give visitors an option to turn it on and not a mute or off button.

Another once-popular design feature – scrolling text – can be irritating and distracting to viewers. If the information is important enough to include on your webpage, give your viewers a click through option so he or she can read at a comfortable pace and absorb your message completely.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of features for building a better website to attract new residents to your apartment home communities, but it is a great place to start. Your site should allow prospective renters to browse your offerings, take a virtual tour with images or videos, and apply online or request more information from any computer or mobile device.