imgix Blog | 8 Ways to Improve Your Real Estate Website Performance

The actual property business is present process vital shifts after COVID-19. According to a National Association of Realtors® report, 97% of homebuyers final 12 months used the Internet of their residence search, and 69% of their realtor members have an internet site. Mobile apps and web sites are actually the first modes of actual property analysis. Along with distant working, video and digital home excursions have grow to be mainstream. Moreover, consumers and sellers more and more demand a digital expertise that’s quick, visually interesting, and user-friendly.

Finally, broader adjustments like Google’s Core Web Vitals, which measures each web site’s efficiency and impacts the search rankings, can considerably have an effect on your internet visitors and deal stream.

These enterprise and technical challenges might be daunting if you happen to function an actual property web site or handle an actual property market. However, with each problem, there’s a possibility. By making use of some efficiency finest practices, your web site or actual property app can stand out from the competitors. In the remainder of this text, we’ll present you eight methods to enhance your internet efficiency whereas saving money and time.

1. Make your photos high-quality and quick loading
High-quality visible media is essential to profitable actual property web sites, however it’s laborious to keep the steadiness between high-resolution photos and movies and quick web page pace. The bigger a picture, the slower a web page masses. Because photos account for 75% of the page weight on right this moment’s web sites, they’ve an outsized impression on loading and visible stability. Technology like imgix means you may get the optimum steadiness between web page pace and visible high quality whereas saving effort and time. For instance, the main Canadian actual property market, Real Estate Wire (REW), selected imgix for a set of transformations, together with dynamic picture sizing and picture compression. As a consequence, REW slashed image processing time by 96%, lower processing prices by 70%, and freed up the engineering staff to deal with the core product.

2. Improve cell responsiveness
The NAR® found that 76% of homebuyers used a cell or pill for his or her residence search. Not optimizing your cell responsiveness means lacking out on a big share of potential prospects. A responsive design can adapt your web site to match any gadget’s display, which is essential for usability. Make certain your visual media adjust with the remainder of your web site for max impression.

3. Optimize and encode movies to keep away from stalling
Videos add super worth to actual property web sites. A current report on actual property tech tendencies discovered that 59% of buyers use videos of their search. In addition, 73% of homeowners say they’re likelier to checklist with a realtor who affords to create a video. And as digital open homes grow to be extra fashionable for the reason that pandemic, exhibiting high-quality movies with nice manufacturing worth can improve buy intent. But video buffering or stalling could be a turnoff to your viewers, whether or not they’re on the shopping for or promoting aspect. A video optimization API like the one from imgix can ship a wealthy and clean viewing expertise in any surroundings, with minimal effort.

4. Use a quick and dependable picture CDN
Using a CDN built for visual media means that you may enhance web page pace, web site reliability, and the visible expertise. As distant work and digital residence showings grow to be the norm, a CDN with huge geographic distribution might help you attain all of your potential prospects, irrespective of the place they’re. You can save bandwidth considerably with photos and movies intelligently optimized and cached. Furthermore, you possibly can remove file redundancy and save storage prices by transforming images on the fly.

5. Programmatically course of user-generated photos
Many actual property web sites supply photos and movies from itemizing techniques (such because the MLS), sellers, and builders. These belongings are available numerous codecs, kinds, and manufacturing qualities, making it laborious to keep visible consistency. Whether you need to automate user-generated image (UGI) processing or standardize the visible type, platforms like imgix can considerably save effort and time.

6. Make your web site accessible
Speaking of entry, now’s the time to undertake the Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act), as actual property websites are frequent lawsuit targets for non-compliance. Real property web sites might be difficult to design for accessibility since most include a whole bunch of itemizing pages which can be typically image-heavy. According to the ADA, for websites to comply, they have to meet the next requirements, together with (however not restricted to):

• All photos should include alt textual content in order that display readers can learn them.
• Video content material wants to have textual content captions.
• Audio and video content material want transcripts or descriptions.
• Any audio that performs might be stopped instantly.

7. Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Like in actual property, pace and agility are the names of the sport right here. Minifying code reduces load occasions and bandwidth utilization in your web sites so prospects with a low-speed connection or low-data plan can entry your web site simply. Tools like imgix don’t simply compress photos and movies. imgix compresses non-image elements, reminiscent of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with Brotli or GZIP. On common, GZIP affords about 78% compression, whereas Brotli offers 82%.

8. Use a quick and dependable internet hosting service
Hosting isn’t only for open homes. Your digital internet hosting is a elementary a part of any web site, and cloud-native internet hosting providers like Vercel or Netlify might help you to deploy your actual property web site a lot quicker and scale it with ease. This frees up useful engineering and IT sources for different important workloads.

One Solution for All Your Visual Media Needs

As expertise and client shifts, actual property discoveries and purchases will grow to be more and more digital, if not digital-first, within the coming years. Your on-line presence is extra vital than ever. By optimizing internet efficiency, you possibly can improve visibility, create a extra pleasant digital expertise, and in the end develop a dynamic ecosystem of consumers and sellers. Check out the next sources to see how imgix can future-proof your visible media wants.