I happened across the Premier Real Estate website (www.reidrealtyteam.com) the other day. 

I took some time to talk with the website owner, Robert Reid, as well as the website designer, Nancy Golliday, to get some further insight into their motivation and vision for redesigning this website.

Robert Reid has had his Point2 Agent account since 2007 and only recently decided to hire the professional design services of Nancy Golliday of First Coast Designs to give his website a sharper look, make the switch to a Brokerage site, and integrate a complete IDX solution.  The redesign of the Reid Realty Team website was completed in November 2008.

Robert’s original goals for customizing their Point2 Agent website were to build a user-friendly destination real estate site packed with useful tools online shoppers are demanding in today’s market.  A big emphasis was placed on creating a sticky website for the local Portland and SW Washington markets.

Using the www.reidrealtyteam.com website as a Broker site also meant that an Agent template website was created and customized with a custom header and made user-friendly for new agents.  The template website consists of 10-12 pages and a foundation of on-page SEO and lead capture pages, which individual agents can then further personalize. 

In order to fulfill Robert’s vision, Nancy worked on making custom design changes such as adding a custom drop-down menu, graphics, and specialized forms.  In fact, Nancy explains that she spent the majority of the time working on changing the website over to a Brokerage website and implementing a full-featured IDX solution.  The www.reidrealtyteam.com blog was also customized to match the look of the website.  We can see her hard work in action here.

In addition to the custom design work, focus was made on updating the content throughout Robert’s website to ensure that it would not only benefit consumers who already knew about the site, but also attract search engine traffic and send new visitors to the site.  Part of this included working on area specifics and adding lots of listings.

The results speak for themselves.  According to Robert, his website traffic has increased dramatically.  Page views have doubled, average time on the site has tripled, and the increase of return visitors is substantial compared to before his site was customized.  No doubt, this success can be attributed to the improvements with website customization.  The original goals Robert had of creating a destination real estate site are being realized. 

The great part about the design that Nancy has given the site is that it is not only custom, but also user-friendly for the brokerage to manage.  They’ve been able to add to the site and ‘play’ since the customization.  Nancy encourages this by saying, “Dig into your sites!”, and we couldn’t agree more.

After the customization of Robert’s site was completed, he personally likes the IDX home search features that provide online users the ability to build their own listing manager account.  Also, the masterful job Nancy did with the graphics carries the corporate color theme throughout the entire website. 

Nancy agrees, that the overall feel of the site turned out amazingly.  It is light, airy, welcoming for the viewer with lots of ‘sticky’ – and Nancy loves ‘sticky’!

Personally when I visited this website one of the first things that caught my eye was the use of different types of media, including videos on this site.  In addition to rich content, the ability to provide information in various formats – like video - provides website visitors the option to choose how they best want to receive that information.  Variety is a great thing.

The website contains tons of awesome design elements but what I appreciated the most was the original content that was used throughout the site.  The content was relevant to what visitors would want, informative, and well-presented.  This is a great plus for both consumers and for search engines.

Your site looks great Robert.  Great work Nancy!

Robert Reid is Designated Principal Broker of Premier Real Estate in Lake Oswego, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. 

Nancy Golliday, of First Coast Designs, is a Point2 Agent Alliance Member Program approved Website Designer.  For more information about Nancy and our other AMP members please visit our website here.