Real estate website design: an IDX site that works for you

Marketing For Realtor is an independent referral service, not a marketing agency. When you send the form, your details go to an independent marketing agency that prepares any proposal and does any work.

This page sets out what a real estate agent’s website needs to do, the main ways to get one, what IDX is and how to set it up, and a checklist to use before you pay for a new site or launch one.

What a real estate agent’s website must do

A good site does five jobs. If yours does not do one of them, that is where to start.

1. Show homes. Current listings in your market, searchable by area, price and type, through your MLS’s IDX feed.
2. Show you know the area. Pages for the towns and neighborhoods you sell, with what buyers and sellers ask about there.
3. Show your own listings properly. A page for each listing you hold, with your photos, video, description and open house times.
4. Start conversations. Short forms for a showing, a question or a home value, plus a way to save a search and get new listings.
5. Belong to you. Your domain, your content and your lead list, so the site keeps its value for as long as you work.

IDX: listings on your own site

IDX lets an agent show MLS listings on their own website. Without it, a buyer who wants to see homes leaves for a portal and may never come back. With it, your site becomes a place people search, save and return to.

IDX can be set up in more than one way, and the difference matters:

Question	Why it matters
Do listing pages live on my domain?	Pages on your own domain can be found in search under your name; a framed or separate site may not be.
Can I make area pages with live listings?	Area pages with listings are useful every day and give each page a reason to exist.
How do saved searches and alerts work?	Alerts bring buyers back to your site, not to someone else’s.
Where do inquiries go?	Every form should reach your phone and your CRM with the listing it came from.
What are my MLS’s display rules?	Ask your MLS what rules it has for showing its listings, and build the site to follow them.

Forced registration

Many IDX setups can ask visitors to register before they see more homes. It produces contact details, and it also turns some people away. Ask for it to be adjustable, so you can decide how many homes someone sees before the site asks, or turn it off for some pages.

Area pages and listing pages

Area pages are where an agent’s site earns visits from search. Each should hold live listings for that area and real knowledge about it, written by someone who sells there: the kinds of homes, the streets people ask about, what a buyer should know. Google’s spam policies treat many near-identical city pages that funnel people to one page as doorway abuse, so each page should stand on its own. Google’s systems are designed to favor “helpful, reliable information that’s created to benefit people.”

Your own listings deserve their own pages too, beyond the IDX entry: more photos, a video, your description, the open house times and a clear way to ask about the home. A seller who sees how you present other homes is seeing your pitch.

Forms that people finish

Many visitors will be on a phone, and long forms are easy to abandon. Ask for what you need to reply: a name, a phone number or email, and the home or question. Put the form where the question arises: on a listing page, the button is about that home; on an area page, it is about that area; on the home value page, it is the address.

Every form should land in one place, your CRM, with where it came from, and should reach your phone straight away. If you send marketing emails to the people who sign up, the CAN-SPAM rules apply: a valid physical postal address, a clear way to opt out, and opt-outs honored within 10 business days.

Template, custom or brokerage page

Option	Good for	Watch for
Brokerage agent page	A start, at no extra cost	It usually belongs to the brokerage and stays there if you move
Real estate template site	A quicker start, often with IDX built in	Who owns the domain and content, and whether you can leave with them
Custom design	A distinct brand, a team or a brokerage	Time and budget, and who maintains it after launch

Any of these can work. What matters most is that the domain is registered in your name, that you can get your content and your contacts out, and that the site can carry IDX, area pages and listing pages as your business grows.

Your brand, and your brokerage

The design should match the way you present yourself everywhere else: the same name, colors and photography. Your state’s license-law advertising rules also apply to your website, so ask your broker what your site must show.

Speed, structure and search

A real estate site carries a lot of photos. Ask for images sized properly for phones, pages that load quickly on mobile, clear titles and headings, and a structure where every area page and listing page can be reached in a few taps. These make the site better to use. Google is clear that meeting its guidelines “doesn’t mean that Google will crawl, index, or serve” a page, so a well-built site is the foundation for real estate SEO, not a promise.

If you run ads, the site matters there too. Google Ads rates landing page experience as part of Quality Score, described as “How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.” Ads for a listing should land on that listing.

Before you launch: a checklist

• The domain is registered in your name, and you have the login.
• IDX listings show on your domain and follow your MLS’s display rules.
• There is a page for each area you sell, each with something real to say.
• Each of your own listings has its own page.
• Forms are short and reach your phone and CRM.
• Your broker has checked the site against your state’s license-law advertising rules.
• Listing copy and photos have been read with the Fair Housing rule in mind.
• Pages load quickly on a phone.
• You know who maintains the site, and what it costs to keep it running.

Questions to ask a web designer or agency

• Who owns the domain, the site and its content? Can I take them with me?
• Which IDX setup will you use, and do listing pages live on my domain?
• How many area pages are included, and who writes them?
• How do leads reach me, and can they go into my CRM?
• What happens after launch: updates, fixes, new pages?
• Can you show me sites you have built?

A new site is the base for everything else: lead generation, Facebook ads, SEO and video all send people to it. If you would rather have one agency handle it all, see what a real estate marketing agency should do.

Questions agents ask