6 Housing Website Updates for Spring

By Elana Goodwin on March 2, 2017

Spring is just around the corner — which means it’s just about time for spring cleaning!

But an often-neglected aspect of spring cleaning involves your online presences. Updating and cleaning up your website for spring is a good idea in order to attract new potential residents for the fall and to improve your current residents’ experience navigating your site. Here are some housing website updates you should make for spring.

Photo Credit: Pexels.com 

1. Change Up Your Images. It can get boring for frequent users of your site to see the same images every time they access your website — and you want both new and regular visitors to be engaged from the first page of your site. First impressions are very important when it comes to your housing website so it’s crucial you change up your images at least every few months or so.

Update your banners and pictures of your properties with new, more current ones. Avoid using stock photos when possible as they don’t set you apart from your competition and can look very dated. Try to take photos of your office and both exterior and interior shots of various rentals during different months so you can change your photos to reflect the current season.

2. Refresh Your Content. Take a look at your website content — does it need refreshing? Maybe your company needs a new mission statement or you need to get some new testimonials. Your content is a huge part of your overall website package and can attract or deter current and potential residents.

While looking at your content, you’ll want to be sure all your company information — such as office address, contact email, phone number, etc. — is all up-to-date and correct. Additionally, check your current listings to be sure they are still available and listed in an easy-to-read way and take a second look at your FAQs. Do your FAQs really qualify as frequently asked questions or are there some that probably don’t need to be on there? In general, when it comes to updating your housing website for spring, make sure all your content is relevant and includes the latest information.

3. Update Your Social Media. Social media and your social media presence are very important when it comes to interacting and engaging your college student clientele. Update your company’s cover photos and profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter and make sure you keep your accounts active. You can also consider rewriting your bios on both sites to be more friendly and fun. Include links to your social media accounts on your website to make it easy for site visitors and renters to follow you on Twitter and like your page on Facebook.

4. Add a Blog. Having a blog on your housing company’s site is a great website update to add for spring. A blog attracts visitors and is an easy way to keep your site updated and your content invigorated. It may be worth designating one of your capable employees as the blog writer and have them commit to writing an article a week or a month.

You can also look into hiring a freelance blog writer to pen blogs on a steady basis for your website. A blog won’t only drive new people to your housing website, it’ll also entice visitors to come back and visit again. Plus, you can use it for a sort of native advertising experience and have some of your articles push your company, with articles like “must-have amenities” that list ones you include in your rent rate.

5. Make Sure Your Site is Compatible Across the Board. Today, people visit websites using a lot of different browsers and devices. So for spring, it’s a good idea to test your website on various programs and technology. How does your website look and operate on Google Chrome compared to Mozilla Firefox or Safari? How’s your website compatibility with an iPhone or iPad versus an Android?

Your website needs to be mobile-friendly and if it’s not, that’s a task you’ll want to undertake quickly and efficiently. Additionally, your housing website’s appearance may differ on the assorted browsers and devices so you want to make sure the design and functionality remain the same across the board.

6. Reorganize Your Navigation. You may be very familiar with your website and think it’s easy to navigate but that doesn’t mean first-time or infrequent users find it as intuitive or simple to use as you. Reconsider your site hierarchy and navigation for spring — is there a better way you can organize it? Can you make it more user-friendly? Are there pages on your site that users think are hard to find? To figure out what you can do better on your website, think about emailing current tenants and asking their opinion on how the website could be better.

Implement these six updates to help you get your housing website ready for spring and improve visitors’ overall experience and impression of your company.

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