Long gone are the days when selling a home meant delivering thousands of leaflets, trying to book appointments in person or simply waiting for buyers and sellers to walk through the door with an enquiry.

This is still vital for estate agents - lots of our customers tell us this - but as more buyers and sellers look online for homes to buy or agents to help sell their home, maybe it’s time to start asking if you’re really making the most of your website when it comes to engaging visitors.

Or, are you actually missing a big opportunity to secure more deals and sales.

Using Live Chat on your website is a great tool for sales and marketing, as it lets you talk directly with buyers, sellers, landlords and those looking to rent at the exact time they’re interested in your service.

Whether it’s buyers starting to look for a home or a seller researching agents or looking for a valuation, using Live Chat as an estate agent can help you win more business.

Putting the agency experience online

Most estate agents now have a website - you probably have one.

But, for the most part, they’re static brochure sites where buyers can make a search by postcode, house type or price etc, or where sellers can find your contact details or find similar houses in their areas to get a comparative sale price.

You may even use your website for inbound marketing, using SEO and content to appear higher in Google searches to drive more traffic.

However, this doesn’t necessarily fit with the type of personalised service you want to be known for, because it leaves a lot of the heavy lifting on the website visitor, requiring them to browse the site and find the information they’re looking for on their own.

Using Live Chat allows you to turn your static website into a digital helpdesk, enabling you to communicate directly with website visitors in the early stages of a search.

Turn web visits into sales

Live Chat helps turn website visitors into sales by allowing you to move customers more quickly down the buying or selling journey.

Instead of waiting for web users to find your contact information and get in touch with you over the phone or via email, you can start the conversation with them directly on your website.

Using your chat function, you can ask questions and provide users with the information they need quickly.

When it comes to using Live Chat on an estate agent’s website, there are lots of ways you can see the benefits:

• Provide quicker answers

Some users may only have some basic questions when they start their property search online. At this stage they may not want to speak directly with an agent. They may fear the hard sell when they only have a simple question.

By using Live Chat, you can ask and answer these basic questions directly through your website and encourage users to get in touch in-person or over the phone if they need more information. 

• Build relationships quicker

Using Live Chat, you can start to build relationships with buyers and sellers before speaking with them in-person.

This not only helps you create a rapport more quickly, but can also make meetings and viewings more efficient because you already have the basic information you need and don’t need to go through it when you eventually meet.

• Engage with more customers

What’s the current conversion rate of your website?

One of the problems with static websites is they require visitors to make the first move to engage with the business.

On the other hand, Live Chat enables you to be more proactive with your web visitors and can increase the chance of conversions.

• Offer virtual tours

Virtual tours are becoming much more popular among buyers, especially in the last few years.

Potential buyers can get a full view inside a property they’re interested in, and are much more effective at showing room sizes and layouts compared to just having an image.

These virtual tours are a great tool for agents talking to buyers who might be unsure about a property and don’t necessarily want to travel long distances to view a property in person.

With Live Chat, these tours can be instantly given to a user and also allows you as the agent to ask questions while the person is ‘touring’ the property.

Imagine this.

You open a live chat and ask about a few preferences like areas, price ranges, number of bedrooms.

You instantly send the user a link through Live Chat to a couple of virtual tours for properties you have that match the user’s preference.

You answer a few more questions based on the virtual tour and now you have a very warm lead who may want to book an in-person appointment.

The alternative is to hope the user finds something themselves and then takes the time to get in touch.

• Offer more convenience

Live Chat on your website creates an extra level of convenience and support, because it makes it easier for buyers and sellers to ask you a question without needing to search through your entire website to find the answer.

It’s much easier for your business too, because you can send or receive information using Live Chat (this becomes even more useful when you can sync your Live Chat with a CRM).

You can also make it much easier for people to book appointments because you can send links to your calendars and even help users book viewings and appointments.

• Have better - and more - conversations

Building relationships is a huge part of helping people buy and sell their home.

Live Chat allows you to have more conversations with people earlier on, and is much easier than trying to do everything in person.

Asking basic questions earlier on means that when you do eventually meet in person, you can be more efficient and focus on personalising a search because you’ve already gone through the basic information with them prior to the appointment.

• Engage buyers and sellers out-of-hours

You’ll no-doubt know that not every buyer or seller is going to contact you during your “regular” office hours.

So many searches happen earlier in the morning, later in the evening, or at the weekend, which means you need to be available for longer hours.

With a managed Live Chat you can continue to have conversations with website visitors long after your agents have left for the day.

 Turn your website into a proactive sales and marketing tool

More than 114,000 searches are made every month for the term “houses for sale near me”.

Hundreds of thousands of people making online enquiries to buy a home and potentially ready to land on your website as part of their search.

Using Live Chat turns your website from a static brochure, into a proactive sales and marketing tool that helps you connect with these potential buyers and sellers and increase the chances of winning their business.