You don’t become the largest independent real estate agency by chance.
In just 10 years, Harris has grown to become the largest independent Real Estate Agency in South Australia. A respected, innovative agency spanning five boutique local offices with unrivalled coverage across the state and its stunning peninsulas – Harris Real Estate is a proud local success story.
“Agent first, agency second.”
With an agent’s own brand being more important than ever, Harris has found the magic mix of combining an agent’s own profile in their local market with the Harris brand.
So when it came time to build a new website for Harris Real Estate, it was about blending both the agent+agency brand with leading technology to deliver world-class service to real estate consumers online and best-in-class lead generation for Harris agents.
The end result – in an industry where so many businesses copy their competitors, plus or minus 10% – the new harrisre.com.au website is truly one-of-a-kind.
Building the next generation of websites in real estate
When we were approached by the team at Harris to design and build their new website, they had a tonne of passion, a long list of technical integrations and some pretty audacious goals. The leadership and marketing teams were looking to build an agency website that not only paid homage to their strong visual identity but also delivered an experience to homeowners and investors unlike anything else that exists online while giving their agents a marketing and branding tool to perform at their best.
Accepting the challenge, we dove right in. And we’re proud to finally announce the launch of the new Harris website and feature some of the big-ticket items below.
Starting with a blank canvas, we worked alongside the team at Harris to architect an agency website that utilised data, from a variety of sources, to give their business a striking advantage in the marketplace.
For sellers and buyers
On the home page, for example, homeowners in the agency’s core service areas can quickly generate property estimate, while keeping the whole experience personalised for the visitor from start to finish.
Utilising the Domain API, vendors can obtain an instant property estimate, based on real-time data from Domain’s API, along with an in-depth overview of comparable sales, suburb demographics, market performance and links to various other content on the Harris website.
If you’re thinking “Those property estimate generators are so inaccurate. I’d never put that on my website.”, you’re not alone. Many real estate businesses think the same way.
But here’s the thing… they have existed on other websites for many years for the purpose of lead generation. And homeowners are using them – a lot.
By putting this experience on your own website, you are not just attracting lots more curious home sellers. But, if done right, you are getting an opportunity to educate homeowners on the benefits and accuracy of an agent appraisal over a computer-generated estimate – an opportunity you do not get with all of the home sellers going to those other websites.
Important: Some web developers are implementing property estimate technology on agency websites using a ‘widget’ style approach by embedding ‘scripts’ on your website and storing data on third-party databases. It’s important, if you are considering this technology, to ensure your data is protected. By using the Domain API, we are able to custom build these experiences using any design our client desires while retaining all user data within the agency’s website.
Suburb profiles give buyers and sellers real-time data on suburb market performance, market trends, recent sales, current listings and more, also adding significant SEO benefits.
For agents and teams
“If you’re not giving your agents the tools they need to perform at their best, they’re probably thinking about leaving you.” – Josh Cobb, CEO @ Stepps
Utilising the property estimate and agent appraisal features, the seamless and strategic integration of these lead generation opportunities for agents are in abundance throughout the new Harris website. All leads are sent directly to the agent by whom the website visitor engages with, on their…
Profile pages:
Listing pages (current and sold):
Property management lead generation is not forgotten. Property manager profile pages and rental listings pages also contain the relevant calls-to-action, providing property management with more opportunities to generate leads throughout the site.
A ‘members-only’ off-market portal provides consumers with exclusive listings as they become available. Buyers must register their details and this data is matched to a profile in the agency’s CRM.
For admin and marketing teams
When it comes to managing the content on the front-end of a website, the back-end needs to be beautifully designed and easy to use as well.
Stepps website clients receive a customised dashboard, built specifically for their business and their website – so admin and marketing teams can make changes to site content, update layouts and push out new campaigns quickly and easily.
For recruitment
The new Harris website actually started with the design and development of ‘Life at Harris’ – a comprehensive library of behind the scenes content, career opportunities, staff milestones, company values and key points of difference for agent who join Harris. With the launch of ‘Life at Harris’, Harris has completely redefined the old, tired careers page on real estate websites and they’ve taken it to a whole new level – setting a new standard in the industry.
For business owners and marketing teams
Your website is another salesperson on the road, but it never sleeps. It’s spruiking your business 24/7/365. So at the end of the week, it should be showing you the results it’s brought in and what it will do next week to improve (just like every great salesperson does!).
Google Analytics is one of those things that businesses know they need, but once it’s installed they never look at it. Stepps deliver weekly results to our website clients, in plain English, accompanied by SEO recommendations and strategies to increase traffic, leads and sales. Many of our clients also opt to include social media and email statistics in the same dashboard – perfect to display during marketing meetings for a more detailed overview of your digital marketing performance and actionable steps to improve.
In closing…
Gone are the days that a website for your business remains static. A website can do (and be) a lot more than just a fancy online business card. It can be a lead generating machine and so much more – if you want it to be.
We love working with forward-thinking real estate brands and this project was certainly one of our favourites. We like to be as creative and innovative as our clients allow us to be and we’d like to thank Phil, Heidi and the team at Harris for inviting our team to be an ongoing part of theirs.
Get started on your next website with Stepps.
Learn more about our approach to building real estate websites or contact us today >
