Conversion rate is how many visitors turn into leads from visiting your website.  A good website company should be able to give you an average based on the current websites they build and maintain for other clients in the multifamily industry. For example, a lot of the websites we examine average a 3% conversion rate.  That means for every 100 visitors you get 3 leads.  At Resident360, our websites average a conversion rate of 8.5%, so if your website is doing less than this, then you have huge room for improvement.   The higher the conversion rate number the better. You want something definitely at 5% or more.

Integrating a website with your property management software provider can save a lot of time for your on-site staff.  That’s what the integration is about, streamlining a process for your staff that saves everybody time.  For example, we can integrate the maintenance request form on our Resident360 websites with Yardi.  This means the work order gets automatically created in Yardi, completely bypassing the apartment staff.  Make sure your website provider can supply integrations either now or at least in the future if it’s something you choose to do.

Custom websites cost more money because they take a lot more time. But, of course the end result means your website won’t look like someone else’s.  Plus, with a custom site, your site gets a lot more individual attention and you are able to get custom programming and features that can benefit your unique properties.  This can allow you to create a strong identity for your portfolio.  Ask the website provider to see samples of their custom work.  Does the apartment website design look good?  Does it get you excited?

Look for a website provider that will give you at least monthly reporting that tells you how many total leads came from your new website.  This should be broken down by phone calls, emails, unique visitors, average time on website and website conversion rate.  This will help you confirm that your financial investment in your website is resulting in leads and a high quality website.

A lot of website providers have platforms that include other features you can add to  your website. For example, at Resident360 we have The 360 Platform that includes a website, resident blog, resident app, reporting marketing.  Going with a website provider that has a platform can help you streamline the number of  vendors you need to work with to get the best online marketing footprint. It can also make it a lot easier to manage everything because you have one company providing more services for you.

When it comes to an apartment website, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. It s worth a thousand leads and leases. Make sure to ask your website provider if they will provide a photographer to take new photos of your property. Its very, very, very hard to create a good looking website with low-quality photos.  Most times having new photos taken will be an added cost, but even if it is, I suggest letting your website provider handle it becauseit can be a big hassle to hire and manage the photographer to ensure you get the high quality photos you need.  The website provider will know exactly what shots to get, taking the guesswork away from you. And it takes you out of the equation as the middle man having to coordinate the right files sizes and file access to get the photos to the web developer.

Every website provider needs to be using Responsive Web Design.  RWD means you have one website that automatically resizes and adjusts to fit what ever device that person is on desktop, tablet or smart phone.  This way you never lose a prospect due to the device they are on.

In my personal opinion, there is no longer any reason to bother designing a website that is not responsive. Maybe a year or two ago it might have been worth a debate to make sure the extra expense is worth it, but now the debate it over. It s RWD or don t bother.

Yes, it costs more money to design websites this way. Yes, it takes longer and it s more complicated. But, you re losing leads if you don t offer a quality experience on every device. You don t know what new device will become hot in the next year. It s cheaper in the long run to invest in a website that is prepared to handle any screen size.

There are so many grey areas with SEO friendly websites and SEO strategies are always shifting and changing to adjust to the newest Google algorithm update.  With that said, I want to make sure you’re educated so you know exactly what you’re looking for.  An SEO friendly website or Search Engine Optimized Website is setup coded properly so that it gives itself the best chance at ranking in the search engines like Google, Yahoo Bing.  Every website provider has their own definition of what a SEO friendly website should include, but let me tell you the most important parts:

• Properly written title tags, meta descriptions H1 tags
• Properly written home page content
• Speed: fast loading website
• Good linking structure

If your website provider mentions those things, you’re pretty good to go.

This can also be somewhat of a grey area and maintain can mean many different things.  In most cases, your website provider will be the one doing the real maintenance.  That means if you ever have any security issues like hacking or spamming, your website provider will handle resolving this.  If you need basic changes your website provider will handle this.

But, on the other hand, you will definitely want access to easily change things like rents and specials and your on-site staff should be responsible for keeping that sort of content maintained.

Ask the website provider what is their average website load time is and if they can guarantee it. For example, Google wants to see fast loading websites at 5 seconds or less.  They use this as part of how they rank websites on their search engine.  You want your new website to load in less than 5 seconds or it will have SEO and conversion repercussions. 

Having a new website is great, but find out what else is included to get traffic to your new site.  Can your website provider include Google Pay Per Click advertising, retargeting or help with Craigslist ads and craigslist posting strategy?

This is a great question and to find out the answer, you just need to look to your current website, if you have one. Find out the conversion rate of your current website.   Then compare that to what the website provider tells you is their average conversion rate. What’s the difference?  That will pretty much be how much your leads will improve.

Resident portal is a comment term in the apartment industry, but everyone seems to mean something different by it. It can be extremely important, especially when done well.  For example, at Resident360 our Resident Portal is called a Resident Corner and it includes a Done For You resident blog where we write the blog posts for you.  We also have a maintenance request form, pay rent link, resident FAQ page and Pet s Corner page with Pet of the Month section.  This is valuable because prospects get a first hand look at life at the community through the resident blog and residents know the site is a resource for what they need: paying rent, submitting maintenance requests and getting information about events in the community. Ask your website provider if they provide a resident portal and get a clear explanation of what that includes.

This is a great question that will help you decide who to work with if you’re looking at several website providers and you re not sure how to set them apart.  Keep in mind, it’s not about having 100 different features at a cheap price.  It’s about having a great looking site designed specifically around your needs that generates leads without hassle to you.

This is also a very important question, even if it s on the technical, behind-the-scenes side of things.  You ll want to make sure your website is on a dedicated server with daily offsite backups and 24/7 monitoring.  This will give you peace of mind that your website will be up and running 99.9% of the time. Make sure to ask this question. You always want to know where your backups are if there is ever an emergency.

If you have any suggestions for things to add to this list or any follow-up questions about apartment website design, I m happy to help in any way I can. Also, if you would like to see a demo of a Resident360 website, just email me crystal@resident360

If you found this list helpful, please share!