How your market appraisal and contact forms are setup is integral in moving your prospects to the next stage of setting up an appraisal appointment – however most real estate agencies are doing contact forms incorrectly.
The form is a very integral part of your website.
Besides the obvious of non working forms – from my research of real estate companies I have found 5 critical conversion killing issues with real estate forms – these are not being clear with what the client will receive, not having a call to action, -not u- having too many fields and not utilising a multi step form, not asking the right questions – or asking the wrong ones and finally and failing to utilise an appointment booking form.
Forms are critical to your business so let’s go to the first issue.
1. Be Clear about what the Client Will Receive
our Market Appraisal form should make it clear why the prospect would want to fill it out. If you provide information to your prospects – is it better or different to what they can find themselves on realestate.com.au?
The site above assumes that the client knows what a market appraisal report is, what it contains and why the prospect would want it.
2. If you want your form filled out – then ask the client to do it and tell them what they would get
Many real estate agents hide their forms in the ‘Selling’ drop down without calling attention to it on the home page.
A real estate agency’s revenue is directly related to how many property appraisal appointments they can book – which means the main focus and call to action in your menu and home page should be to get the prospect to book a Home Appraisal Appointment.
Your form should not be hidden in a drop down or be put AFTER the Buying tab.
3. Don’t Feed Me the Whole Enchilada at Once (How to Ask for a Little Bit at a Time)
Coming out the gate with 31 questions on your form overwhelms customers and massively decreases your conversion rate.
Most Market Appraisal forms – have a lot of questions which demoralise prospects – and the way to fix this and ensure you still get the information you need from your prospects is with a multi step form.
By feeding your prospect bite sized questions makes the process of entering their details manageable – a prospect looking at the funnel below would probably say “Hey why not, let me put my address in and see what happens”. The prospect is now curious what the next step will bring and filling out the form piques their curiosity and makes the sales journey seem like an adventure.
Should the prospect choose to leave your website before filling out the entire multi step form you will have enough details to initiate a follow up procedure should you wish to.
This is impossible with a one page form – where if the prospect leaves you don’t even know that they existed and you can guarantee you’ve lost that lead.
4. Ask the Right Questions (and Avoid the Wrong Ones)
Choosing what questions to ask on your property appraisal form is a balancing act.
You don’t want to ask too few questions and not have enough information to qualify the lead and follow up correctly.
On the other hand you also don’t want to have a form with too many irrelevant questions that scare prospects away.
The purpose of the market appraisal form is to qualify the client and to give
The real estate agent enough information to close the sale smoothly and professionally – more questions can always be asked on the initial appointment.
Rather than asking questions about the property – which you can discover yourself with minimal research you should instead ask the following:
- When are you looking to sell?
- What is your relationship with the property?
These are the questions that will help you make the decision to see if this client is qualified.
5. If you want appointments – make them easier to book (The Appointment Form)
A real estate agent’s revenue is directly traced back to the amount of seller listing appointments they book – since setting appointments is such an integral part of your business – shouldn’t you do everything possible to make it easier for your potential prospects to book them?
Rather than playing the embarrassing game of phone or email tag to pin down an appointment – why not let your website handle this for you?
An online booking form will allow the client to choose a time to speak to you through an online scheduling form – this scheduling application will automatically present available times to your prospect that don’t clash with other events on your Calendar.
There are many off the shelf scheduling solutions available such as Calendly – which I use myself and which has many options such as automatic redirect after a user books an appointment.
The best thing about an online scheduler is that you can email the link to the home seller where they can choose a date and time – this greatly speeds up the process and makes it very clear to you when a prospect is not serious and is wasting your time.
This is because with traditional email tag a prospect can evade you and say they are “really busy” right now – or ask you to call them back in a week. With the schedule link the prospect can simply make a time which works for them at any point in the future – so the “too busy”excuse is eliminated.
While you may not have the Scheduling form on your website – you can integrate it into your sales process and how you deal with new enquiries – and it can speed up the sales journey considerably.
Summary
If you are looking at optimising your forms to increase your enquiries then the steps outlined in this blog will help you achieve that goal.
You need to understand what the purpose of not only your forms is, but your website and your business. If booking seller appraisal forms is your website’s purpose then make sure that you include a visible call to action to your most important form (the Market Appraisal form).
When the user lands on your form you should tell them why they should make the effort and what they will receive for filling out the form – and you need to ask the correct questions.
Remember the purpose of the form is to book the appraisal appointment and to assist you in closing the deal and becoming an exclusive seller for the prospect’s property – every question you ask should assist you with doing this – and any un-necessary questions should be stripped.
When it comes to speeding up the process and creating great user experience – implementing a scheduling form in your sales process will ensure that you are not left playing phone tag, annoying the client with follow ups for an appointment and losing your power in negotiations.