Estate agency websites serve two audiences with almost nothing in common, and most treat them identically.
A buyer wants a property, a viewing, and specifics about one listing. A vendor wants a valuation, your fees, and to know you will sell it.
Working out which one you are talking to should be the first thing that happens.
The seller conversation
This is the one with the money in it. A valuation request is the highest-intent seller signal there is, and it frequently arrives at 10pm when someone has decided to move.
What it needs to establish:
- Property type and rough size
- Location
- Timescale — are they ready, or thinking about it next year
- Whether they are also buying
- Contact details
Plus the questions every vendor asks: what your fee is, whether it is sole agency, how long the contract runs, what happens if it does not sell.
The buyer conversation
Different entirely:
- What they are looking for and their budget range
- Whether they are chain-free, in a chain, or first-time
- Whether they have a mortgage in principle
- Which properties they want to view
The chain and mortgage questions matter. A proceedable buyer and a browser look identical in an inbox and are worth very different amounts of your negotiator's time.
What it should not do
Value a property. Ever. A valuation is a professional judgement about a specific building and market, and an automated figure anchors the vendor somewhere you then have to walk them back from.
Capture the request and book the appointment. That is the whole job.
Answer about a property it cannot see. If listing details are not in its knowledge base, it should say so and take the enquiry rather than improvise.
The out-of-hours reality
Property is browsed in the evening, almost universally. The valuation requests and viewing enquiries arriving after six are not an edge case, they are a large share of the total.
An agency answering those at 9pm is the one that gets the instruction.
Try it
Build one from your agency website and ask it as both a buyer and a vendor. If it gives you the same conversation, that is the problem this article describes.
Related: the real estate guide.