Can Widgets Boost Your Real Estate Website?

We’re firm believers in the value of good content for real estate websites, including information on the latest market movements. One way to include this kind of information is to use a widget from one of the bigger property websites out there. The question is, do these widgets actually enhance an agent’s website, or just act as an ad for the property website that created them?

A widget is a small application - such as an average house price tracker - that can be embedded directly into a website. Real estate search engine Nestoria, which offers property price widgets covering the UK and Australia, says the main benefit of adding a widget to a website is to provide visitors with interesting content that benefits them. “For example if your website is about a certain area, it might be interesting for your readers to see information about local property prices,” the search engine says.

In the US, both zillow.com and trulia.com offer a vast range of widgets for website owners, covering everything from property slideshows to quizzes. Like Nestoria’s offerings, most of these widgets do include some form of branding for zillow.com or trulia.com, along with links back to their websites.

So if you do decide to add one of these widgets to your own real estate website, chances are you will be sending some of your traffic to Nestoria, zillow.com or trulia.com. The weaker the rest of the content on your real estate website is, the more likely people will be to click away.

That said, if one of these widgets fills a gap in your website’s content, we’d say it’s best to fill that gap, even if it’s with someone else’s data. You might still lose a few visitors to the bigger real estate sites, but provided you have enough engaging local content to complement the widget, you shouldn’t lose their interest for long.

Can Widgets Boost Your Real Estate Website?

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