Last week I wrote a post likening your new home staging website to a big party you’ve thrown that nobody shows up to besides your family members. Home stagers, if you have not read that post, I urge you to go back and read it now.
In today’s business climate you can’t deny the importance of having an effective Internet presence. If you aren’t sure whether or not your website works – if you have a sinking feeling that it might be making you look amateurish or if you’re just not getting any traffic and you don’t know why – I’m offering a new service that can really help you and I’m calling it the Home Staging Website Checkup.
I’ve been building my own websites since 1999 when I decided a website would help sell my art. From that day on, I’ve been taking seminars and courses and reading everything I can get my hands on about how to build effective websites— websites that can be found by people searching Google.
The first website I created for my home staging business in 2002 was responsible for all of the media attention I received during those first couple of years, including calls from CNN, The Wall Street Journal, HGTV, Style at Home, Women’s Day, Reader’s Digest, House and Home and more. So I’ve experienced first-hand how important a good home staging website is and how many doors it can open for you!
If you stop and think about how you first heard of me, you’ll probably realize it was after doing a Google search and finding one of my websites online. I know how to develop an effective and professional-looking web presence and how to make sure it can be found by others.
Does your home staging website need some “staging” of its own?
You know how we explain to home sellers that hiring a home stager works so well because we can be totally objective about their homes and that we know what works to help buyers fall in love, and that a buyer forms a first impression about their property within a few minutes (or seconds if they’re looking at MLS and relying just on their photos)?
Well that’s a perfect analogy for what a Home Staging Website Checkup can mean for your home staging website! I review your site with an objective eye and I know what to look for.
According to author Tim Ash, recent research indicates that people form an initial impression of your website within 50 milliseconds. After this instantaneous response, they either click away or begin a more considered view of your site. But that first impression has a huge impact on whether that potential customer will ever contact you.
During your Home Staging Website Checkup, which lasts a total of 90 minutes, I’ll personally review your site (including text, photos, layout and links). Then I’ll look behind the scenes at the “hidden code” that search engines read to make sure your website can get found by Google and others.
You don’t need to prepare anything in advance. All I need is your website address (URL) and I’ll take it from there. You’ll gain access to my online calendar so you can schedule your check up by phone with me. I’ll go through your website with you, telling you everything I think you should do to improve it.
Don’t worry about taking lots of notes during your Home Staging Website Checkup, because I’ll email you audio recordings of our phone meetings so you can re-listen to my recommendations as often as you like.
The constructive feedback I give you is designed to help you make more money as a home stager because it will help potential clients find you and get the right first impression when they do! I don’t want you to worry if you think your site is a mess. You have to know what’s wrong in order to fix it. And even if your site is pretty good already, that doesn’t mean it can’t be that much better with the right finishing touches!
>Schedule your Home Staging Website Checkup today. All you need is for one new client to find you and hire you based on your website to see an immediate return on your investment!
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Debra Gould has been building her own websites since 1999 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She is the author of 5 guides and developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.
Debra,
Good idea. Though I have a page on the staging diva directory of home stagers I have also been researching options available to me for building a “free” web site. Maybe you can give some advice about best options for “free” web building site since this may be one area where many of us waste our time and do a poor job? There is a lot of information on the web about the things one can do to create a site that attracts search engines, thereby optimizing our sites, but it does take a good deal of one’s time. Your new website checkup service will be valuable for those of us who build our own sites, as well as those who have paid others to create web sites.