In my last post, I discussed several of the mapping applications that Mirr Ranch Group uses to effectively market ranches for sale. This week’s post will cover the importance of a well-functioning website as a tool for marketing high-value and complex Rocky Mountain ranches.
In the early 2000s, the average ranch brokerage website consisted of the most basic information on a property: its name, location, acreage, a few photos, and, most importantly, a phone number to call for more information. Fast forward a decade, and technology has expanded so that a company’s website is a virtual multimedia library that brings together all of the pertinent information on a ranch – maps, high-quality photographs, well-produced videos, detailed descriptions of important issues such as water rights, grazing leases, recreational considerations, public lands regulations, and more.
At Mirr Ranch Group, we’ve invested an extraordinary amount of time and resources into our company website so that potential buyers can fully understand and appreciate our unique and sometimes complex listings. The following are a few of the aspects that we’ve found to be invaluable when showcasing a ranch on MirrRanchGroup.com:
Photography and Video: Other than detailed maps, high-quality photography and video are the most important tools for conveying the overall feeling of ranches we market. Given the scenic nature of most of our listings, our website has been designed to make photographs the central aspect of all of our web pages. Our brokers include talented and award-winning photographers, and several are highly skilled in video production and editing. Striking photographs are our best tools for making a dramatic first impression, so we work hard to capture and display only the best high-resolution photography.
Downloadable Reference Material: Given the complexity of many of our ranch listings, we provide many supplementary reference materials in electronic form, downloadable from our website. For example, the fishery that runs through my Three Creek Ranch listing was featured in a publication by the Front Range Anglers, so we linked to a pdf version of that document so that potential buyers can have an additional perspective on the quality of fishing on the ranch. Depending on the listing, we may choose to link to information on water rights, grazing permits, hunting tags, or other relevant information. On all of our listing web pages, we have downloadable, detailed marketing brochures in pdf form that have been created by our extremely talented full-time marketing manager.
Mobile-Responsive: Just a year ago, 87% of our website visitors were viewing our website from a desktop or laptop computer, with only 13% viewing from a mobile device. Now at the end of 2013, 70% are viewing on computers and 30% are viewing from mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. The Mirr Ranch Group website is optimized to function equally well on a 15-year old Dell as on an iPhone 5S, and this mobile compatibility will become even more important in the future. Because our properties are spread over six states (and three countries), it is very important that buyers are able to access information on our listings while sitting in a New York City office or exploring a Colorado back road.
Clean, Easy to Use Design: The ability to include an infinite amount of data on our website creates a challenge: How do we present all of this information without confusing potential buyers? This is exactly why we recently partnered with one of the most innovative web design companies in the Rocky Mountain West to design and build our site from the bottom up. With many years of experience, they were able to create an interface that allows for easy categorization and search capabilities. The design allows for a combination of photographs, maps, video, supplemental downloads, and text that fully conveys the complexity of each property, without being overwhelming. While this was a significant investment of time and resources, it has proven to be extremely effective in funneling web users to the property of interest and presenting the complexities of that listing. In the end, Mirr Ranch Group has created a new standard for web marketing in the ranch brokerage business.
These are just a few of the aspects of our website design that allow us to effectively and successfully market Legacy and Fine Sporting Properties throughout North and South America.