How to Blow a $2.1M Sale Using the Mobile Web

This past weekend I was in a spendy neighborhood in San Francisco and happened to pass by a house for sale.

The signs out front advertised the agents, of course, and had a prominent URL.

Here’s what I got on my iPhone:

And when I zoomed in on that tiny text I saw:

Of course, I tried to click. (Even though I already would have stopped if I were just a random person who wanted to spend a couple of million on a house in San Francisco.)

And here’s what I got:

Ouch. That’s IT.

No details about the house.

No pictures.

And, worst of all, no contact information. I can’t even call the listing agent from this page.

Last time I checked, this was a buyer’s market.

So let’s think this through.

This building is actually two condo units, each priced for over $2M.

If someone walks or dives past this building, they probably won’t have their computer with them. Even if they do, they aren’t in a place to whip it out. But they probably have their phone. And if they can afford this place they probably have a smartphone capable of viewing the Internet.

If they have a smartphone, they’ll try to view the site.

And the results are probably worse than if there had been no site at all. Not only have you lost your chance to interest them in the property, but you’ve given them a negative experience.

For what it’s worth, here’s what the inside of one of the condos looks like:

Pretty nice, right?

And the commission on two $2M sales is something upwards of $120,000, depending on your percentage.

Who can afford to alienate a qualified buyer?

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.

To the uninitiated, the mobile web seems overwhelming, but it’s not hard to build a function that detects whether someone is viewing a site on a mobile phone. The developers of this site could have implemented this code and directed mobile visitors to a rich, engaging site that actually worked on modern smartphones.

Want to find out more? Give me a call at 888-815-9981.

Joe