![]() Once again, GoDaddy rebuilt their website builder from scratch: it’s called GoCentral now. Version 7, their previous product, had only been on the market for three years and didn’t exactly shine in our review. GoCentral now has a completely new look and also works differently: reason enough to make us curious. There are four plans available to pick from, starting at $5.99 per month. They all come with 24/7 support and website hosting. However, a domain name is not included in the price. Also, if you plan to open an online shop, you can only do this with their “Online Store” plan. Unlike before, it is now possible to test the website builder during the first month for free: enough time to find out its pros and cons. GoDaddy's e-commerce platform does not even come close to comparing to Shopify. The templates you have available are much, much cleaner and much, much more appealing to the eyes. Having the access to changing. I don't think I've ever seen a GoDaddy website or store that looked halfway decent. - Ex-customer of. New to GoDaddy? Create an account to. Our website builder templates get you started but they never hold you back. In Website Builder you can have a site and an. Just answer two questions and GoDaddy suggests templates and themes for your site. Image courtesy of author. Tons of Business Templates. One of GoDaddy's real killer apps is that GoCentral has dozens of website templates, categorized and customized to specific products and services. Don't mistake templates with themes. With GoCentral Website Builder you can have a site and an online store; you don’t have to choose between the two. You get to build your website based on type of site you want to create. There are over 16,000 theme templates that can be custom-fit to the type of website you want to have, and you can change its look at any time – without losing. You can have a site that reflects your personal style without having to learn any coding, web design, or website management. You can choose from a huge selection of royalty-free professional images, and if you need to update your site with new content or sections, you can even do it directly from your mobile phone. ![]() Let’s have a closer look. When you compare GoDaddy’s plans with its biggest competitors and, you would think that you’d get the same things: a website builder, online store and email marketing. Long story short: yes, you do, but everything is much more basic. And, unfortunately, there are some standard features completely missing. There’s no blog, password-protection and, of course, no app store either. This makes it impossible to add new features such as a common table or a Facebook ‘like’ button. Also, the editor itself limits your creative freedom a lot. You cannot arrange and style elements the way you want. Here’s an example: it’s impossible to show a video next to a text block. You can only insert a video above or beneath the text. The online store is easy to manage and well integrated within the editor. It allows you to sell physical products with shipping as well as services. We’d like to see an option that allows you to sell digital goods like MP3’s or eBooks, too. The SEO settings are also too basic. In our tests, all our product pages displayed the wrong title and no meta description. Rich snippets for pricing or product names can’t be integrated even though they are very important these days for good Google rankings. Unfortunately we can’t think of any ideal scenario for when we’d recommend GoCentral. For the limited range of features it’s a very expensive product. Also, we can’t predict when they’ll next scrap their site builder. The last time it occurred, there was no easy way for existing customers to move their content from the old to the new system. Example Sites. My Brokers website is good enough Wrong! More often than not, a Brokers website does more to advertise the brokerage than any one particular agent. Many Agents have their own website, quite often more than just one. It’s entirely appropriate to create your own website and market it yourself to use as an independent lead generation tool. I need a.com name It’s not a deal breaker if you can’t get a.com domain name. What you need is a short punchy domain that someone is likely to remember. Nine times out of ten, the short dot com address you want has already been taken. Do a GoDaddy search for the domain you want and if it’s unavailable, they’ll recommend alternatives. Try a.net or.biz domain name. But for god sakes don’t hyphenate. No-One-Remembers-These-Names.com Common sense stuff here, but you’d be much more likely to remember DanObrien.biz then DanObrienRealEstateAgentLLC.com. The longer the name gets, the more unlikely it becomes that someone will remember it. I should hire a web designer What for? For a couple hundred bucks can create your own website complete with domain name registration, hosting AND a sleek web design that will look like you spent thousands. Purchase a cheap domain name and hosting through GoDaddy, for $4.99 a month. Right off the bat, that’s hundreds of dollars less than a web designer will charge. GoDaddy comes with WordPress, and you can install it with just a few clicks into your hosting control panel and trust me when I tell you that you don’t need a web designers help to do it, the entire process is pretty painless.. You can purchase and download a WordPress template from or and install a beautiful looking WordPress Real Estate template that you can completely customize yourself. A quick Google search turned up: 4. I don’t need IDX Without IDX, you have a website that’s all tell and no sell. 95% of your visitors are on your website looking for home listings. Sure, your website has to look great, but without showing your listings, you have all the sizzle and none of the steak. You might be able to use the IDX feed from your MLS or you can find an IDX vendor that has access to the feed and pay a monthly fee to use it on your website. (my employer) has a copy & paste quick search page that installs quickly to any website. I should let them view all my listings This is perhaps the one Agents struggle with the most. Forced Registration is a must. Teaser Registration creates 14x more leads. Forcing visitors to register in order to view listings is the best way to capture leads. By giving your visitors the ability to view a few listings before asking them to register you allow them to get a feel for your site before asking them to give you their information. It’s more organic than asking for that information up front, and a much more aggressive lead capture strategy than not asking for it at all. I agree with what most of what you say, but frankly, number 3 is terrible advice for an agent (who is serious about their business). There is a difference between putting up a basic bare bones WordPress site and putting up a real fully functional and professionally designed real estate WordPress site. I’ve seen a lot of agent sites, and still have yet to see one done entirely by an individual agent that would meet my expectations if I were an agent selling real estate full time. Jay Thompson is the exception, but people don’t often realize he’s spent 5 years tweaking his site and learning PHP/CSS. Compare a site like LoriBee.com (a client of ours) to any agent site running AgentPress or Genesis or Headway (or anything else) that has been put together by an agentit’s night and day in my mind. Obviously I’m biased, but building your own website makes zero sense if you ask me. Does the ROI of doing it yourself make sense? Look at the numbers and you tell me. •. Agree with Drew on all points with one addition GoDaddy is perhaps the worst hosting choice for WordPress, second to 1&1. Godaddy leaves little room for the agent/broker to grow their online business. Email marketing, intranets, niche sites, landing pages, etc. Go ahead and forget about these offerings with your discount host. Manage your domains with GoDaddy, host your website elsewhere. You’re building a web presence; a virtual office. The primary medium for which clients will learn about you, your services and interact with your organization. If $60/mo a month ($30 for a virtual server / $30 for IDX) isn’t in your budget, please, don’t create a website. You’re just contributing to the devaluation of an already underappreciated industry.A few years ago, yes, you had to shell out a few grand for a quality website if you were to contract the work. Take your indecisive self over to Virtual Results, pay $699 and get a website that will cost you $2,000 elsewhere. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There is plenty of time to further customize your site, add features, content and upgrades. But, this is only possible if you start with a solid foundation. And on point 5 – forced registration can work. But so can not forcing registration. It depends on where you are at with your business as to the best approach. If you have more business than you can handle, and you don’t want to spend countless hours moving an early home buyer lead to a point where they are actually ready to buythen don’t force registration. Rather let the consumers see all the listings and contact you when they are 100% ready. But if you are struggling to find business, then yes, forced registration is probably a better approach. Maybe I’ve been doing this too long but I believe anybody can pull this off by watching a 5 minute YouTube video. Go on and take a look at some of these templates. They are so simple to manipulate into a website that it completely negates the need for a web designer. Half of them come with pre-populated stuff that you can just edit out in WordPress. I mean do you really need a web designer to click install? Do you need one to slap in a logo and an agent photo? Cut and paste IDX and copy and paste widgets and scripts make the entire process something anybody with a comfortable ability to click through a website something anybody can accomplish without knowing any HTML. @drewmeyers:disqus, my company has performed exhaustive analysis on the subject. The figure I quoted is based on a pivot table we did of clients with and without it enabled over a course of years. Agents with it enabled performed 14x better. @msqrealty:disqus, I’m in no way a fan of GoDaddy, HostGator, 1and1 or any of these fly by night self hosting companies. But for the average agent trying to build a business on a budget, it’s a start. I’m not talking about this being a magic bullet for the seasoned well healed broker. Those guys should definitely shell out top dollar to promote the business in the best possible light. Hell go to an agency if you can afford it. But for the average agent, it’s definitely within the realm of possibility to put up a very decent looking website without ever stepping foot in a web design studio. Contributors & Authors • Founder of Geek Estate Blog /. Travel addict & co-founder of. Social entrepreneurship & microfinance advocate. Fan of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kiva.|| • An agent with RelatedISG International Realty and specializes in all things related to and Mojitos!|| • Mike has been involved with RE Tech and marketing since 1995 and as of Feb 2017 a Trainer with the Broker Agent services team at FBS, creators of FlexMLS. He is the Managing Editor, handles biz-dev for GEB and is a Steely Dan fan.|| • is a Minnesota-based realtor specializing in duplexes and other multi-family properties. Jason's team,, have worked together to sell more duplexes than any other realtor in Minnesota - for four years and counting.|| • Seth is a full stack software engineer, technical consultant and experienced startup founder. He sold his last two startups in the real estate space (Robot Workshop and Curb Call), served as CTO of both acquiring companies and currently offers consulting and custom software services through Hoverboard Labs, from sunny San Diego, CA.|| • Principal Broker and creator of, one of the most popular websites on Oahu. I enjoy working with PHP, MySQL, jQuery, JavaScript, HTML5, Ajax and more. I am always looking to improve my Website and business. When not working, I enjoy spending time with my family and doing anything on or in the Ocean.||.
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