Avoid the Potential Pitfall in Property Management Website Design

Property management website design is its own category, and it’s one we specialize in.

Many firms are now turning to excellent cloud or web-based solutions such as Propertyware, Buildium, or Appfolio to manage their rentals, accounting, rent collection, etc. They have an excellent solution, and the purpose of this article is not to dissuade you from using their tool. These firms also provide a website portal to property management companies, and we want you to understand why your best option is to not use it as your primary website. So why would a company want their own website rather than just using the one provided by their property management solution?

How can having an ‘all-in-one’ solution be dangerous? Read on to find out!

(Don’t want to read it all? We know you’re busy – just call us and we will explain it to you… 909-748-5882)

Why Keep Your Website Independent of Your Property Management Solution

It is dangerous to have your site and your property management tool provided by the same firm.

• You will be shelling out plenty of money for SEO, but receiving services by a company that is not an SEO expert
• You will be spending money on a site you do not have total control over
• You will have no freedom in who you choose as your marketing firm
• You won’t be able to use other online property management tools without having to start a new site with them from scratch
• Any changes in direction will cost you more money, possibly messing up your existing rankings and sabotaging the marketing you have already done

The disadvantages of having your site and your property management tool provided by the same firm:

• These portal providers are not website experts – their site templates simply aren’t as good at conversions (turning visiting property owners into clients)
• These property management solution providers are great at what they primarily focus on, but they are not SEO, SEM, or internet marketing specialists.
• As you grow and mature in your marketing efforts you may eventually realize you want to try out other marketing firms, but you can’t!
• Their provided web portals are locked down, preventing you from backing up your site, moving it, getting FTP access, or allowing the marketing firm of your choice to do serious SEO work
• Once you are in bed with one tool that you use for your website, it will be painful to switch to another web tool, especially if you had been paying them thousands to have their in-house SEO team work on their own portal. Switching to another tool would likely have you starting from scratch, and will hurt your existing website rankings.

Is there a better way?

Yes! Your property management tool, Appfolio, Buildium, or Propertyware can be integrated into your own website without it BEING your website. This is the best of both worlds and the ultimate win-win. We specialize in doing just that, and we have some of the top residential management firms in the nation… the smartest firms choose us. We provide an independent website and integrate the rental listings, tenant application, owners portal, etc. from your tool of choice. We don’t try to duplicate what these property management tools do, instead we compliment them and work with them.

Why Would You Rather Use OpenPotion for your Website?

• We build your site on an open-source CMS (Content Management System). This means greater options for the future and freedom. Thousands of add-ons have already been written to plug into CMS systems, thousands of template designs and themes have been created, you can easily make changes to text on your web pages, and SEO firms can do more work in less time.
• You have full control. We provide the marketing firm of your choosing with whatever access you want to give them, even full FTP and administrator access.
• We are marketers first! We focus on making sites that sell and are easy to use. We specialize in start-ups and branding. We can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business by avoiding branding pitfalls, so your company isn’t swimming upstream.
• Your site will have greater functionality. You can have us add additional tools into your site, such as a photo gallery of remodeling work, or an event calendar for trade shows and community events, a blog, video tours of properties, your Twitter feed… the sky is the limit.
• Multiple integration possibilities. Find better rates for credit card processing somewhere other than your property management tool? You can use one tool for collecting payments and another tool for showing properties, you don’t have to use the property management solution for everything. We can integrate multiple tools into our CMS property management websites. Just another money saving factor to consider.
• We’ll be your secret weapon. Many of our clients consider us their secret weapon in battling their competition.
• Easily switch or ditch your property management solution. Eventually if you tire of their service we can replace much of it with available website software.
• We’ve earned a lot of trust. We are trusted by some of the largest and most successful residential property management businesses throughout the nation. Just check out our website design portfolio to see our work.

Even a just little bit curious as to why so many smart property management business owners are choosing OpenPotion? All you have to do is simply talk to us and you will quickly understand why.

Contact OpenPotion to get started.

PropertyWare, Buildium, Appfolio are are Trademarks of their respective companies and OpenPotion, Inc. is in no way affilliated with them.