How To Make Your Student Accommodation Look Great Online
Here are some great tips for student accommodation providers and student letting agents to help them really make the most of their online presence in the student accommodation sector and stand out.
You Must Be Online
There is no doubt about it, you need to be on or have:
- Website
- Google Business
- Property Portals
I think websites will eventually be used less and less as more and more start to search on the ‘shops’ of social media.
To start with, simply having a presence here is great, because people can then start to see, find an trust you.
Simplicity Wins
I have personally scoured many student letting agents and accommodation website for prospects, houses for students and to find the good and the bad.
The one thing that puts me right off is having to find what I am looking for, or it takes too long to get there.
On your website, make sure you clearly state what is a student property and what is not a student property. There may be some cross over, but make sure that students can search for a student house in the least amount of click possible.
When it comes to booking, make that just as simple, make sure that they can book on each property page, the form isn’t an essay and you aren’t going to spam them afterwards.
The less steps between searching and booking the better, this means that you will get a lot more students come through the flow of the website, rather than them having to painstakingly find their way through it!
Photography
When listing your student properties and rooms, professional photos are far better than others. They can be costly and if they do the job, they won’t be up for long, however, they will last for as long as the next refurbishment on the property.
Some tips on making your photos great:
- Stage them – Make sure the bed is made, computer on the desk, flowers on the side etc. This really helps the imagination run and students can see themselves there
- Make sure that the photos aren’t taken when an actual student is living there. It’s just not the same and won’t be as clean
- Lighting, get this right for a brighter room and better pictures
- Show off the room, make sure you get the important elements of the room in – Bed, desk, en-suite
- Always have floor plans, even if you do them yourself and not to scale, just having that representation can help a lot of people
- Get a picture of the outside of the house
- If you can, get a walk around done or 360 tours, this can help change peoples minds because they can see the house for themselves, however, if not, simply a professional walk around with a video camera can be a good bridge between the two
List Your Features
Give a quick snapshot of your house or room, this is to get the student property noticed and then you want to give more detail.
This should be a bullet-pointed list where students can look and get the vital info in a few seconds. Students don’t want to read a lengthy paragraph straight off, they want the information and will decide after that if they want to continue, it is like offering a free trial for a product.
Be Concise, Yet Share The Detail
This is tricky and it is a fine line, between waffling on and including everything and not including enough to get the right amount of attention.
In this part you need to remember that we all buy with emotion and justify with logic. What does this mean? It means we don’t buy it because it’s functional, we buy it because it looks cool, has this quirk, does this trick, it’s based here or any other way we can show it off.
When writing the bio, make sure you capture the details of the house in the story you are telling. If you can get this right, you are on to a massive winner.