What your real estate website has to do on a phone

In short: on a phone, your website has about one screen to prove you are worth a call. That screen needs your name, your market, a sharp photograph and one obvious next step, and it needs to appear fast on cellular data.

When someone hears your name at an open house, from a neighbor, or on a sign, they look you up on the phone in their hand. That first visit is short and it happens in the worst conditions your site will ever face: a small screen, a patchy connection, one thumb, and a reason to leave at any moment.

Google also judges your site mainly by its mobile version. Since the move to mobile-first indexing, Google uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking. If something is missing or broken on the phone, it may as well be missing.

The first screen

Everything important has to fit on the first screen of a phone, before any scrolling:

• Who you are. Your name or your team's name, large enough to read at arm's length.
• Where you work. The market in plain words: "Palm Beach and Jupiter", not "South Florida's premier".
• One next step. Search homes, value my home, or talk to me. One primary button, not three.
• One strong photograph. Sharp, bright, and sized for a phone, not a 6,000-pixel original that takes ten seconds to arrive.

Remove anything that competes with those four: auto-playing video, rotating sliders, chat bubbles that cover the button, and pop-ups that appear before the visitor has seen anything.

Type you can read without zooming

If a visitor has to pinch to read, they will usually leave instead. Body text should be comfortable to read at arm's length, roughly 16 pixels or larger, with enough line spacing that lines do not blur together. Light grey text on white looks elegant on a large monitor and disappears on a phone outdoors. Check your site in sunlight.

Buttons a thumb can hit

Links and buttons need room. Two links stacked tightly together guarantee mis-taps. Every important control should be large enough to tap easily and spaced far enough from the next one that a thumb never hits the wrong thing. Phone numbers should be tappable links that start a call.

Listings that behave on a phone

Your listings are where phone visitors spend the most time, which is why every Regencly listing page is designed phone first. Check each one:

• The gallery swipes smoothly and every photograph can be opened full screen.
• The price, beds, baths and size are visible without hunting.
• There is a way to ask about this specific home from the listing page itself, and the inquiry keeps the property attached.
• Maps and floor plans do not trap the visitor in a pinch-zoom they cannot escape.

Speed on cellular data

Speed matters more on a phone than anywhere else. Google's Core Web Vitals describe a good experience as the largest element loading within 2.5 seconds, the page responding to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and nothing shifting around while it loads.

The usual causes of a slow phone experience are oversized images, too many third-party scripts (chat widgets, trackers, review badges), and web fonts that load late. A good site serves each visitor an image sized for their screen, loads what is visible first, and keeps scripts to the ones that earn their place.

A two-minute phone test

Do this on your own phone, on cellular data:

1. Open your homepage. Can you tell who, where and what next before scrolling?
2. Read one paragraph without zooming.
3. Open a listing and swipe through the gallery.
4. Ask about that listing using only your thumb.
5. Tap your phone number.

If any step was awkward for you, it was awkward for every buyer and seller who tried it before you, and most of them did not tell you.

Sources

• Mobile-first indexing best practices, Google Search Central
• Core Web Vitals, web.dev
• Accessible tap targets, web.dev