Castle Realty

Castle Realty owners Alan and Amber Iverson have relied on the DigiSage team for years for marketing support, including the creation and maintenance of one of their most important marketing tools: their website. In 2012 and then again in 2020 DigiSage redesigned onlinecastles.com. It is a dynamic website that has continued to grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of buyers, sellers, and the real estate team that serves them.

Goals

The primary goal of the website is to provide a great user experience for visitors, whether their objective is searching current listings, finding a REALTOR^® to help them buy or sell their home, or simply to educate themselves about the buying/selling process. In addition, Alan and Amber wanted to provide their staff with an innovative toolset that would help them provide the very best service to their customers, throughout the entire buy/sell process.

Solution

We started by creating an attractive design that would enhance the Castle Realty brand, but that would also be highly focused on usability and providing a great experience to visitors.

The site integrates with the MLS and refreshes every 20 minutes so listings are kept up-to-date. A robust search function allows visitors to search for homes and properties by property type, price, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, and even filter by number of garage spaces, waterfront property, minimum acreage, and more.

We also want visitors to quickly understand why they should work with the Castle team. Clear positioning describes the agents’ commitment to their customers, their co-workers, and the communities they serve. Each agent has their own page on the site, where visitors can learn more about agents’ professional experience and background, personalities, and enthusiasm for real estate. And to help visitors learn more about how Castle gives back to their communities, we included a Community Giving page that outlines all the causes and organizations the team supports.

What’s more, because a company’s online presence should be all about answering visitors’ questions, we included a variety of helpful articles and videos, for both buyers and sellers.

When Castle Realty expanded their business by opening a second office in Winona, Minnesota, we added an option for visitors to choose to browse the Winona, Minnesota site, which shows the listings in the Southeast Minnesota Association of REALTORS^® MLS (SEMAR MLS). Using cookies, the site remembers each visitor’s past selection and automatically shows them the appropriate content the next time they visit the site (which they can override if they’re interested in viewing the other listings). And, when Castle expanded into Rochester, MN, we added Rochester as a third option.

The public-facing side of the website is just the beginning. The real magic happens in the “backend,” where we built a custom dashboard that allows Castle agents to collect, track, and manage leads, and make sure that sales are progressing on schedule and no details are overlooked. The dashboard makes agents’ jobs easier, and helps ensure Castle Realty customers have a consistently great experience.

In addition to the website, DigiSage helps support Castle Realty’s marketing efforts in other areas, including:

• Email marketing
• PPC (paid search)
• Design of promotional materials including postcards, flyers, and handouts

Together, the Castle Realty and DigiSage teams develop and execute creative, innovative ideas that elevate the Castle Realty brand, and we have a lot of fun doing it!