Websites: launch a property site that feeds your CRM

Direct REI hosts real, public websites for your business — built from the same CRM you already work in. Open Websites in the left nav, click + New website, and you can have a professional site live the same afternoon. No web designer, no separate website builder, no plugins.

Two kinds of sites

• Sell properties — your inventory online: listing cards with photos and prices, an interactive map of everything you have, filters, owner-financing terms, and inquiry forms on every property.
• Get seller leads — a "we buy land / houses" site with a cash-offer form. A motivated seller fills it out and lands in your CRM with their property attached.

You can run both at once (and more) — each site is its own address with its own design.

Creating a site

Click + New website, pick the site type, and choose Complete starter site (recommended — pages, menus, and sample copy pre-built; swap in your words) or Blank. Give it a name and a free web address: yourbiz.directrei.site. The name shows in the header and across the home page banner.

Every starter site follows the same proven layout: a dark header with an announcement bar above it, a tall photo banner with your business name, a one-line statement, then (on a Sell properties site) a photo slideshow, the map of your land and your property cards, separated by thin lines. Each inner page opens with a shorter photo banner carrying its title. A Sell properties site comes with Properties (grouped by state in the menu), About (your story, the founder, an FAQ), Contact Us, Get Notified, How Buying Works, Legal and Privacy & SMS Terms, plus a property page layout: the title, the photos, the price and details beside the map, the description, a video, an owner-financing band and the contact form. A Get seller leads site comes with Home (why sell to us, how it works, the offer form), Submit Your Land, FAQ, Contact Us and Privacy & SMS Terms. The photos are from our stock pack and the words are placeholders — replace both with your own. Oliver and the starter packs build sites from this same layout, and Apply starter layout… (Pages tab) puts it on an existing site, keeping your properties, business details, colour and forms.

Editing: click anything, change it

The editor shows your actual rendered site — click any section to edit it right there, drag blocks to move them, and grab the edges to resize them on the layout grid (the same way Google Sites works). Undo / redo is one click (or Cmd+Z / Shift+Cmd+Z), and a List view toggle gives you a keyboard-friendly version of the same controls.

Pages are built from blocks — 19 types including hero, your listings, the map, lead forms, photo galleries, a photo carousel (a Google-Sites-style slideshow: one photo at a time, arrows and dots, auto-advances every few seconds, swipeable on phones), video, FAQ, testimonials, steps, feature grids, text columns, an email-list signup, and an embed block for anything else (a Calendly, a checkout button, a widget you paste in). Most blocks have an Align content control (Left / Center / Right) in their settings for the text, buttons, or form inside them. Add pages from templates — About, Contact, FAQ, Get Notified, Privacy & SMS Terms, Legal — and reorder them; the page order is your menu order. The Privacy & SMS Terms template ships pre-written texting-compliance copy (a privacy policy stating mobile opt-in data is never shared for marketing, plus SMS program terms: frequency, STOP, HELP) — carriers check the website named in your texting registration for exactly this, so add it before you register a texting campaign, and have your attorney review the wording.

The editor's tabs:

• Design — brand + accent colors, curated font pairings, logo, tagline, a promo bar, social links, and background colors or photos per page and per block.
• Pages — the pages and blocks above. The properties block's filter bar is configurable: pick which controls visitors get (price, property type, bedrooms, bathrooms, acreage, square feet, sort — each with min/max where it applies) and add up to six feature checkboxes (e.g. Waterfront, No HOA) that match listings whose Highlights mention the phrase. The map block lets you choose what a visitor sees when they click a pin — a photo, the price, lot size, bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet, property type, city or county, an "Owner financing available" tag, and a View property button (the property's name always shows and opens its page); a preview in the block's settings shows how it looks. It's one choice for the whole site: change it on any map and every map on your site follows. Also the Property page template: the page every listing gets, pinned below your pages. It edits exactly like any other page — click a section (gallery, prices, details, financing, video, map, contact form…) to edit it, drag it anywhere on the layout grid, drag its edges to resize it (a section's height is a minimum — each property's own content grows it, never clips), place sections side by side, untick to hide one, and + Add block puts regular content blocks (text, photos, FAQ, CTA, video, embed…) on the template too. One layout applies to every property, each filled with its own photos, price and details; a section a property has nothing for (no photos, no video) simply collapses on its page. You can also give the page its own background, rename the contact-form heading, and add an "Extra content" section that appears on every property page (your guarantee, how buying works). Each section can be centered and given its own background colour (or photo) — select it and use Align and Section background; with the section at full width, tick Stretch edge to edge for a colour band across the screen that breaks up a long white page.
• Properties — which of your properties appear on the site, plus per-listing polish: headline, highlights, owner-financing terms (down / monthly / term), taxes, a video, a map pin, and up to 15 photos each with a cover photo. There's also a built-in stock-photo pack for hero and section images. Sold listings show a SOLD badge (or hide them), and fresh listings get a NEW badge for their first two weeks.
• Forms — see below.
• Analytics — traffic and leads, see below.
• Settings — your web address (connect a domain you own — free, see below), search-engine titles and descriptions, a share image (the picture shown when someone shares your site in a text or social post — best at 1200 × 630) and a site icon (the little square in the browser tab and on a phone's home screen), and deleting the site.

Owner-financing payment calculator

Every listing shows a payment calculator automatically: the rate defaults to 10% APR, minimum down to $999, longest term to 120 months, amortizing each listing's financed price or its sale price. Visitors slide the loan length (and raise the down payment) and watch their estimated monthly payment update live, with an "estimate only" note. Change the site-wide terms on the Property page template (Pages tab → Owner financing section) — or untick that section there if you don't offer financing. Any listing can override with its own rate, term, down payment or financed price (Edit & add photos → Owner financing — enter just a rate and the 120-month/$999 defaults fill in). 0% interest works too, and the manual down/monthly/term table still shows below the calculator if you keep both.

Forms → leads in your CRM

Every site has a built-in inquiry / cash-offer form, and you can build custom forms too (up to 12 per site, 25 fields each — short and long text, email, phone, number, dropdowns, checkboxes) with each field mapped to a CRM field.

When someone submits:

• They're matched against your CRM by email and phone — an existing contact gets the message on their timeline and is re-flagged for attention; a new visitor becomes a new contact (source: Website) flagged red for follow-up.
• Seller-lead forms also create the property they told you about, linked to the contact.
• Email-signup (subscribe) forms are the quiet exception — subscribers get tagged, not flagged, so they never flood your attention queue. A sign-up asks for a name and email; set its Phone number to Ask (or Ask, required) and it also asks for a phone, with your texting consent checkbox (the wording from the Forms tab).
• You hear about it right away. The account owner gets a push notification, a pop-up in the app, and an email from Direct REI with what they filled in — hit Reply on the email and you're answering the lead. Teammates can turn website leads on for themselves in Settings → Notifications (and the owner can turn them off there). Email sign-ups don't send alerts.
• Your automations fire. The trigger A website form is filled in runs for every form — new visitors and people already in your CRM — and can be narrowed to one site, one form, or only new / only returning people. A brand-new visitor also sets off your A new contact is added rules. See Automations: let the CRM work your leads for you.

Format your text

Long-text boxes in the editor (text blocks, columns, call-to-action text, FAQ answers, steps, features, a listing's description) have a small toolbar: B for bold, I for italic, 🔗 Link, • List, H for a subheading and ▣ Button. Select some words and click a button, or click it first and type. A link can go to a web address, an email, a phone number (tap-to-call), or one of your own pages like /about. The toolbar writes small marks into the text — **bold**, *italic*, [words](link), - for a list line — and the website shows them as formatting. You can type those marks yourself too.

Tap to call, and a Call / Text bar on phones

The phone number and email on your site are tap-to-call and tap-to-email on a phone. Under Design → Contact info you can also turn on a Call / Text bar — two buttons pinned to the bottom of the screen on phones, so a visitor reaches you in one tap. It needs a phone number people can dial; switch the canvas to Phone view to see it.

Take deposits

A property page can carry a Put down a deposit button under the price. The buyer clicks it, leaves their name and email (they land in your CRM, flagged so you see them), agrees to your deposit terms if you set any, and pays.

• Connect Stripe once. Open a website → Properties tab → 💰 Deposits → Connect Stripe. You connect your own Stripe account (or create one during setup) — deposits are paid straight into it. Stripe charges its usual fee (about 2.9% + 30¢ per card payment); Direct REI takes nothing. Refunds and payouts happen in Stripe. Only the account owner can connect it.
• Or paste a payment link. A PayPal, Square, or Stripe Payment Link works too. A payment link can't tell us when someone paid, so for those only the "starts a deposit" automation runs.
• Turn it on for the site with Take deposits on every property on this site, set the amount, the button words and optional terms, then click Publish changes.
• Or one property at a time. In Edit & add photos → Deposit a listing can follow the site, turn deposits on just for itself, or turn them off — and use its own amount, terms or payment link. These changes show on your live site within a few minutes.
• A second Buy Now button lower down. In the Property page template, select the Extra content section (or a text block) and click 💰 Buy Now in its toolbar. That button opens the deposit checkout for whichever property the visitor is looking at, and hides on any property that isn't taking a deposit. It works in a listing's own description too.
• One buyer per property. Once a deposit is paid, the button hides on that property so a second buyer can't pay for it. If the deal falls through, refund it in Stripe and click Take deposits again on that listing. The button never shows on a property marked Under contract or Sold.
• You hear about it right away. A paid deposit sends the same alerts as a website lead (push, a pop-up in the app, and an email), and it's listed under Recent deposits in the Properties tab.

New-listing alerts to your subscribers

Each listing in the Properties tab of a live website has a 📣 Tell subscribers button that emails the people who signed up on that site about the property, with a link to its page. It shows Announced with the date afterward, or Not announced yet. You'll also be asked right after adding a property to a live site that has sign-ups. The CRM lesson (Send a property to your buyers list) explains the send window.

Your office address

Add your office address under Design → Contact info (street, city, state, ZIP). It shows in the footer and the contact card as a link that opens Google Maps, and search engines are told where you are. If the email box holds something that isn't an email — an address, say — the editor points it out, because visitors can't tap it to email you.

Fast photos, found by Google and AI search

Photos you upload are sent at the size each spot needs — a small one for a listing card, a bigger one for a full-width banner — so pages load quickly on a phone, and photos further down the page load as the visitor scrolls. You don't have to resize anything before uploading. Every published page also tells Google and AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and others) what it is: your business name, phone, address and social links on the home page, your FAQ answers, your property list, and each property's details. That happens automatically.

Preview, publish & what it costs

Drafts are private — the editor gives you a preview link only you can open. When you're ready, click Publish; changes reach the live site within about 5 minutes. You can pause (unpublish) a site anytime.

• Starter: your first published website is included. Extra sites are $9/mo each.
• Pro & Scale: unlimited websites included.
• Free plan: $9/mo per published site.

Paid sites bill $9 for 30 days at a time — to your card on file, falling back to your prepaid credit balance. The included allowance always goes to your oldest published sites, so the same site stays free month after month. Photo storage scales with your plan (account-wide: 100 on Free, 400 on Starter, 1,500 on Pro, 5,000 on Scale).

Analytics — is it actually working?

The Analytics tab answers that per site, over 7, 30, or 90 days: Visitors, Page views, Leads, and Conversion (leads ÷ page views), each against the previous period so you can see direction, not just a number.

Below that: a visits-per-day chart where gold dots mark the days that produced a lead, plus Top pages, Where visitors came from, Devices, and Countries.

• Bots are excluded from every number, and the footer tells you how many were filtered out — so your traffic figures aren't inflated by crawlers.
• A visitor counts once per day; someone returning on a later day counts again.
• "Direct" traffic means they typed the address in or came from a text, QR code, or another untracked source. For a site you promote on postcards, Direct is your mailer working.

These numbers also feed your main Analytics dashboard — there's a Websites category in the widget catalog (visitors, page views, leads, conversion, visits and leads by site, traffic sources, devices), so site performance can sit next to your outreach numbers instead of in a separate tab.

Duplicating a site

Built something that works and want it again for another market? Hit Duplicate in the editor's header bar: the copy starts as an unpublished draft with the same pages, design, and properties, and you give it a new name and address.

What does not come along: leads, visit stats, and any custom domain all stay with the original. And because it's a separate site, publishing it is a separate charge (or uses another slot in your allowance).

Custom domains

Connecting a domain you already own (yourbiz.com) is free — open the Settings tab and follow the DNS steps. The free .directrei.site address keeps working alongside it.

Let Oliver build it

On Pro and Scale, you can ask Oliver to do the whole thing: "build me a website for my Texas land business" — he creates the site, writes the pages, and edits blocks on request. Publishing always pauses for your approval, since it puts a page on the public internet (and may bill).

What's next

Wire up Automations so website leads get worked the minute they arrive, and watch Contacts by source on your Analytics dashboard to see what your site is producing.