How to get more Rightmove clicks on an empty property listing

To get more clicks on Rightmove for an empty property listing, the single most effective step is replacing bare-room photography with virtually staged images, clearly labelled as such. Beyond that, you can improve your headline, reorder your photo set, refresh your listing copy, and time your re-upload to catch peak browsing hours. This guide covers each step in plain terms, so you can act today rather than wait for a physical staging team or a price reduction.

Why empty listings underperform on Rightmove

Rightmove's search results are visual. Buyers scroll thumbnail-first, and an empty room, bare walls, echoing floors, a single radiator, gives the eye nothing to land on. Most buyers cannot mentally furnish a space from a photograph. They skip past and click something that feels like a home. That one decision costs you viewings, and viewings cost you offers.

According to the NAR 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 83% of buyers' agents said staging helped buyers picture a property as a home. The same report found that 49% of sellers' agents said staging cut time on market, and 29% reported offers coming in 1–10% higher than unstaged equivalents. Empty rooms are not neutral. They actively work against you.

Step-by-step: how to improve an underperforming empty listing

1. Stage the photography first. This is where the click is won or lost. Virtually staged images, where furniture, lighting and soft furnishings are added digitally to your existing empty-room photos, give buyers something to respond to emotionally. Every virtually staged image must be clearly labelled as such, which keeps you compliant with portal guidance, ASA expectations, and CMA consumer-protection requirements. It is also honest: you are helping buyers picture the space, not hiding anything about the property.
2. Lead with your strongest image. Rightmove uses your first photo as the search-results thumbnail. If that image is an empty hallway or a bare box room, change it. The lead photo should be your largest, best-proportioned room, staged and well-lit. Many agents upload photos in the order they were taken rather than in order of impact. Fix that before anything else.
3. Write a headline that earns the click. Rightmove pulls the property type, bedrooms and price automatically, so your headline copy needs to add something those fields do not. Mention a standout feature: a south-facing garden, a recently fitted kitchen, a converted loft, proximity to a sought-after school catchment. Keep it specific and factual. Vague phrases like 'stunning family home' are ignored because buyers have learned they mean nothing.
4. Rewrite the first two lines of your description. On most devices, Rightmove truncates descriptions to a short preview. Those first two lines need to do real work. Lead with the feature most likely to matter to your target buyer, not with 'We are pleased to offer for sale...' which no buyer has ever read with excitement.
5. Check your floorplan is present and accurate. Listings with a floorplan consistently outperform those without. Buyers use floorplans to pre-qualify a property before booking a viewing. If yours is missing or out of date, add one. If the property has an unusual or flexible layout, call that out in the description.
6. Review your price bracket. Rightmove's search filters operate in £25,000 increments at lower price bands and £50,000 increments at higher ones. A property listed at £301,000 misses everyone searching up to £300,000 and gains nothing. Know exactly which search brackets your listing falls inside, and price accordingly.
7. Re-upload at peak browsing time. Rightmove's own data has historically shown that early evening, particularly weekday evenings between 6pm and 9pm, sees the highest buyer traffic. Re-uploading your listing, even with minor changes, can push it back towards the top of 'newest listed' sort order. Time that re-upload deliberately.
8. Add a video or virtual tour if the property warrants it. Rightmove supports video and 360-degree tour embeds. These are not mandatory, but for larger or more complex properties they extend time-on-listing and signal to buyers that the agent is presenting the property seriously.
9. Request a listing review from Rightmove's own tools. Rightmove's agent dashboard gives you stats on how your listing compares with similar properties in the same area, including click-through rate benchmarks. Use that data to understand whether your underperformance is a photography problem, a price problem, or both.

A note on compliance: labelling virtually staged images

Portal guidance, ASA rules and CMA consumer-protection requirements all point in the same direction: edited or digitally enhanced images must be clearly disclosed to buyers. That means every virtually staged photo should carry a visible label, something like 'virtually staged' or 'digitally furnished', so buyers know what they are looking at. This is not just a legal consideration. It is also the right thing to do, and most buyers respond well to it because the label signals that the empty room they are about to view has genuine potential.

An agent who stages honestly and labels clearly is in a much stronger position with vendors, buyers and regulators than one who presents enhanced images without disclosure. Compliance and good marketing are not in tension here. They point the same way.

Which types of empty listing benefit most

What not to do with an underperforming listing

• Do not reduce the price as a first response. A price cut is permanent and affects your vendor's proceeds. Fix the presentation first, measure the impact over one to two weeks, and only revisit price if the presentation improvement has not moved the needle.
• Do not re-upload without changing anything. Rightmove's algorithm recognises listings that are repeatedly cycled without substantive changes. Agents who do this repeatedly may find diminishing returns from re-uploads. Make a real change each time.
• Do not use photos taken on a phone without editing. Poorly lit, hand-held photography is immediately visible at thumbnail size. If the original photography is the problem, it needs to be replaced, not reordered.
• Do not ignore your Rightmove stats dashboard. The data is there. Use it. If your click-through rate is well below the local average, that is a clear signal that the issue is the listing itself, not the market.

How quickly can you see results?

Most agents who refresh empty-listing photography report a noticeable uptick in enquiries within the first few days of re-uploading. Rightmove's 'newest listed' filter gives refreshed listings a brief visibility boost, and improved thumbnails compound that by converting more impressions into clicks. The combination of better imagery and a deliberate re-upload strategy is usually enough to move a stagnant listing back into active conversation with buyers.