What do you consider a goal or conversion on your site?
Posted in Real Estate Marketing 2.0 By G Dewald | Union Street Media, Wednesday, March 19, 2008.This is for anyone tracking the performance of your web site. What do you consider the goal or conversion of a visitor into a lead? Becoming a registered user? A contact form? Something else?
Those of you not tracking this sort of thing, is it because it's too difficult/time-consuming or just that you do all the tracking at the sales level?
Thanks!
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Submitted by Real Estate Marketing - Misty Lackie on March 19, 2008 - 5:08pm.
What a great post idea. I too would like to hear others input on this. I will offer my idea of a lead though.
Registered user regardless if paid user or free is a great lead because that shows they were interested enough in your services/products to register and explore more. You also then have their contact info to follow up with specials, promos, newsletters and new products/services.
Of course converting the registered user into a paying customer that is a happy customer is the ultimate goal. I say happy because happy customers are what keep your business going. Many times companies do whatever they can to convert the lead into a paying customer but they do not continue the effort in making and keeping that customer happy.
Contact form - this is good too because you can contact them back up selling your services/products. Not as good as a registered user though because many times inquiries submitted through a contact page is spam.
Submitted by Lu Doan on March 19, 2008 - 7:51pm.
I personally feel that conversions are one of the most important statistic in understanding the effectiveness of your website. Google, through their goal tracking feature, has made conversion tracking really easy to implement and analyze.
The way that we work with understanding conversion rate is to first define what is considered a “conversion”. For our clients, it’s usually filling out a contact form or reaching a certain page on their website. We then add the tracking code provided to us through the Goal feature in Google Analytics. That’s it. The data will start rolling in and you’ll start seeing the conversion rates calculated for you. It also shows you a funnel of what pages the user went through to reaching the conversion. This way, you can understand the navigational habits of your website and make adjustments as necessary.
For those who are not familiar with Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/), it is a free statistics software provided by Google. It’s easy to set up, use and understand. It will provide you with an amazing amount of useful data about your websites.
Submitted by G Dewald | Union Street Media on March 20, 2008 - 7:17am.
How about actual real estate pros out there? How do you evaluate the performance of your website, at a business level?
And yeah I definitely love the GA. ;)
Submitted by Lori Turoff on March 20, 2008 - 7:50am.
I'm a Realtor and here is my take on the above.
Customers do not want to register, sign-in, give you their email or any other contact info. They don't want to do it to see listings on a realtor's site, they don't want to do it to see a property at an open house. They feel that realtors will hound them. In fact, I would say about 50% of my open house visitors give a fake email address. The other 49% write illegibly. I've seen similar results on my broker's site which required registration to do a search. Fake info abounds. Even on my blog- they often comment using fake names and email addresses. When they are ready, they will come to us.
Google analytics and sitemeter are great to see a general overview of how your site is doing and which pages/posts are getting hits and generating interest. There is no way to measure the direct relation between a site view and a property listing or property purchase through these tools.
In my opinion, if you have a site with listings easily accessibly and other useful, concise info your site will be noticed. My strategy is to have my blog known in my community as "the" source for RE info. I hope to position myself as an expert in my market. That is done by giving them the info they want - listings plus market analysis that is objective.
So how does all that translate into business? Simple - my phone rings and the customers says "I found you on the web". Or they send me an email saying I was reading your blog and wondered if you could help me with X. Or they ask a question on Trulia Voices which I answer and we get into a conversation that leads to the email or phone call. Even then, it doesn't mean a deal. In our profession, no deal, no paycheck. So inquiries are not even enough to mean much. They are just a start. If they are just picking my brain, that's not enough. I need them to buy or sell. Does it sometimes take time and require the development of trust? Of course.
What realtors need to do in order to really track what works and what doesn't, in my opinion, is once you have developed a relationship with a potential client, ask them directly "how did you find out about me?". Then write down the answer and keep track all the way to whether the deal closes.
Hope that is helpful & I'd love to hear what other realtors think.
Lori
Submitted by Real Estate Marketing - Misty Lackie on March 20, 2008 - 8:37am.
Lori - great take from a Realtors point of view. I agree with you for listings and other information that should be accessible for free. A visitor should not be required to register to view listings. This is something I have always dis-liked on many websites. If I have to register to view listings I leave the site and go to the thousands of others that will allow me to view listings without registering.
In my opinion the only time a visitor should have to register or provide personal information is if they would like to use a service the site is offering, purchase a product or contact you via a web contact form with questions.
Submitted by G Dewald | Union Street Media on March 20, 2008 - 8:42am.
A side note, some MLS rules require customers to be registered before you can view certain information MLSPIN, for example, requires the customer to be logged in before seeing maps, addresses and (surprisingly) the description/remarks.
Any other realtor thoughts on tracking the performance of websites?
Submitted by Lori Turoff on March 20, 2008 - 8:47am.
The MLS rules you reference seem odd since anyone can go to realtor.com and access the listings in all their detail there without registering. Maybe it's just a particular site run by the MLS?
Misty, I don't know of any realtor sites that sell any type of product. Do you?
Submitted by Real Estate Marketing - Misty Lackie on March 20, 2008 - 10:13am.
I wasn't really referring to realtor listing sites when discussing selling of products. It was a more of a general statement. But yes, I have seen realtors try to sell products on their sites such as books and other affiliate type products.