What are some inexpensive tools real estate agents can use to track their online marketing efforts?

By Jessica Swesey, Monday, April 14, 2008.

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Submitted by Gahlord Dewald | Thoughtfaucet on April 14, 2008 - 12:45pm.

Well that's a question I'd love to tackle.

Google Analytics is a free analytics package that includes a wide variety of reports that are useful for tracking your online marketing efforts.

Installation is fairly painless (though it does involve adding a small bit of code to your site).

But tracking your performance goes beyond installing code and looking at pretty graphs.

There are some processes you might want to consider adding into your life (you know, all that spare time...).

* Linktagging: if you advertise, learn about linktagging so you can track results via Google Analytics.

* Learn about Key Performance Indicators. I did a guest post over at MyTechOpinion about this a few weeks back. Understanding KPIs is what will keep you from drowning in data, once you start tracking.

* Once you get the hang of tracking things in GA, consider engaging in a "continuous improvement process" by optimizing your site/advertising/marketing via A/B and Multivariate testing. Google Optimizer comes in handy here, free of course because Google wants your ads to work so that you buy more ads.

There are other fun, free tools as well. One of my favorites is Crazy Egg which lets you know exactly where people are clicking on a given page. More of a "deeper look at one specific thing" tool than GA, using them in conjunction is great to help with site design and usability (and this counts for advertising landing pages etc).

I could go on and on I'm sure. But I'll spare you all. A little plug, this is the sort of thing I write about very frequently at the Union Street blog.