What Kind of Form Get the Most Leads?

Less Traffic But More ROI?

One "point of view" that I have struggled with because it seems common sense to me. Is that you must make your listings freely available to your visitors.

My assistant put the argument to rest after running some interesting numbers from a couple client websites.

Both are in the same market. One is a big franchise with Gold Coats. The other a boutique.

I wanted to know the lead disparity of the Lollipop Ratio (How many visits to get a lead) as measured on both sites. The Big Gold Coat Franchise is a soft opt-in taking you to thumbnails of listings,while the other takes you straight to a register form. In other words the message is if you want to see listings sign up here!

Now, I understand that this is harsh and many agents find this distasteful. But every case that I have run this kind of comparision I get similar results.

Nevertheless the conversion rate says it all: 3.5 X more traffic got almost 3x less leads per visitor.

	February Traffic	February Leads	Ratio: traffic/leads
Client #1	4858	242	20
Client #2	17236	307	56

These two real estate offices are in the same very Competitive market area.

Client # 1 got 4,858 visits, 242 registered leads. That is 20 visits to get to a 1 lead.

Client # 2 is a 10 office Franchise real estate firm, so traffic comes in from brand as well as engines. It takes 56 visits to get them a lead.

Put another way, with # 1  you must register to see anything MLS. Client # 2  has 4 opportunities to get mls information without ID.

What This Means

I make some assumptions. Each click into the site has a 16 cent click cost to bring the visitor there.

This is startling.

If you put a .16 per click value on each click, then

#1 is paying $777.28 for its traffic;

#2 is paying $2,757.76 for its traffic.

#2 is paying 3.5 x what #1 is paying.

Assume they both have a sales rate of 1 per 20 registered leads. The average commission is $10,000.

#1 has a Return on Investment of  242/20=12.1 sales or $121,000. or $24.90 per visitor

#2 is 307/20=15.35 sales or $153500 or $8.9 per visitor

#1 has a 2.9 X better Visitor Value than #2