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.
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.
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.
Tim - assuming that every click is paid for. In the case of #2 with no form hassle - perhaps, because it is free access 20% to 30% of the visitors are returning without pay per click. Or perhaps they have better organic traffic.
I'd like to see it boiled down some more. It's an issue we are constantly wrestling with as I am sure many others are.
I like the content you bring to the party.
Posted by: john harper | April 7, 2007 at 07:20 AM
All organic and some branding on both ends. Heavily weighted for the Gold Coats.
By the way something I noticed was that when I made commenting easier on this blog (less hoops) all of a sudden I started getting more comments. It only makes sense.
The post above is really to make peopl elook at their results and be willing to test one vs the other.
Results always vary and you never know till you test.
Posted by: Tim O'Keefe | April 7, 2007 at 12:13 PM
We have combined the two approaches and allow consumers to see all of the listings on our new website with Birdview, but when they ask for more details, they need to give us their email address and can provide a name/phone.
Posted by: Sandy Collins | April 11, 2007 at 12:31 PM
Hmmmm, good data Tim. I know I've been struggling with the same decision. I have no doubt that forcing people thorugh the hoop will get more people through the hoop , but is the data as accurate, are people putting in false information just to get the information and if so what's the cost of chasing false leads even if it is only a few moments to make a follow up call. I'd like to see some results on that, maybe it's time I try testing to see what happens. If I get around to it I'll pass the results on to you.
Posted by: Tom Lyons | April 11, 2007 at 08:54 PM
Interesting. Thanks so much for the great tips. I might have more question about this later.
Posted by: Mortgage Movies | April 28, 2007 at 06:57 AM
Great article.
Posted by: Michael Carucci | May 31, 2007 at 09:09 AM