HomeQuest

Jeff on Monday, August 30, 2010

Is Your Real Estate website optimized to properly convert traffic into clients?

Every so often I hear Real Estate agents stressing out over things like: what kind of content they should create, search engine optimization techniques, and the number of visitors their website is getting. Now don’t get me wrong, these are all things you should think about if you’re going to have a successful web presence, but they’re definitely not things to be stressed out over.

If there is one thing that I would obsess over, although not necessarily stress out about, it would be whether or not my site is optimized to convert the traffic it receives (be it organic, PPC, or self promotion from social media) into some sort of “conversation” that would eventually result in a face to face meeting and hopefully a Real Estate transaction further down the road. After all, that’s still the goal of all this stuff.

If you’re not sure your site is optimized to convert, it probably isn’t. Conversion optimization is something that takes time, and lots of testing.

Here are 5 simple tips to get you started on the road to having a website that is a conversion machine:

Good content is the best SEO – Your content is essentially what will define the kind of traffic your website generates. For example, if you write about nothing but foreclosures, it’s fairly safe to assume that the traffic you receive from organic sources will be looking for info on foreclosures. Keep this in mind as you’re coming up with a content strategy. If you don’t like working with foreclosures, I wouldn’t suggest including much content in your site related to them. For some examples of a good content strategy, see my previous post on using your daily Real Estate activity to produce content.

Build enough traffic to test properly – like I mentioned above, conversion optimization takes a lot of testing. But, in order for your tests to be worth a damn, you need to be working with a fairly large sample size. In this case, the traffic your website receives should be fairly substantial. What is a fairly substantial amount of traffic? Well I suppose there’s really no correct answer to that question, but as a personal preference I would recommend shooting for somewhere in the range of 100 unique visitors per day before you can even start any sort of A/B testing. The more the better. If you have a new site that doesn’t receive much traffic, think about running some Google Adword campaigns, or Facebook ads. Be prepared to spend some money though, but know that in the end, this will be money well spent.

Give visitors what they’re after – This especially applies if you’re running a PPC Adword campaign of any type. If your ad is promising info on something specific (which I recommend), you better make sure they’re landing on the proper page of your site with the related content, or that will be money down the drain. I don’t recommend offering something generic, like “Real Estate Search” and just dropping them onto your home page. With generic offers come high bounce rates, and more money wasted.

Put some thought into the design – This can really tie in with the above tip. Having a design that matches your content strategy can be a HUGE component in better conversion rates. If your content and promotion strategy revolves around searching for homes on an interactive map, it makes sense to have some sort of a “map theme” built into your site design, right? We’ve noticed a significant improvement in both analytic stats (bounce rate, time on site, page views, etc.) and conversion rates (IDX sign ups, and contact form requests) when we apply custom design that parallels the content strategy of our clients websites. Contact me if you’d to talk about a custom designed WordPress site for your Real Estate business.

Nail the “call to action” – Similar to the custom design (and often an integral part of it) is having a call to action that also parallels the content strategy of your website. Again, with the idea that your visitors are finding your website under the assumption that they can search for homes on an interactive map, you should probably give them what they’re after. Notice on most of our example sites that we have a custom “search for homes” graphic up near the header? There’s a reason for that. Although, sometimes you’ll hear all the “experts” saying that nobody clicks on text based calls to action anymore that you need to have a graphical call to action if you want results. Well, they’re partially right. Having the graphic with a matching “map based” design is a given, but don’t rule out the text based call to action. We have sites that get a large percentage (nearly 50%) of the clicks on that page to convert using text links in the navigation bar. Again, we would only know this from testing and monitoring the click points where our traffic is clicking on our site.

Create multiple “capture points” – When creating a funnel with your content, you need to create something to capture the visitors as they pour out of the funnel. Having the HomeQuest IDX with “forced registration” turned on is a great start for capturing visitors who are searching the properties on the map or your listing pages. Vancouver Realtor, Dale Chumbley has reported a drastic increase in visitors contacting him since he implemented his custom site design and contact form (courtesy of HomeQuest), which invites visitors to “Meet up with Dale…” Prior to the new site design and some basic changes in strategy, Dale had received very few visitors contacting him through his site. Now he’s getting several per week.

So as you can probably see by now, to become decent at conversion optimization, you don’t have to use deceptive marketing tactics, and you definitely don’t have to pay for a bunch strategies from the “guru” of the week.

It’s simply about understanding exactly what visitors to your website want, and aligning what you’re offering (in both content and your tangible services) to their wants and interests. If you do that, I think you’ll be amazed at the results that you yourself can produce.

Have an example, or a story to share? Post it in the comments, I’d love to hear it.

**Also, for our Portland area clients who are interested in learning more about conversion techniques, I’ll be speaking on the topic at the upcoming Inman News – Agent Reboot.  If you’d like to attend, use the code HomeQuest when you register to get special pricing of only $79 (normally $149).