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.
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.