01 Jun 4 Things Real Estate Agents Wish They Knew About Their Websites

If only you had a crystal ball that would tell you the exact words to say and the exact order to say them in to get every homebuyer to call on you. Sadly there is no crystal ball, but the better you are at analyzing user behavior and the way in which users interact with your website the more it can seem like you have a crystal ball.

As a real estate agent the metrics that you are interested in nailing down are the number of visitors to your site, the number of conversions you get from those visitors, and how long they stick around your website.

We will tell you where to find those numbers and how to measure them once you’ve found them. Of course you could always hire a web design team like ours at Oxford Circus who can handle all of the details for you.

However, using Google Analytics alone, you could glean quite a bit of information. By learning how to use tools like this and others to learn more about your website visitors, the more effective your website marketing efforts will be.

Defining Your Goals

Before you can properly analyze how your visitors interact with your real estate website, you must first ask the right questions. Defining your goals for increasing lead generation and conversions through your website boil down to these four basic questions:

1. What Makes Visitors Stay Longer?
2. What Makes Visitors Contact You?
3. What Makes Visitors Come Back Again?
4. What Makes Visitors Refer You?

These are the metrics that lead to the results that you want. The longer a visitor stays on your website the more interested they are in what you offer – effective targeting. They are in turn more likely to contact you for more information than those who browse for just a few seconds and leave – effective engagement.

If they have a positive experience with you and you entice them to come back to your website frequently they are more likely to refer you to others. Those are your primary goals for increasing and improving website traffic.

#1: Measuring Visitor Stay Time

By far the clearest metric measuring user engagement besides contact is stay time. How long a visitor lingers on your website is directly related to their level of interest. Most people searching online do not land on your page and just park there.

If they are there for more than 30 seconds they are interested, if they stay longer than two minutes, they are prospective clients. These numbers can be found using website administrative tools to track statistics like:

• Number of Visitors
• Number of Unique Views
• Number of Conversions from Website Visitors
• Time Each Visitor Remained on Your Website before Leaving

Unique views show how many visitors outside of your regular followers have found your website. It is not a solid measure for user engagement because a unique visitor may have happened upon your site and immediately left because it was not what they were looking for.

However, tracking the number of total visitors (including the errant ones) against the amount of time that they lingered on your site before leaving will give you an idea of how well your website content is targeted. If the majority of visitors are staying, it means that your SEO content is hitting its target for search engine rankings and engaging your target audience.

#2: Tracking Visitor Interaction

On the other hand if the majority of your unique views are less than 10 seconds, you are capturing users with your SEO technique but are failing to engage them once they are there. Your SEO technique is fine; you just need to focus on adding more useful and engaging content. Perhaps you need to redesign your website; it could be the look of your site that is turning visitors off.

By drilling down deeper into these specific metrics you are better able to formulate a picture of how your visitors are interacting with your website. If you are doing fine, you could do better. If you are doing poorly, you need to make changes to your site.

A good customer relationship management software program could go a long way to helping you identify the path that led your past clients to your website. Build in your metrics to highlight how your converted leads found you or your website:

• Did they meet you at a networking event?
• Did someone refer them?
• Did you give them your business card?
• Did they see an advertisement or a flyer?
• Was it a share on social media?

Once a user goes from a visitor to a client there is a paperless trail so to speak that will give you clues into how to lead your targets to your website. Figure out the route that most of your clients took to find you and then work a strategy around making other paths to find you more effective; i.e., attend more networking events or post more content on social media, depending on the results of your analysis.

#3: Evaluating Return Visits

Return visitors are coming back because you provide something that they want. What is it? Is it your content? Is it to view more properties? Is it to find your contact information? Tools that measure return visits will be very helpful in capitalizing on that interest.

If your return visitors are also included in your newsletter subscription database, it is your content that is likely driving their behavior. If there is no connection between the number of return visitors and subscribers perhaps it is your listings themselves that are driving user behavior.

You want repeat traffic just like retailers want repeat shoppers. By tracking your registration or subscription numbers and measuring them against your repeat visitors, you can analyze which aspect of your website users are attracted to.

#4: Gauging Visitor Referrals

Finally you should always build in tools to gauge your referrals. Not every person who lands on your site and engages with it is interested in buying or selling real estate themselves. It may be that someone they know is in the market. You want them to refer them to your website and not some other agent in your area.

• Is there any easy to find share button?
• Do you offer anything for referrals?
• Can visitors see testimonials from your past clients?
• How can they refer someone who is not on social media?

Make sure to include ways to do all of the above on your real estate website. On the backend build in metrics to gauge just how many referrals are coming from your website visitors? Don’t forget to ask your clients for reviews and referrals. If they are happy with you they will likely be pleased to oblige.

Finding the Data that You Need

You don’t have to be the marketing guru that knows all of the right things to say and do to build more website traffic. All you have to do is contact our team at Oxford Circus to help you to analyze these metrics and to revamp your website to maximize your return on investment and to drive lead generation and conversion rates. We are only one click away. Contact us now or download our brochure for more.

by Ryelle