The art of conversion optimization is having people come to your website and do an action that you want them to do with the highest amount of completions(conversions) possible.
If you’re getting traffic to your website and no one is calling you or signing up then your problem is conversion optimization.
You need to figure out how to get these visitors to perform an action/goal on your website.
Have a goal for your real estate website
What’s your goal for every potential lead that ends up on your website?
Here are some possibilities:
- E-mail lead
- Phone number
- Subscribe to blog
- Download an e-book
- To call you
- Follow you on social media
- Subscribe to newsletter
- Get them to ask a question
- And many more
Read more on ideas to capture leads on your real estate website
Generally speaking, in most websites the goal is to get the visitors e-mail.
Once you have that e-mail you have a window to get to know that person even more and send them ‘things’ that you find valuable and hopefully they will appreciate the value too.
If they do, they can end up being a new client.
Create a visitor flow based off the goal
Every page should have a goal of it’s own.
How the visitors go through the pages to accomplish the goal you have set is called flow.
They can work something like this:
Visitor lands on your homepage (www.domain.com) ->Goal to get e-mail right away
or
Visitor lands on your homepage (www.domain.com) -> Goal to get them to view your listings page -> Visitor goes to listing page, goal is to get them to signup here
There are different flows you can do, no website is the same.
Every flow will convert differently and this is what we call conversion optimization.
Start tracking your visitors / potential real estate leads
If you haven’t already installed Google analytics, go install it right now.
It will allow you to track things such as:
- Where your visitor came from
- If they accomplished your goal on the site
- Time spent on site
- What pages they visited
- If they bounced (visited and left right away)
- What pages they spent the most time on
- & much more
Track visitors flow
Go to behaviors and take a look over at the visitors flow.
Figure out where your biggest drop off point is, then go to that page on your website and brainstorm why people might be leaving.
Put your creative hat on when doing this.
The reason people might be leaving, might not have to do with that page at all.
Maybe the page before it was misleading and when the visitor got to that drop off page, they left because they were confused by the last page. Wait… Did I just confuse you there? Ironic if I did 😉
The best way to get good at this is to put yourself in your potential leads shoes.
- What are they thinking when they come to your site?
- What does a seller with a potential listing want to see?
- What does a first time buyer want to see?
- Should you target both right away or just one ?
- How can you help them accomplish that goal?
- Does your site make sense to someone that has never been to it before?
- Is everything clear and concise?
(email marketing post with some stats about clear always beats clever when trying to appeal to your audience. )
Setup actual ‘goals’ in google analytics
This will help you visualize the conversion rate that you’re currently getting.
Settings up goals isin’t the easiest thing to do but, we have a couple guides here if you’re interested in learning how
The google analytics conversion funnel survival guide (also consider subscribing to this blog, they are one of the thought leaders of internet marketing and conversion optimization.)
*I would highly suggest learning how to use goals if you don’t already know how to do it. It’s one of the most powerful datasets within the Google Analytics toolkit.
A/B Test your real estate website
A/B testing is where you test 2 different variations of a website and see which one converts better.
e.g. You might have a current headline that says “#1 real estate agent in south orange county” with an e-mail signup box below that and you might want to test “South Orange County’s #1 Seller agent” to see which converts better.
One of the best and easiest tools to do A/B testing is optimizely.com
Always be testing and trying new things. It’s often the unexpected changes that have the highest impact to conversions.
The Complete Guide to A/B Testing
Have multiple goals
Your main goal may be to get the visitors e-mail.
Great, make sure your real estate webpage/blog is doing everything it can to accomplish that goal.
Inevtiably people will not sign up though.
You should also be thinking, how can I get those visitors that aren’t signing up to do something else?
What about an eBook offer? Potentially have two separate eBooks, one for sellers and buyers.
To download the eBooks though, the visitor has to enter their e-mail. This could be another way to grab the customers e-mail.
Or maybe they go from your homepage to your blog. Then you could have potentially an entire different goal, which may be to get them to subscribe to your blog and get all your latest updates and information about the market. That reminds me, why not even offer a local market report?
I’m throwing ideas out there but, keep in mind only you know your audience.
Sit down and try to figure out what you think people who are visiting your website would find the most valuable and then give them that in return for their e-mail / contact information / whatever you see fit.
In the end, Realtors job is actually getting harder and harder because you have more and more to manage.