Watching Web visitors can pay off
Panelists focus on online analytics, ROI
By Lai Saetern, Friday, July 25, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
SAN FRANCISCO -- As invasive and creepy as it may seem, tracking and following every single step that Web visitors make is a valuable approach for Realtors to seek potential clients and simply makes for better business, according to Jim Marks, founder and president of Virtual Results.
Marks spoke during a panel discussion on Web analytics and return on investment Thursday during the Real Estate Connect conference, which ends today.
"It's not something to be scared of, and you can jump right in," Marks said.
He was joined by three other panelists: Brian Balduf, president and CEO of VHT Inc.; Gahlord Dewald, founder and president of Virtual Results; and Oren Michaels, founder of Mashery.
"Mainstream media is like a retail storefront. You can watch people come in and see what they do at a store. With analytics, you are watching consumers and what they do (online)," explained Dewald.
He added that watching what consumers are clicking on, which Web sites they visit, and how long they stay can help Realtors decide what they can do to fix their online presence and implement those changes based on consumers' online activities.
The aim, panelists noted, is to lower the "bounce rate," which measures the share of initial visitors to a Web site who leave or "bounce" away to a different site rather than staying to view other pages within the site.
Marks said that investing a lot of money on branding may not be good for the bounce rate, citing the example of a Realtor who "wanted to put a caricature of her face on her ad." Once that image was added to her site, the bounce rate increased -- the caricature was removed and the bounce rate dropped back again, he said.
Michaels, who two years ago launched Mashery, a Web services company, said it's important for real estate professionals to keep up with trends.
"Two years ago, real estate leaders started blogging ... but it didn't evolve. Fashions change, things change and you need to get to that right away," said Michaels.
He said Web analytics can be useful in gauging customer acquisition, activation, retention and revenue.
"As an individual of a large (brokerage) company, you have to get more anecdotal by seeing what people are doing, what places they are visiting. You can learn about the profiles of people, what they click on, what interests them. Get to know these people," he said.
So, how do you track these people and what's the cost of hiring a computer analyst?
"All of our clients use Google Analytics, which is a great place to start. Web developers could add that to the Web site. Clients put them onto their dashboards," said Dewald. "It is also useful to (use a) spreadsheet for checking on data that Google doesn't provide. Have control of your data."
As for the cost to hire a computer analyst for this service, Marks said, "You're not looking for a marriage -- you're looking for a date. They ... teach you how to do it. Hire them once a month, you move along, and if you want them for more than a year they're not doing their job. A year is all it takes," he said.
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Submitted by Barry Kushner on July 25, 2008 - 2:02pm.
Speaking of watching and tracking where Web surfers are clicking, the back office of my IDX home search site - www.Search4PA.com - lets me see every home a buyer clicks on in real time the moment they click on it. (That is, if I'm online and happen to click on a buyer surfing at that time.) And my site maintains a permanent log of every home clicked on by each buyer - and this list can be sorted by price, by when viewed, by square footage, etc.
The value of this feature is not that I become Big Brother and I'm watching them conduct their searches, but that it makes me aware of which homes my buyers are most likely to want to see when they go house hunting with me. Hence, it takes some of the guess work out of the search process.
Plus, my back office lets me see which homes my buyers have bookmarked, so I get a better feel for which homes are most appealing to them among all the ones they've seen on my site. Again, this helps streamline the house hunting process.
And my back office even displays a map view function that shows the geographic distribution of all the listings a given buyer has viewed. That way, I can schedule the initial round of home showings for the area with the greatest concentration of listings viewed by a particular buyer.
The newest feature of my back office is a price preferences section that gives me, at a glance, the price range for all their searches, as well as the median price and average price for all the homes they've seen on the site since they first registered. This is an invaluable tool because now I don't really have to question them about their price range.
So, by using Web-based technology that lets me pay attention to what and where my buyers are clicking on, I'm in a much better position to help them and make suggestions that actually may improve their home search.
Barry Kushner
REALTOR®
Realty Professionals of America
Huntingdon Valley, PA
215-698-2654 home office
215-868-1194 cell
BarryKush@aol.com
www.PhillyDreamHome.com
www.Search4PA.com
Submitted by Jeff Manson on July 25, 2008 - 4:27pm.
Google Analytics is great plus it’s free as well. I would say good bounce rate to try and stay below is 20% on your main entry pages and 30% on pages that require forms to be filled out. If your bounce rate is higher than 50%, that should tell you the page should be deleted or completely over hauled because it obviously has no value to the user.
Jeff Manson
American Dream Realty
46 Hoolai St.
Kailua, Hawaii 96734
808-792-7040
Personal: Hawaii real estate
Company: Oahu real estate
Submitted by Steve Simon on July 25, 2008 - 6:22pm.
Having just started the learning curve of Search Engine Optimization. "Visitor Analytics" has that "Oh no, not another mountain to climb!" feel to it:(
However the article and the concept make perfect sense.
If you're going to mess with the net at all you must have a multi-tiered workplace:
The SEO to get them there.
The analysis of what they do when they are there (so you can adapt to thier wants as evidenced by their actions)
A constant dynamic marketing plan that marries the analysis and the website organic optimization with the Search Engine Marketing Program!
Otherwise you will fall far short!
If the answer to a complex problem is very simple, it is usually incomplete...
Steve Simon is the lead instructor at the Steve Simon School of Real Estate www.stevesimon.us
Submitted by G Dewald | Union Street Media on July 29, 2008 - 10:17am.
Thanks for the write up of the panel!
Couple little typos in the article above. First being that I'm Director of Web Strategy at Union Street Media. ;)
That and I don't use parens when I speak nearly as often as when I type (or at least I hope that's true).
I might disagree with your assessment that the goal of analytics is to reduce bounce rate. That might be one goal. But overall I think the goal of analytics is to gather information about helping your customers achieve their task.
Re: Bounce Rates
This will always be different depending on the site. A blog may experience higher-than-average bounce rates, for example, if it contains content that can be quickly consumed (blog visitors often come for one post, driving up the bounce rate).
Also, you may have a page which is attracting a lot of attention for a mismatched search term.
A funny story: I once created a page titled "Tips for First Time Video-Makers" which was about helping real estate pros get started with creating video. I got a lot of bouncing traffic for the search term "First Time Video" which brings up a number of not-safe-for-work sites. Since I wasn't providing anything for those searchers they often bounced. However, the article itself was very helpful (and I received emails telling me so). So I'm quite glad I did not delete it even though it had a bounce rate in the 80% range.
But your heart is in the right place. If you have a high bounce rate: take action. In my example, I changed the headline and that slowed up the bounce rate quite a bit as the article lost position in the NSFW search results.
The thing is that you need to consider source and visitor intention to determine meaningful action to take on bounce rates. We didn't get that nitty-gritty in the panel. I would have loved to if we'd had time. Maybe next year we can have a hands on workshop.
Steve:
Check out my blog for some more analytics, marketing tactics and strategy for real estate.
Thanks again for your review on the panel!
G. Dewald | Union Street Media | Internet Marketing Blog