Real Estate Lead Generation Online - Tip #63 of 100
Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days
Tip 63 of 100 - Increase Your Onsite Conversions
A real estate website that doesn't make conversions is a real estate website that serves very little business function. So let's talk about (A) what a conversion is and (B) how you can increase conversions across your real estate website or blog.
By way of definition, an "onsite conversion" takes place when somebody goes from being a website visitor to something else as well.
For example, if a person visits your website and signs up for your email newsletter, an onsite conversion has taken place. The person has "converted" from a casual website visitor to a newsletter subscriber.
There are many kinds of conversions, and they differ from one website to another, and from one organization to the next:
So we have talked about the importance of onsite conversions, and how they are the end-product of your online real estate marketing efforts. Now let's look at some of the ways you improve your onsite conversions to help grow your real estate business.
This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised by how many deer-in-the-headlight expressions I get when I ask real estate agents, "What are your top three conversion goals on this website?"
Some will scratch their heads and say, "To get clients, I guess." That's not a specific goal for website conversion. It's the end-goal of all real estate marketing efforts, sure. But it's not a clearly defined conversion goal.
Other real estate business owners have it figured out better. For example, they might say something like, "I want my visitors to do one of three things ... download our featured report from the home page, click on the chat button to get in touch with a representative, or contact us by phone or email."
In the example above, the hypothetical real estate professional has clearly defined the conversion points on her website. And from the sound of it, other members of the company are knowledgeable about (and engaged in) those conversion points. Customer support, for example, is ready to connect with site visitors through the website's chat tool, anytime somebody clicks on the button. That's much more specific and achievable than the first conversion goal of "getting clients."
People cannot contact you (or purchase your products, etc.) if they don't know you exist. So you must strive to make your business visible, online and off. Internet visibility is a big part of this. After all, the more visible you are online, the more likely people will be to find you.
That's why I've written an entire book on the subject, to serve as your guide to online visibility.
But there are other ways to increase your visibility as well. You can publish articles in your local newspaper, syndicate articles and press releases online, be active in your community, conduct free seminars, and many other aspects of PR. Visibility and awareness are the first steps to generating real estate leads online.
Picture this. You're on one side of your real estate website, and a potential client is on the other side of the website. This person is looking for an agent to represent them in buying a new home.
The problem is, you don't know the potential client is there. How could you? They haven't contacted you yet. So in order for a connection to take place, the person must first enter your real estate website, navigate their way through it, like what they find on the site, and then contact you in some fashion.
But what if they find the navigation menu confusing? Or maybe they can't find the property listings on your site? Or what if they have any number of problems related to a lack of usability? That's right ... they'll leave as quickly as they came. After all, there are plenty of other websites within your industry that they can visit.
Website usability is crucial to making onsite conversions. The two concepts are inseparable, because if a person can't use your website, you have no chance to connect with them or to make a sale. You don't have the luxury of personally guiding them through your website -- they are completely on their own.
This is another element of website usability, but it deserves special focus. On a real estate agent website, the goal is usually to lead visitors down a certain path. You can't control where people will go or what they will click on, but you can at least offer your preferred path and make it easy to follow.
But when you overload your web pages with too many items, you end up dividing the reader's attention, creating unneeded distraction, and increasing the likelihood visitors will leave your website altogether.
Visit your home page and ask yourself, what is the most desirable action you want people to take? What is the second most desirable action? From a visual standpoint, does the placement and prominence of these two paths support their importance? Or do they battle for attention with a dozen other distractions?
In real estate web marketing, there is a direct correlation between value and response. If you want people to take a certain action on your website, you have to convey the value of that action. In other words, tell people what they get out of it. It's a simple rule to remember. If you want action, you have to explain the reason and value behind the action.
Instead of saying, "Click here to join our newsletter," say something like this:
"Join our newsletter for access to hard-to-find property listings, plus a wealth of money-saving tips and advice!"
Want the opportunity to convert more of your website visitors into clients? Then just increase the amount of website visitors you get. Once you have some lead generation and sales-generation techniques in place, you want to get as much qualified traffic to those conversion points as possible.
The first step is to increase your overall website traffic. The second step is to increase your traffic to specific pages of your website (your purchase page, your download page, your contact page ... in short, your conversion pages). You can do this by making your conversion points / pages more prominent and easy to find. See the following items for tips on doing this!
Once you've defined your conversion points (see item #1 above), you should try to make them visible from every page of your real estate website. Put them into the main menu, right up near the top. Create eye-catching graphics to showcase them. Put them "above the fold" across all of your web pages.
For example, let's say one of your conversion points is an email newsletter you want visitors to find and subscribe to. You could put a sign-up box in the upper-right corner of your website, a location that has been shown to increase sign-up rates. You could also create a newsletter link at the top of your main menu area, right under the links for "Home." You could put call-out boxes within articles on your site, right there in the middle of the page ("center mast").
By doing these things, you would increase the prominence of your newsletter sign-up forms (conversion points) and most likely increase subscription rates as a result.
Marketing attrition refers to the number of people who do not take the actions you want them to take along the path to conversion. At each step in the marketing process, you stand to lose some people. You could also refer to this as "drop-off." The higher the attrition rates, the less successful the marketing program.
The more ways people have to interact with your website, the better your chances of converting them into customers. You can increase interactivity in a number of ways. And these days, there are all kinds of software products to make it extremely easy for you!
Here are a few examples of interactivity you could build into your website:
We are all naturally skeptical online. The reasons for this are obvious. The Internet can be an anonymous and scary place, used for deceitful purposes by everyone from con artists to pedophiles. Yikes!
Of course, these shady characters represent the minority (or so I'd like to believe). But it still poses a challenge you must consider in your online marketing program.
I encounter a lot of "faceless" websites that use a lot of pronouns like "we" and "us" ... websites that make it nearly impossible to find a person's name. You've seen websites like this, yes? What's your first reaction when encountering a mystery website? Distrust? Uncertainty? Fear? Yeah ... me too.
Take a look at your own website right now. What have you done to make the visitor comfortable in who you are? How have you demonstrated integrity? How have you encouraged trust and confidence?
Tip 63 of 100 - Increase Your Onsite Conversions
A real estate website that doesn't make conversions is a real estate website that serves very little business function. So let's talk about (A) what a conversion is and (B) how you can increase conversions across your real estate website or blog.
By way of definition, an "onsite conversion" takes place when somebody goes from being a website visitor to something else as well.
For example, if a person visits your website and signs up for your email newsletter, an onsite conversion has taken place. The person has "converted" from a casual website visitor to a newsletter subscriber.
There are many kinds of conversions, and they differ from one website to another, and from one organization to the next:
- A non-profit website might seek donations or volunteer registrations. Those conversions are valuable to them.
- A service-related business like real estate might seek website conversions of a different nature. Maybe they want people to sign up for a newsletter list or call to learn more about a property listing. Those are valuable conversions for these business models.
- A product-based website like Amazon.com seeks one type of conversion above all else. They want people to purchase products, plain and simple. So that's the most important type of conversion for them.
Increasing Conversions Across Your Website
So we have talked about the importance of onsite conversions, and how they are the end-product of your online real estate marketing efforts. Now let's look at some of the ways you improve your onsite conversions to help grow your real estate business.
1. Define Your Conversions in Advance
This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised by how many deer-in-the-headlight expressions I get when I ask real estate agents, "What are your top three conversion goals on this website?"
Some will scratch their heads and say, "To get clients, I guess." That's not a specific goal for website conversion. It's the end-goal of all real estate marketing efforts, sure. But it's not a clearly defined conversion goal.
Other real estate business owners have it figured out better. For example, they might say something like, "I want my visitors to do one of three things ... download our featured report from the home page, click on the chat button to get in touch with a representative, or contact us by phone or email."
In the example above, the hypothetical real estate professional has clearly defined the conversion points on her website. And from the sound of it, other members of the company are knowledgeable about (and engaged in) those conversion points. Customer support, for example, is ready to connect with site visitors through the website's chat tool, anytime somebody clicks on the button. That's much more specific and achievable than the first conversion goal of "getting clients."
2. Be Visible Online
People cannot contact you (or purchase your products, etc.) if they don't know you exist. So you must strive to make your business visible, online and off. Internet visibility is a big part of this. After all, the more visible you are online, the more likely people will be to find you.
That's why I've written an entire book on the subject, to serve as your guide to online visibility.
But there are other ways to increase your visibility as well. You can publish articles in your local newspaper, syndicate articles and press releases online, be active in your community, conduct free seminars, and many other aspects of PR. Visibility and awareness are the first steps to generating real estate leads online.
3. Increase Usability Across Your Website
Picture this. You're on one side of your real estate website, and a potential client is on the other side of the website. This person is looking for an agent to represent them in buying a new home.
The problem is, you don't know the potential client is there. How could you? They haven't contacted you yet. So in order for a connection to take place, the person must first enter your real estate website, navigate their way through it, like what they find on the site, and then contact you in some fashion.
But what if they find the navigation menu confusing? Or maybe they can't find the property listings on your site? Or what if they have any number of problems related to a lack of usability? That's right ... they'll leave as quickly as they came. After all, there are plenty of other websites within your industry that they can visit.
Website usability is crucial to making onsite conversions. The two concepts are inseparable, because if a person can't use your website, you have no chance to connect with them or to make a sale. You don't have the luxury of personally guiding them through your website -- they are completely on their own.
4. Minimize Distractions Across Your Website
This is another element of website usability, but it deserves special focus. On a real estate agent website, the goal is usually to lead visitors down a certain path. You can't control where people will go or what they will click on, but you can at least offer your preferred path and make it easy to follow.
But when you overload your web pages with too many items, you end up dividing the reader's attention, creating unneeded distraction, and increasing the likelihood visitors will leave your website altogether.
Visit your home page and ask yourself, what is the most desirable action you want people to take? What is the second most desirable action? From a visual standpoint, does the placement and prominence of these two paths support their importance? Or do they battle for attention with a dozen other distractions?
5. State (and Restate) the Value of Each Conversion Point
In real estate web marketing, there is a direct correlation between value and response. If you want people to take a certain action on your website, you have to convey the value of that action. In other words, tell people what they get out of it. It's a simple rule to remember. If you want action, you have to explain the reason and value behind the action.
Instead of saying, "Click here to join our newsletter," say something like this:
"Join our newsletter for access to hard-to-find property listings, plus a wealth of money-saving tips and advice!"
6. Increase Traffic to Website Conversion Points
Want the opportunity to convert more of your website visitors into clients? Then just increase the amount of website visitors you get. Once you have some lead generation and sales-generation techniques in place, you want to get as much qualified traffic to those conversion points as possible.
The first step is to increase your overall website traffic. The second step is to increase your traffic to specific pages of your website (your purchase page, your download page, your contact page ... in short, your conversion pages). You can do this by making your conversion points / pages more prominent and easy to find. See the following items for tips on doing this!
7. Increase the Prominence of Conversion Points
Once you've defined your conversion points (see item #1 above), you should try to make them visible from every page of your real estate website. Put them into the main menu, right up near the top. Create eye-catching graphics to showcase them. Put them "above the fold" across all of your web pages.
For example, let's say one of your conversion points is an email newsletter you want visitors to find and subscribe to. You could put a sign-up box in the upper-right corner of your website, a location that has been shown to increase sign-up rates. You could also create a newsletter link at the top of your main menu area, right under the links for "Home." You could put call-out boxes within articles on your site, right there in the middle of the page ("center mast").
By doing these things, you would increase the prominence of your newsletter sign-up forms (conversion points) and most likely increase subscription rates as a result.
8. Minimize Website Attrition
Marketing attrition refers to the number of people who do not take the actions you want them to take along the path to conversion. At each step in the marketing process, you stand to lose some people. You could also refer to this as "drop-off." The higher the attrition rates, the less successful the marketing program.
9. Increase the Interactivity of Your Website
The more ways people have to interact with your website, the better your chances of converting them into customers. You can increase interactivity in a number of ways. And these days, there are all kinds of software products to make it extremely easy for you!
Here are a few examples of interactivity you could build into your website:
- Real estate blogs work great because readers can leave comments on the various blog posts. That's a form of interaction, and it's also the start of a dialogue that could lead to a sale.
- You could create some kind of Q&A forum on your website and grow your own Internet community. Forum software programs like VBulletin and phpBB make it achievable.
- You can also buy and install programs to help you create an interactive FAQ section of your website (also known as a "Knowledge Base"). Interspire's "Active KB" and Omnistar's "KBase" are two such programs.
- If you have customer support personnel, you could install a chat program on your website to encourage the all-important first contact from site visitors.
10. Overcome Skepticism / Encourage Trust
We are all naturally skeptical online. The reasons for this are obvious. The Internet can be an anonymous and scary place, used for deceitful purposes by everyone from con artists to pedophiles. Yikes!
Of course, these shady characters represent the minority (or so I'd like to believe). But it still poses a challenge you must consider in your online marketing program.
I encounter a lot of "faceless" websites that use a lot of pronouns like "we" and "us" ... websites that make it nearly impossible to find a person's name. You've seen websites like this, yes? What's your first reaction when encountering a mystery website? Distrust? Uncertainty? Fear? Yeah ... me too.
Take a look at your own website right now. What have you done to make the visitor comfortable in who you are? How have you demonstrated integrity? How have you encouraged trust and confidence?
Labels: Internet Marketing
posted by Brandon at
9:10 AM
