Estate agents’ websites can be an effective tool for generating valuation leads, provided they are designed in the right way. This is according to Mike Smithson, Founder and Managing Director of The Property Jungle, part of nurtur.group and one of most experienced property website developers in the UK.
Smithson adds that he recently took a sample of 14 websites that the business had built for returning customers to compare the before and after performance of their sites. “By choosing these clients we were able to see how the evolution of our site designs, call to action triggers and conversion protocols have improved. The one thing that all agents want is to get valuation leads off their websites and so that is what the analysis focussed on.”
He continues, “it is also important to understand that the metric we use to measure efficiency of the site is the number of visitors that are needed to generate a valuation request. It is a ratio because that is a better way to measure efficiency than just total numbers. We looked backwards for six months on all the original sites to see how many visitors it took to get a valuation until the site was replaced. We then looked forward six months from the launch of the new site to compare. By looking at the data from a ratio perspective we eliminated any market dynamic bias, but also by looking across so many sites of varying sizes and traffic we got a good statistical average as we were analysing the behaviour of more than 1.8million visitors.”
Smithson adds that even though these clients were replacing good, business generating sites that they had had from The Property Jungle for several years, they were still able to reduce the number of visitors needed to get a valuation request by an amazing 30%. “This research shows that the number of visitors the new website requires to generate a valuation request dropped substantially and if the traffic remained constant the number of valuations that the site generates increases by 43%. It shows that even if you have what you think is an up-to-date and relatively modern website, it is always possible to make an improvement. And a significant one at that,” he comments.
Smithson says that by working with so many estate agent sites (over 700 live at the moment) and having built nearly 3,000 over 19 years, The Property Jungle understand the impact of well-designed Calls to Action, how visitors use the sites, and above all how to maximise conversions. “We use this experience and skill in the design of every site we produce, even in our lowest cost templates to make sure that our clients are given the greatest number of opportunities. And don’t be fooled into thinking that just because a site is only two or three years old, it can’t be improved. It can, and we champion the cause of continuous improvement. A new site will cost considerably less than just one fee. So, the cost-to-benefit argument for replacing a site with new designs and processes every two to three years is substantially in favour of making the change,” Smithson concludes.
For more information about website improvements contact The Property Jungle via info@thepropertyjungle.com or 0208 050 8822
