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Tips to increase your website's conversion rate - increase sales and ROI

By Michael Thomas

Services for Real Estate Pros with First SEO Consultants

May 23, 2007 07:27 AM

Conversion rate is defined as when a new visitor comes to your site, it is known that within 3 to 5 seconds they will leave if they do not have a compelling reason to stay and take a specific action. BY the specific actions (conversions) in real estate we usually mean contact you by phone or email and/or register in your web-based MLS virtual office (VOW) to access your MLS internet data exchange (IDX) and view listings - either way you capture the lead and then can implement other techniques to convert the lead into an actual sale.

1) Make sure your site is not too busy - make it easy for the new visitor to easily find what they came looking for - generally that is access to real estate listings with photos

2) Use aesthetically pleasing layouts and colors - blue is known to be the best

3) stay away from Flash and loud music

Drive more traffic to your website - after all, it is somewhat of a numbers game...

1) Implement a search engine marketing (SEM) strategy that will increase your immediate web-presence through pay-per-click - it is important to either really know what you are doing or work with someone that is a Google Certified Pro, or member of the Yahoo Ambassador program so you do not build campaigns that are not effective and max your ROI. --> this will yield some immediate results

2) Implement a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that will cause your site to climb the organic or natural search results over time.

3) Identify good sites where you can exchange links to increase your web-presence and the number of inbound links for free

5) Identify good sites where you can place inbound links to your site and ads spots that you can purchase to be featured more prominently

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Bettina Clairmont

Bettina Clairmont - San Francisco, CA

CPA

I virtually always leave a site if it take too long to load. I also can't stand these flash intros and music on a website. All big turn offs.

Great points.

May 23, 2007 07:41 AM

XXXXXXXXXX XCXCX

KJHGF - Arviat, YN

Music is a big turn off for me. There is one local site that scares me to death when it loads. The volume is way too high. You can turn it off but wow it gets your attention. I also agree with the flash intros again most give the option to skip but I don't want flash I want the information I've come for not the fluff. From the info I've seen the best sites are very simple and to the point. More of the country is getting broadband but fast loading is a plus. I've strayed away from recip links and ads. I've seen pages with links from all over the country and I know the reason for it but it has nothing to do with me or my local area and I feel my clients may be put off with this on a page. I feel a link page should be useful links from the local area.

May 23, 2007 12:36 PM

Michael Thomas

First SEO Consultants - Scottsdale, AZ

Real Estate Website Optimization

I completely agr3ee with both of you, and thanks for posting a response - I always have the image of going in late at night while everyone else in the house is asleep - forgetting to turn off the speakers and arriving at a site that starts blaring some sort of music, that eventually might get me in trouble for waking others up :o)

May 23, 2007 01:29 PM

Pat McCray, ABR

CENTURY 21 AAA North (Capac Office) - Berlin Township, MI

Thank you for the ideas. How long on the average, does it take for communication to start from the public? Fairly new to blogging and I can't wait for some feedback or involvement from the public.

May 23, 2007 02:54 PM

Pat - this was really meant more for your actual website, not blogs - so I will try to answer both. Blogs really depend a lot on the subject, title, how they are written and how they appear. If you look at some of the top blogs within this site you will get some good ideas on how to write successful blog posts.

Regarding your website - to start getting any contact from the public takes time (about 6 months to a year for a new site). Also it depends if your website is search engine friendly and appeals to the areas that are considered to be valuable when the search engines assign page rank - these are all search engine optimization techniques (SEO).

On the other side, if you want to drive immediate traffic to your site yo can do pay-per-click by bidding on key words in Google (Adwords program - Google Adwords covers Google, AOL, ASK.com among other sites in their content network), Yahoo (Yahoo search marketing), or MSN. Also you can place ads on prominent website to drive traffic to your site - and begin creating link partnerships (free or paid) on real estate directories (like: http://www.amer-relo.net/). These are all search engine marketing (SEM) techniques.

When I compare the two it is like comparing day trading (SEM) to long term investing (SEO).

I hope this helps - and if you need someone to help you with this process I would be happy to discuss it.

May 23, 2007 03:12 PM

Michael Lyons

COMPASS Lyons Group - Boston, MA

Luxury Specialist

Michael, once again you hit the nail on the head - bottom line is how you convert these leads into sales once captured in your lead management system or VOW.

May 24, 2007 03:11 PM

Chuck Tuttle

Residential Realty Advisors, Tuttle Team - Centerville, MA

What an excellent postintg - I would love to see more about these topics

May 27, 2007 09:48 AM

Tips to increase your website's conversion rate - increase sales and ROI

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