When you've got an awesome website, or an Active Rain blog that you've put your heart and soul into, but you find that your percentage of visitors that turn into actual inquiries is extremely low, you have to ask yourself -- "Do I own a website, or is it a billboard?" If less than 1% of your unique website visitors are turning into actual leads (either from a phone call, email, or filling out a form), the answer is probably the latter.

To turn your "billboard" into a website that turns visitors into leads - which in turn, turns leads into closings, the most important thing is that you have a lead capture mechanism.

Types of lead capture mechanisms:  Depending on what sort of lead capture mechanisms you have on your site, your mileage will vary, whether you've got a blog, or a website -- having one of the following conversion tools will drastically increase your conversion rates.

1. IDX search tools:
   1. Depending on your source of traffic, and your marketing message, forced registration IDX search tools tend to convert between 4% & 10% of website visitors into leads. (Forced registration means that visitors must sign in and give a name, email address, and maybe some other contact info before being able to search listings.)
      
   2. Open search (buyers are allowed to browse and look through as many listings as they like. Typically, this option converts far lower percentages than forced registration, but the argument is that the leads are much higher quality when they do contact you. (I prefer forced reg.)
2. Free reports: Free reports are a great way to generate interest, and usually involve an auto-responder that sends the reports, and follows up with a drip-email campaign of some sort. Depending on how they are set up, these sorts of capture mechanisms can average anywhere between 5% and 40% opt-in rates.
   
3. "What's my home worth" form submissions. These are a great lead-capture mechanism for home sellers, and also usually involve some sort of follow up. Typically, you'll see between 1% and 30% of your visitors request a home evaluation depending largely on how compelling your offer is, as well as how targeted the keywords you rank for. (ie: "NEIGHBORHOOD CITY home values" will convert much better than "CITY real estate")
4. Subscribe to your blog. If you own a blog, you could count a new subscriber as a "conversion". The key is to continue to write engaging content to entice your visitors to subscribe to your blog (that - and making your subscription links as visible and convenient as possible.

PS - If your webiste is converting more than 1% of your visitors into leads, you're sitting on a potential goldmine... There is no reason you shouldn't be experimenting with driving as much traffic as possible to your website. In that case, you might be interested in this video.