You should expect only one to contact you for every 100 visitors to your real estate website.
That's a reasonably low figure to work with, but the number of regular website visitors you accumulate can be increased with conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Learn more about the benefits of CRO and how and why you should care about this digital marketing for your real estate business.
What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?
The percentage of regular website visitors, who act according to your plan (e.g., provide contact info, reach out to you, click through listings on your site), make up a conversion rate. Visitors' actions are called conversions.
To calculate conversion rates, you divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors. Then, multiply by 100 for the percentage. In real estate, the rate is around 1%.
CRO exists to optimize your conversion rate. Conversion rate optimization offers several benefits for your website and, in turn, your real estate business.
How Do Realtor Websites Benefit from CRO?
The benefits of CRO impact both your website and your business. You're more likely to communicate with buyers if you have higher conversion rates.
A website optimized to convert traffic for real estate will have higher traffic. CRO is customer-focused, which is a central keystone for any successful realtor. With the future of real estate growing more and more virtual, prospective clients need to feel engaged.
In turn, more web traffic and better user experiences will turn a higher profit for you. The more clients you have, the better your chances to connect with prospects and generate leads.
The benefits of CRO for realtor websites like yours across four major areas.
Home Page
For realtors, especially, your website's home page needs to invite users to stay like homemade cookies at an in-person showing. This is your virtual first handshake, and it needs to be attractive, simple, and credible.
It would be best if you communicate with buyers in a way that invites action. Your home page could incorporate several elements to call users to action.
- Welcome and quick announcement bars
- Popups (for chatbots or email signup)
- Real-time purchases, visitors
Beyond these calls to action, your home page could offer testimonials or reviews about customers' experiences in shopping for their future homes. Your prospective clients will connect with you as a realtor if they hear good stories from people like themselves.
Last but not least: Keep it simple. It might seem like a good idea to bog down your home page with lots of information, and it's not a good idea.
Instead, you're likely to overwhelm prospects and tank your conversation rate optimization.
Landing Pages
When you want to provide additional information for prospects, use other landing pages on your website to drive natural traffic and increase your CRO. These other landing pages serve as further conversion opportunities when used correctly.
You could create landing pages for virtual tours to share free resources or compare the pricing of homes in your area.
Any time you provide pricing options, including a phone number or email address, customers can follow up with questions.
Blog
A blog is another cornerstone to building targeted website traffic. Not only are blog posts valuable content for a well-made website, but they're also essential calls to action and significant boosters of CRO.
You can provide tips or guides on house-hunting. To grow your conversion rates, you can also communicate real estate trends for renters and buyers.
Blog posts about these topics should be accompanied by relevant contact information to show your interest and ability to communicate with buyers.
How Does CRO Apply to the Real Estate Business?
Now that you understand the benefits of CRO for your website, you might be wondering how these apply to your business beyond increasing your conversion rate. These benefits can be answered by critical questions you should be asking yourself.
1. Do I Know My Audience?
Understanding your audience is critical to accurate targeting and retargeting strategies. If you are new to real estate, you must quickly learn about your key demographics.
Researching your competition is an excellent tactic to understand your target customer.
How are you different? Your competition determines what makes you stand out as a realtor. Your customers will compare your business to others when researching the best.
2. How Am I Keeping Track of My CRO?
If you've never heard of conversion rate optimization, likely, you don't have a solid record of your CRO. This is not a bad thing if you're already successful.
But, if you find your local business listing is not drawing in the desired number of regular website visitors, it's time to start keeping track.
3. What Is My Marketing Budget?
Your marketing budget will hit the mark if you have not kept good track of your web traffic. A low budget or misallocated spending can wreck your conversion rate. If you are new to the real estate market, this can cripple your ability to generate leads.
CRO Marketing Strategies for Realtors
When examining CRO marketing strategies as a realtor, you should consider the above questions. The answers to these questions will guide you in using the most successful strategy for conversion rate optimization.
Your primary response to any of these questions should be to eliminate roadblocks that result from them. Some of these obstacles relate to web design, weak CRO metrics, and content on your website.
The following strategies address these roadblocks in detail and provide solutions to boost your CRO.
Calls to Action
Calls to action are essential for any marketing strategy, especially conversion rate optimization. They can be included in several places on your website and direct many conversion types. These calls to action can contain:
- Contact information to communicate with buyers
- Testimonials or reviews for credibility
- Comparing housing options in the area
- Interactive tours or guides for higher engagement
- Live chat or chatbot support for availability
These are just a few calls to action you can include in blog posts, on side or header banners, or popups on various landing pages.
Landing Page Tests
If you are not tracking average time on landing pages or your CRO, you should consider running tests to help determine the most attractive website features for prospective buyers.
CRO relies on the best features possible, and A/B testing of landing pages is one such way to track changes such as:
- Different versions of web copy or blog posts
- Content offers or deals
- New images
- Form questions
- New web pages
A/B testing will help you determine which changes are most effective. This will also help resolve any uncertainty about your marketing budget.
Workflows
If you work on a team of realtors, enabling a seamless approach to CRO and business operations is vital. Healthy conversion optimization explores workflows that centralize project management.
If you are an independent realtor, your workflows need to be streamlined for a proper approach to CRO. With the many subtasks optimizing conversion rates requires, you must spend your time wisely.
Live Chat
Live chat features are essential to your regular web visitors. With the digitization of the real estate industry, it is critical to show your ability to adapt.
Messaging features like a live chat show prospective buyers how invested you are in supporting their homebuying journey.
Chatbots
A chatbot system is an excellent alternative if you do not have the staff, budget, or time for live chat support.
Chatbots can answer several basic queries, direct users with calls to action, and step in when you are away. They are an excellent tool for automating parts of your work while still optimizing your conversion rates.
Optimize Content
If you measure your conversion and clickthrough rates, you should know which content on your site is generating the most traffic. The most influential blog posts should be optimized to boost your CRO, and another form of optimizable content is lead flows from your blog posts.
Lead flows result in high conversion optimization rates. Specifically, these are popups designed to incentivize conversions through good deals. Drop-down banners, slide-in boxes, and popups are a few examples that result in higher clickthrough rates and conversions.
Retargeting
If you have a low conversion rate, you need to ensure your audience is fully engaged. You need metrics on your highest-performance landing pages to determine where to retarget prospective buyers. Tracking regular website visitors' behavior will give you the data you need.
Making a CRO Framework Work for You
You can capitalize on the benefits of CRO if you implement the proper framework for optimal performance. You can make the most of the various strategies described above with just a little organization.
A solid framework includes research, a hypothesis, prioritization, testing, and learning. There are a few models crafted that you can adapt for your real estate business.
The LIFT Model
The LIFT model uses customers' urgency as the basis for your conversion rate framework. The value proposition, or the properties your clients are interested in, offers you opportunities, and you can leverage these propositions to enhance relevance and clarity with your prospects.
The Data36 Model
This particular model uses quantitative data, such as the number of regular website visitors you might receive, and combines it with qualitative data. Your qualitative data might include important features clients desire in relevant properties.
You can then follow up this data by brainstorming more opportunities for quantitative tests with conversion rate-related factors. A/B testing can be one way to test the validity of qualitative and quantitative factors for your clients.
CRO Tools to Explore
When attempting to implement frameworks or strategies for your CRO campaign, there are a few tools you should consider, too. These tools are not necessarily brand specific but offer your real estate business benefits.
Google Marketing Tools
Google offers a wide variety of tools to help with conversion rate optimization. Your business can benefit from these tools as they will easily integrate with any frameworks you adopt.
Case Studies
Case studies can provide helpful information about how to communicate with buyers. You can acquire valuable quantitative or qualitative data if you have a sub-niche of particular clients.
CRO Blogs
Even with helpful consultation and support from professional marketing agencies, staying informed about changes that might impact your CRO strategy is still essential.
Conversion rate optimization is an ever-changing industry, and any agencies you work with should be able to provide you with reference materials for the latest updates. You have to follow blogs by no means, but if you are genuinely investing in optimizing your conversion rates, it helps to do your research.
Why You Need Marketing Professionals to Grow Your CRO
Now that you understand the basics of conversion rate optimization, you may be wondering just how to convert the traffic you need. You're a realtor, not a digital marketing expert, even with your newfound knowledge.
Whether you have the confidence to experiment with CRO for your business, you likely don't have the time it takes to guarantee the best results.
Instead of struggling through conversion rate calculations on your own, consider the Website Marketing Pro. We offer a wide variety of services that will benefit your real estate business. From converting traffic to SEO and more, we are here to help. Contact us today to get started with a free CRO audit of your site.
Need more local marketing tips? Check out our entire Guide to Local Marketing for Real Estate Professionals
