What’s Your Lead Conversion Rate – 3 or 15 Percent?

Posted by Matt Malmgren on Dec 19, 2007

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No matter what industry you’re in, success in the online marketplace is determined by conversion.

Sites like Amazon and Wal-Mart measure not only how many visitors view an item, but how many place the item in their shopping carts and then actually purchase it.

Even though you aren’t selling goods on your real estate site, you should always be concerned with how well your site is converting visitors into leads.

Many of the real estate sites that we see convert visitors somewhere in the range of 3%-5%.

That’s really low.

(We regularly take an interest in our customers’ lead capture web page because if they don’t do well, they certainly won’t continue as a HomeGain subscriber.)

Some of the other real estate agents’ sites convert higher, but most fail to convince its visitors that it is worth their time to leave their contact information in exchange for a glimpse at local listings, and, therefore, fail to produce a good ROI.

You really only have a few seconds before a reader moves on!

Due to the low conversion we know some real estate agents are experiencing, we always keep our eyes open for websites that convert at much higher rates to provide as examples to agents wanting to know how they can get better their ROI.

Guess what? We just figured out how to increase the conversion rate to an amazing 15%!

Interested? Read on.

Just a few weeks ago, HomeGain partnered with a small marketing company, Integral Impressions, who specializes in creating individual landing pages for marketing purposes.

These landing page live on a 3rd party server and have one goal only: to convert visitors to leads.

(Click here to see a demo landing page)

Instead of having a visitor land on an agent’s actual website or home page (from marketing efforts), the visitor would land here and fill out the contact information fields before seeing any information related to purchasing a home.

Once the home buyers or sellers complete the online form, they are instantly forwarded to the Realtor’s web page to start their search (for information, for listings, etc.). The pages are highly customizable, yet simple, and have showed early promise with an average conversion rate of an amazing 15%.

In an industry that has averaged 3-5% conversion over the past few years, the prospect of 15% is extremely exciting!

Even better is that these pages are being offered FREE to new and existing BuyerLink subscribing agents who wish to see a better conversion rate and return on their investment in buyerlink.

Questions? Advice about what’s working for you? Let me know by sharing a comment below!

Comments

Great information. Do the same techniques apply for lenders? I would love more information.

Posted on Dec 21, 2007 by Brian LeBars

Good question…I’ve never really looked at studies related to the lender side of the house so it’s hard to tell. With consumers looking to buy homes, the proposition of “view homes 4 sale” universally attractive. Depending on what your proposition is, “view lowest rates in your area” or something to that effect, you could have comparable results. I do know that these pages have been used for marketing in other industries and verticals with similar conversion statistics.
Hopefully this helps and gets you some results!

Posted on Dec 21, 2007 by Matt Malmgren

When you mention conversion rate, what rate are you discussing – the conversion from a visitor to a lead, or a conversion from a visitor to a sale? I’d be curious to see the statistics on the latter conversion rate.

Posted on Feb 26, 2008 by Unknown

The statistics are for visitor to lead conversion which is a bit easier to track. When looking at closes, it’s a real crapshoot since no two agents are the same. If an agent aggressively works a lead over the entire lifecycle (more than 1 call!); then they are going to convert at a much higher rate than their competition. Unfortunately, this industry has taught agents to ignore the basic sales principle of pipelines and to only pursue immediate business; an unfortunate course of action.
We tell agents that if they work their leads, they should be looking at a minimum of 1-2 closed transactions per 1000 visitors. Doesn’t sound too good right? But, when you run the numbers it makes sense.
Say you buy 1000 visitors at $2 per visit for a cost of 2k. You close 1 of these buyers on a beautiful $250k house at 3% for a commission of $7500. After all the splits, bills and Uncle Sam’s share, you’re still in the black and that’s if you only close 1.

Posted on Feb 26, 2008 by Matt Malmgren

I would definately like more information about these new landing pages. Please have my account rep contact me.

Thanks

Posted on Feb 27, 2008 by Chris Tesch

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