5 Ways to Boost your Website’s Conversion Rate in 2017

The basis of a successful online marketing plan is to drive high volumes of traffic to your website and convert those visitors into high quality leads. Your website’s conversion rate is the proportion (or percentage) of website visitors that take a desired action that can include anything from enquiring about a property listing; downloading a document; signing up for your email newsletter or property email alerts service or any other action that requires more than simple page browsing.

To increase the possibility of a visitor converting into a high quality lead, you first need to provide your website visitors with a superior website experience. To achieve this, your marketing efforts need to include a conversion rate optimisation plan which is a systematic and structured approach that implements analytics and end-user feedback to improve various aspects of your website to provide a better experience and ultimately generate more leads.

Therefore, before you launch your 2017 marketing campaign to drive more traffic to your website, we encourage you to first focus on the following 5 innovative ways to boost your website’s conversion rate:

1. Create a new website look and feel

Over time the design of real estate websites can age and your audience can get indifferent and bored of the same-old website look and feel. Therefore, it is essential to give your website a fresh new look and redesign the layout every 12 – 18 months to keep your website contemporary and relevant. This will help engage your website visitors and keep them coming back.

2. Publish more valuable website content

The content you publish on your property website is your real estate brand’s most valuable online asset. Therefore content marketing is an ideal tool to engage your website visitors and ultimately increase the possibility of a conversion. But not just any content will do, instead you need to engage your audience by creating and publishing content that is valuable, original and informative to your audience in order to position your real estate brand as a trusted online marketing resource.

Not only is the quality of your content important, but so is the quantity. The more valuable content you publish, the more pages website visitors will view, the longer they will stay on your website and the more likely they become to pick up the phone or make an electronic enquiry on your website. Your website content plan needs to include four main areas of interest: property news and advice articles; area profiles; a company profile and testimonials.

3. Better present your content

Since website content is integral in boosting conversion rates, that very same content needs to be designed and presented in a very structured way that is unique in look and feel, easy to read and understand, professionally laid-out and fully integrated with calls to action. Therefore, it is vital that all your website content pages are custom designed to ensure that it is effective and delivered to your audience in the best way possible.

4. List more properties, better

The majority of visitors to your website are buyers and tenants looking to search, assess and shortlist properties in the shortest possible time. To ensure the best possibility of a website conversion through your property listings, you need to uphold volume and quality. The higher the volume of listings, the wider the variety of choice you provide for the buyer or tenant, therefore, the more likely they are of finding a property that matches their requirements.

Likewise, the higher the quality of the listing and the more comprehensive the information you provide on a property, the better the chances of the buyer or tenant making an enquiry on a particular property. It is therefore essential that each and every property listing includes:

• High volume of high quality photos
• Multimedia components such as virtual tours, YouTube and Property Tube videos
• Floor Plans
• Well written property descriptions
• Supporting documents for download
• Google Mapping

5. Go Mobile

With over 16.1 million smartphone-users in South Africa and nearly 60 percent of website visits coming from mobile devices, mobi sites are fast becoming an essential tool in promoting your real estate business online, and ultimately generating high quality leads. It is essential to place mobile at the forefront by fully optimising your website for smartphones and other mobile devices. This means that real estate companies need to change the way they present their content and visuals to their visitors on small mobile devices. To succeed, real estate brands need to re-think how a visitor moves through a website and consumes information on their smartphone and then create a truly mobile property search experience.

So before you spend your 2017 marketing budget on driving more traffic to your website, rather start the New Year with a bold plan to first boost your website’s conversion rate and generate more leads through the redesign of your website’s homepage; publishing valuable website content in a well-structured, professional manner; improving the quality and quantity of your property listings and adopting a mobile-first approach to website design.