Unpacking your Prop Data Insights report

How can you boost your website’s performance? This is a common question the Prop Data team is often asked. After you launch your website, you may wonder what steps you can take to improve it. That’s where your Prop Data Insights report comes in. This simple record is filled with valuable data. By reading it every month, you can keep track of your website and make educated decisions that will optimise how it runs.

This Knowledge blog post covers:

• What is the Prop Data Insights report?

• Benefits of your Prop Data Insights report

• Breaking down your Prop Data Insights report

• Future updates to the Prop Data Insights report

• Taking action with your Prop Data Insights report

What is the Prop Data Insights report?

At the start of each month, Prop Data emails the Insights report to all Prop Data website clients. This personalised report makes a month-to-month comparison in traffic volumes and traffic trends. While not particularly in-depth, this report provides a quick summary of the past month's activity, highlighting points of interest or of concern.

The Insights report is compiled from your Google Analytics account as well as information stored in your website management system. It covers the following:

• Web traffic
• Visits by traffic source
• Property listings
• Mailing list subscribers
• Property email alerts subscribers
• Leads
• Conversion optimisation analysis
• Property listings (conversion optimisation analysis)
• Area profiles
• News articles

Benefits of your Prop Data Insights report

The Prop Data Insights report empowers you to quickly and accurately understand your website’s progress. The data it provides can be used to transform your real estate brand from ordinary to extraordinary.

The Insights report is provided for free to all Prop Data website clients each month. It’s an affordable way to make changes without having to sign up for an expensive tool. You can choose the team members that receive the report, making it easy to review and discuss.

The report, as its name suggests, provides key insights into the most important parts of your website from listings to news articles. This allows you to quickly identify the areas or gaps that need attention.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics can be intimidating to use for the less tech-savvy and take time to navigate. The Prop Data Insights report is simple to understand and comes in an email format that can be viewed on your desktop computer or mobile.

Finally, Prop Data is always looking at ways to update the Insights report for our clients. Our additions to the report provide new ways to fine-tune your strategy and achieve even better results for your business.

Breaking down your Prop Data Insights report

Below is a guide to the different sections along with a brief explanation of what each of the metrics actually measures and what they mean. You can also get tips and valuable resources to step up your efforts.

Website traffic:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report gives a breakdown of the volumes and quality of the traffic. This is a simple overview of your website's general performance.

Total visits: This is the total number of times that the website has been visited. This includes all unique visitors and any return visits by them.

Unique visitors: This is the total number of individuals that have visited the website. This would represent the size of your audience over the recorded period.

Avg. visit/visitor: This is how many times the average visitor has visited your website.

Pages viewed: This would be the total number of times that all pages have been viewed.

Avg. pages/visit: This is the number of pages that the average user will view in each visit. This is a good indication of interactivity or how "sticky" your website might be.

Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visitors that will view a single page and then leave. Generally, the lower this value, the better.

😎 Pro tips: There are several avenues you can explore to increase your website’s traffic. You can use content marketing through quality blog articles and area profiles. You can also send out emails and newsletters.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can help you maximise your presence in relevant search engine searches, driving traffic to your website. Organic social media posts can also bring in interested visitors. If you have a reasonable budget, you should consider paid advertising on search engines and social media.

To combat a high bounce rate, look at designing a better user experience for your website. You can update content on your website to better appeal to your visitors. Building landing pages to direct traffic will also help. Pop-ups can also work miracles if they provide enticing offers. Also, consider adding strong call-to-action buttons and refining your linking strategy to improve how visitors navigate your website.

📚 Resources:

How to improve your organic search engine rankings
Areas to improve your real estate SEO
Bounce rate

Visits by traffic source:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report gives a breakdown of where the traffic to your website is coming from. This is useful in identifying what is working or highlighting an area that could be better utilised. There is no perfect formula as to what percentage of traffic should come from any single source.

Organic: This is organic or unpaid search traffic. These are visitors that have performed a search on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing and found your website.

Paid: Paid traffic is traffic generated to the website from sponsored search results. These visitors are those that have clicked on an ad in the search results (primarily Google in the form of Google Ads) and have reached your website.

Direct: These are visitors that have entered the domain name directly into the address bar. They are already familiar with your website from a previous visit or an offline source such as a business card or print ad.

Referral: These are visitors that have been led to your website by clicking on a link on another website. These are often industry-related websites, portals, or other web services.

Email: These are visitors that have reached your website through a branded email, be it a newsletter, email alert, or email stationery. While these are all recorded singularly as “email”, Prop Data can easily identify the actual email that's been used to reach your website.

Other: “Other” traffic consists of all other marketing efforts that might be in place. These could be a series of guest blog posts, banner ads, or even internal ads that you'd like to measure. These could be any form of traffic that you'd like to track separately to better measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns.

😎 Pro tip: Need to learn more about your traffic sources? Simply log onto Google Analytics to dive in deeper. From your account, navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. Clicking on each source will give you more detailed insight.

📚 Resources:

Traffic sources
Increase organic traffic on Google

Property listings:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report keeps track of the property listings you’ve added to your website through the Prop Data Management System (PDMS). A green-dotted figure and a red-dotted figure indicate a positive/neutral or negative change respectively from month to month.

Active listings: These are the property listings that are live on your website and can be viewed by visitors.

New listings: These are listings that have been added by your team during the course of the recorded period.

😎 Pro tip: Google Search Console helps you improve your website’s search appearance. You can use this tool to see which listing pages are getting click-throughs and impressions in search results. This will help you assess whether your listings need their copy refreshed to better appeal to potential clients. As Google Search Console tells you which listing pages are popular, you can also use the tool to figure out which of your areas are attracting sales interest.

📚 Resources:

Quality listings
Improve the quality of your property listings

Mailing List Subscribers:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report keeps track of the sign-ups to your email newsletter. A green-dotted figure and a red-dotted figure indicate a positive/neutral or negative change respectively from month to month.

Active members: These are your current newsletter subscribers receiving your newsletter on a monthly basis. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), they have provided consent to receive your newsletter communications.

New members: These are new subscribers to your newsletter during the course of the recorded period.

No marketing consent members: These are clients who have given consent for their data to be held and processed within your management system database. However, they have opted out of receiving newsletter communications.

POPIA non-compliant members: These are clients who haven’t opted into your newsletter subscription and/or have updated their preferences on your website to remove their subscription. If you add a mailing list to PDMS or manually add a client, they will reflect as non-compliant on our system.

😎 Pro tips: POPIA has made newsletter sign-ups tricky if you’ve already given clients the option to subscribe. There’s still a lot you can do to win them over.

• You can update the copy on your newsletter subscription page to highlight the value your newsletter offers.
• You can call or send one email to your contact with the request information link. Be sure to remind them to expect a subscription mailer.
• You can also run campaigns on social media platforms directing users to your newsletter sign-up page.

📚 Resources:

Newsletters
How to get your newsletter sign-ups soaring
Stuck for newsletter ideas?

Property email alerts subscribers:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report keeps track of the sign-ups to your property email alerts. A green-dotted figure and a red-dotted figure indicate a positive/neutral or negative change respectively from month to month.

Active subscriptions: These are your current property email alerts subscribers receiving your newsletter on a monthly basis. Under POPIA, they have provided consent to receive your newsletter communications.

New subscriptions: These are new subscribers to your property email alerts during the course of the recorded period.

No marketing consent subscriptions: These are clients who have given consent for their data to be held and processed within your management system database. However, they have opted out of receiving property email alerts.

POPIA non-compliant subscriptions: These are clients who haven’t opted into your email alerts and/or have updated their preferences on your website to remove their subscriptions. If you add a list of potential email alerts subscribers to PDMS or manually add a client, they will reflect as non-compliant on our system.

😎 Pro tip: Just like your mailing list, POPIA also impacts your email alert sign-ups. You can apply the same steps: update your email alerts subscription page copy, call or send one email to re-engage clients, or run a campaign on social media platforms to drive sign-ups.

📚 Resources:

Property email alerts
Lead nurturing through automated email marketing

Leads:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report keeps track of leads for your listings and services. A green-dotted figure and a red-dotted figure indicate a positive/neutral or negative change respectively from month to month.

Active leads: These are your current leads within your database on PDMS. Under POPIA, they have provided consent to have their data held and processed.

New leads: These are new leads added to your database on PDMS during the course of the recorded period.

No marketing consent leads: These are clients who have given consent for their data to be held and processed within your database on PDMS. However, they have opted out of receiving marketing communications.

POPIA non-compliant leads: These are clients who haven’t consented to have their data held and processed by your agency or brokerage. They might have also updated their preferences on your website to remove themselves as a lead on your database. If you add a list of potential leads to PDMS or manually add a lead, they will reflect as non-compliant on our system.

😎 Pro tip: You’ve used or considered social media and Google Ads. Take it to the next level with Flow. This platform automatically creates Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google adverts out of your listings, targeted to people who are likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Flow is cost effective, automated, and POPIA compliant.

📚 Resources:

Killer campaigns
Converting visitors into active leads
Why every real estate business should go with the Flow

Conversion Optimisation Analysis:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report helps you convert website visitors into active leads. Here you’ll see a "green thumbs up" or a "red flag" next to each point. The green thumbs up indicates that this particular point is taken care of while the red flags suggest that a point should be acted upon.

Property listings:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report provides insight into the quality of your property listings. A good listing will attract and convert potential buyers and renters. Putting in the effort ensures your properties are quickly snapped from the market.

Photographs: Listings with images are more likely to generate interest; the more eye-catching the image, the better overall impression a listing can make. Generally the more images the better. There should be a minimum of eight photographs on each listing to give potential buyers or renters a good idea of what the property has to offer.

Description: Clear, in-depth, and well-written descriptions will go a long way in separating one listing from another. Using the right keywords can also ensure your listings gain traction in searches.

Mapped: By mapping properties, those viewing the listing can get a better idea of the neighbourhood and surrounding infrastructure.

Virtual tours and YouTube videos: By employing interactive mediums such as videos or virtual tours, you will better engage your website visitors. You will also increase the speed at which a property can be viewed, assessed, and shortlisted by providing your buyers and tenants with the tools they need to view a property as if they were actually there.

Agent Photos: Agent photos are encouraged as visitors can immediately put a face and a real person to a listing and company. This ensures a more personal interaction that goes beyond just your website.

Captcha verification is set to on/off: While useful in preventing unwanted spam, the use of a CAPTCHA can reduce your conversion rate with forms requiring additional information on submission.

😎 Pro tips: Your listings and agents profiles are competing against the listings and agents profiles of other agencies and brokerages. It really does pay to take the time to write down a captivating description of the properties you’re selling. In the case of agent profiles, consider having it professionally done by an experienced copywriter. They have the wordsmith skills you may not have to truly share your experience, passion, and competency as a property professional.

📚 Resources:

The magic of video in multimedia
Become the local area expert your clients need
A better way to introduce yourself as an agent

Area profiles:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report provides a snapshot of the quality and coverage of your area profiles. Area profiles provide vital information about the area in which you sell or rent out properties. The enticing picture they paint doesn’t just appeal to your listing visitors. They’re also Google friendly, attracting significant traffic to your website.

X area profiles out of x active areas: Learn how many areas you’ve spotlighted with area profiles.

Photographs: Adding at least eight photographs to your area profiles helps your website visitors get a feel for the neighbourhood. This field shows how many area profiles are meeting this requirement.

Mapped: By mapping your area profile, those viewing it can get a better idea of the neighbourhood and surrounding infrastructure.

Description: Take your area profile readers on a journey, showcasing all the highlights of buying, investing, or renting a property in the area. This field shows how many of your area profiles fit the minimum 500+ word count to ideally market the neighbourhood.

😎 Pro tips: Remember, people don’t just buy a property — they invest in the area as well. Make sure your area profiles truly shine. Get your photographs done professionally as they are the first things clients see when they view your area profiles. You should also use a content structure that helps you sell every aspect of the area. Potential buyers and renters are hungry for details so don’t be afraid to show what the area has to offer.

📚 Resources:

Area profiles
Compiling an informative area profile
Structuring your area profiles — made easy

News articles:

This section of the Prop Data Insights report covers your news article progress. Engaging content can attract, inform, and convert your website visitors. Great websites rely on fresh content posted regularly to boost your online presence.

Minimum of two news articles added: Your home page and newsletter displays the snippets of the last two news articles written. This field checks if you’ve met this minimum requirement to keep your audience engaged.

😎 Pro tip: It can be tempting to simply republish an article from a property portal or related real estate website. Avoid this! These articles can reference competing agencies and give them exposure on your own website. Google can potentially view your blog links as duplicated content and remove them from search results. Copying does little for your brand, giving the impression you have nothing original to say. Unless given permission, it’s also a form of plagiarism. Rather get one of your team to write content or get it done by a professional.

📚 Resources:

News
Why content isn’t king if it has been copied
Making your news useful

Future updates to the Prop Data Insights report

Prop Data is always looking at ways to enhance your experience. In the works are updates to the Prop Data Insights report to cater for branch-specific metrics. This will also include listing quality scores at both a branch and individual level.

Take action with your Prop Data Insights report

Your website plays an important role in helping you attract and convert leads. With Prop Data’s Insights report, you can keep an eye on its performance. Need help understanding your Insights report? Or looking to put a strategy in place to achieve better results next month? Prop Data’s team is here to help. Get in touch with your Account Manager to get started.

*Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been completely revamped and updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.