Does increased web traffic result to increased sales?
January 15, 2010 by ebrown
Filed under ROI and Case Studies, Social Media Marketing
Our Guest Post today comes from Jennifer Kennedy, Technology and Operations Specialist at Property Counselors Management Group in Fort Myers, Fl. Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and getting the conversation going surrounding web traffic and apartment communities!
Here is Jennifer’s post;
Measuring Web Traffic
This topic came up on the January 5th blog talk radio Apartment Marketing Gone Digital. I was inspired by the comment made in relation to traditional property tours. As an industry we have a standard expectation that if a certain number of prospects walk through the door we expect our teams to close and lease a certain amount of apartments, thereby know how much traffic we need to generate to reach our occupancy goals. However, how do we measure our website traffic? How much traffic do I need to generate to my property website to secure a lease?
Apartment operators and owners need to answer these questions for their business, and the way to measure website leads will vary from company to company depending on the marketing of their websites and the way the sites themselves are organized. For PCMG the property websites are both for prospects and residents. Based on the dual roles for our sites, when it comes to generating leads we look solely to new visits to our site that resulted in an online guest card. We found that as a company 5% of new visitors completed a guest card. We had one site as low as 1% and one as high as 10%, but the majority hovered around 5%. Five percent sounds low until you put it in the perspective that our average number of new visitors to our website is 237.
This information generated a new set of questions. How can I make 10% the standard? What did my site that hit 10% do differently? Was the traffic generated from different sources than my other properties? Answer these questions and you now know what sources deserve the most resources allocated to them. There are so many mediums that can be utilized to push traffic to your site it is paramount to determine where your time and money should be spent.
I urge you to start measuring today! Complete an analysis that is appropriate for the purpose of your site. As an industry we have to start measuring the effectiveness of our sites in order to progress and continue to take online leasing to the next level. If we don’t have a measure for our online efforts, we will never know the extent of their success.
Great post Jennifer. You make a great point on the importance of comparing sites. Knowing you, until you get to the bottom of why one site produces more than another, you won't stop. I look at a site in a similar way the opening conversation with a leasing professional starts. The question is: What is keeping me on the site or on the phone? Paying attention to your site stats will bring the dividends you seek. Thanks for the post.
Hey Jennifer,
Thanks again for the Guest Post, and I hope you have evoked other property management folks to Start to Share their numbers. I think what we will find is that most don't really know them, and see this as an IT Issue, not a Marketing Issue.
Jonathan,
Thank you for your comment! I did some more research last night and found that my lowest performer didn't have any links back to their site from ILS and my top two performers were featured listing and the top of all of the ILS. We had some that performed very well with Organic search – I believe due to better title bars for SEO. We have only just started our journey in Social Media, and I was pleasantly suprised that those were also bringing traffic to our sites. As we continue, I hope to see those numbers grow!
Eric and Digital Sherpa,
I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to do my first online post!!
Great Post Jen, I'm going to have my staff include a section on the websites with their market surveys of our comps!!! Thinking outside the box again I see!
Great idea Jen, I'm going to have my office team include their comparisons with their
market surveys!!!! Always thinking outside the box I see,,,,,
That is awesome! I would love for comps to share this numbers on market surveys.
I like the comparison to the traffic coming into the leasing office, Jennifer — we can move the conversation forward easier if we keep it in terms our industry already understands. I would say that 5% is a great number, too … keep it up!
I can understand that the ILSs are good sources for you, because they typically come up extremely high in the organic results and they're also spending heavily on paid search ads. It's great to hear you're getting traffic to your site from social media channels, too. Do you have any idea whether visitors from social media sites are converting as well as visitors who find you through the ILSs?
Jonathan, I hope this is one of the next issues our industry faces in their efforts to improve their online marketing. Once we get a potential renter on the property's website, do they stay? Do they take the action we want them to take? How do they move through the site? Property managers should be looking at their stats and asking their website vendors for help in these areas to give themselves the best chance to delight the prospect and capture those leads.
Thanks for checking this out and commenting. You asked an important question regarding converting by source, which had me searching through my analytics some more. I found that we are not coverting on Social Media (FB and Twitter), but we are not currently using either of these mediums as sales tools only as a resident retention tool.
However, what a great time to look at these because if/when we do any campaigns to promote leads, we have a very clear starting point and now know how to measure our results.