I had the privilege recently of participating in a discussion lead by Dustin Luther at Inman Connect NYC that exceeded my expectations. The topic was Web analytics – which I thought would have a high propensity to be exceedingly boring to the brave few who might wander in, perhaps because they had nothing better to do at that time.
I won’t reiterate the whole discussion here other than the part which I found most promising: that the room was mostly full of agents, and that these agents were already well past the point of knowing what Web analytics are and why having a basic understanding of your traffic matters, and even how to assess it. Instead, we were able to move right to the practical application of “online intel” to the business goals of a producing and not necessarily very technology-savvy real estate agent.
Let’s start with a basic truism: most consumers online are not looking to buy or sell. Statistically speaking, they couldn’t possibly be. Look at this comparison of the number of sides nationwide each month in 2008 (in red) to the number of people cruising real estate information online during the same period (in blue):
Now think about your own business practice. Do you only deal with clients who are in the market now? This is not a trick question: one legitimate answer is, “Yes, I don’t want to waste my time with someone who’s not serious right now.” You still probably have visitors on your Web site who do not fall into this category. You may be buying ads on property aggregator sites (like Cyberhomes) which expose you even more to this segment of the audience. Why are you doing that to yourself?
