Your website is the critical, central hub of all your marketing efforts, which is to say that all the people who view your ads, social media, SEO, personal networking, and referrals, are being funneled to your website with the goal that they will take action (e.g. contact you). You spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy to promote your brand, capture prospects, and cultivate leads. After all that effort, you can't afford to have 99% of visitors arrive at your website and then immediately bounce without taking action. It's a terrible waste of money! 

In the following case study we will refer to a Luxury Realtor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Research shows that in the Real Estate industry an astonishing 67% of buyers and 82% of sellers choose to work with the first agent they contact (clients don't waste time interviewing other agents). For the sake of this case study, let's take a conservative view and assume that 50% of contacts will convert into a sale. 

You win or lose a visitor's trust in the first 30-120 seconds, so that first impression is critical for capturing that first contact! Your website needs to be stunning and obviously better than your competitors, it must engage attention long enough to build trust, and then provide extremely clear calls to action that motivate that first contact.

Website Conversion Rates

According to research, a "good" website will convert between 1-5% of random visitors, so for every 100 website visitors there are 1-5 people who fill out a contact form, make a phone call, or buy a product. However, most small business websites are not reaching this level of conversions because they have not invested in a strategic communication strategy, they don't have engaging design, and their website is not human optimized for conversions. 

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) estimates that the average conversion rate for online Real Estate leads is 0.4%-1.2%. So a typical Realtor in the San Francisco Bay Area who already has an older website might be getting a "good" conversion rate of 1% (1 person out of every 100 visitors calls or fills out a contact form).  

How to Determine Actual Conversion Rates

You should immediately setup Google Analytics to know the exact number of visitors per month. Then you can count the number of contacts you received from your contact form, service signup form, and phone number to get an estimate on your website conversion rate. You can also get more fancy and have Google Analytics track actual clicks on buttons in order to automate this (although someone might call or email directly without a click so it won't be fully accurate).

Cost of Client Acquisition

So if a Realtor has a 50% conversion rate on leads that make first contact, and they want one new client per month, they need two qualified website contacts. If the website has a 1% conversion rate of visitors who take action to make the first contact, that means the website needs to get 200 new website visitors per month.

Obviously the total number of leads coming in through the website are mixed (personal contacts, referrals or cold leads from SEO or ads) and conversion rates will differ. So for the sake of this case study, we will focus only on cold leads intentionally sourced from from organic search (SEO), paid Ads, and Social Media.

If you relied only on online ads (Google, Facebook, Instagram) to drive traffic to your site, you might be pay between $2-20 per click/visit. (depending on your keywords and competition). And note that these cold leads from ads usually have a much worse conversion rate on the site (harder to build trust and encourage action to contact you). So if you average a cost of $10 per website visitor, and have a goal of 200 visitors to get one new client, the cost of the final Client acquisition that comes out of the end of the pipeline $2,000. 

This is coherent with the market value of paying a lead generation service like realtor.com which offers exclusive direct lead for $1,000 (these leads will still want to visit your website to do their research on you in their evaluation phase). Optimistically if 50% of these leads also convert into customers the cost is still the same $2,000 (although since they were referred from a generic service they are likely less qualified and the conversion rates are likely lower).

If the sale for one home in the San Francisco bay area will net a Realtor $30,000+ in commissions, and it cost $2000 to get one client, that's $28,000 in gross profit (15x ROI) before other business costs, broker split, etc. 

Optimizing Your Conversion Rates

Your numbers will most certainly differ, but whatever your actual results, you will benefit from optimize your conversion rates at every stage of your pipeline:

1. find an ad platform, or clever keywords, or other strategies to drive traffic where you pay less per visit

2. find higher quality "qualified" visitors 

3. improve your website to reduce bounce and increase contacts

4. improve your face to face sales pitch

Since every leads funnels through your website, and a "good" performing website is maybe only getting 1% of visitors turning into leads, an engaging website is the most obvious low hanging fruit with which you can really improve your results.

ROI of a Human Optimized Website

Based on the numbers above with a gross profit of $28,000 and broker split of 50%, a Realtor may profit $14,000. If it takes 200 visitors to achieve this, that means every visitor to your website is worth $70 (whether they bounce or turn into leads), and every person that fills out a contact form is worth $7,000. At that point, you can begin to properly value the cost of lost opportunities and justify the investment of optimizing your website to capture more leads!

With investment in careful strategy and design, you should try to capture the contact info of just one extra person for every 100 visitors. If you do that, you could go from a 1% conversion rate to 2%. That doubles your conversion rate! In the scenario described above, that means instead of paying $2,000 for one customer/sale, the cost is now only $1,000.

If the following changes can double your profit and cut your marketing budget in half, you can easily see why investing in a highly performant website will more than pay for itself in the course of just one month, and certainly over a year. If you gain just one customer/sale, who would have otherwise bounced without contacting you, you can justify the costs of even the most engaging website you can imagine. In fact, every day you don't take action and visitors are bouncing, you are losing money.

How to Optimize Your Website

See our video which briefly discusses these concepts. Essentially this is done in 4 ways:

1. Strategy: Determine who your competitors are and what is the minimum work required to stand out as a leader so clients choose you. Consider the ROI of the investment to understand the ideal budget and how to use it. Understand how to communicate to each audience with clear value propositions that earn trust and overcome doubts, and create convincing calls to action. Create a content strategy where every piece of content exists to funnel visitors to take action.

2. Design: People absolutely do judge a book by its cover, making a many subtle and subconscious judgements. Great design engages attention so that visitors don't immediately bounce. It demonstrates your commitment to quality in everything you do, which builds trust and shows you are a leader in the market. It sets you apart from your competitors in an immediately visually recognizable way. It organizes your value propositions in a way that focuses visitor's attention and optimizes their time.

3. Writing: Great writing should be short, engaging and delightful. It should say just enough to build trust and create curiosity, so that they contact you for a real conversation.

4. Call to Action: Every piece of content needs to strategically lead to a call to action that gives visitors a reason to contact you. 

With careful attention to each of these elements, your website can undoubtedly begin capturing leads from visitors that are currently bouncing. Anyone in the market for your services, doesn't want to waste time, they want to believe they have found the best, trustworthy solution. They are just waiting for you to convince them, and a great website will do just that.

To learn more, let's schedule a call to discuss your particular situation and needs. We do work for clients at every budget level, you can start simple and then make improvements over time. But even the simplest options are better than what most clients currently have (nothing or a very old website). Let's get started!