IDX Website force sign ups or open?
I run a local real estate website that allows customers to search homes for sale in the area. I have it set up to force people to make an account if they want to view properties. I have it configured this way because statistically speaking, according to past industry "market testing" you get more conversions when you force signups. At the moment my website provides the user with 95% of the information for free, there are benefits of signing up, like receiving email notifications when properties that meet their criteria come on the market and bookmarking favorite properties.
My friends who are not in the real estate business but are business savvy told me they think I should keep it open and not require sign ups. This strategy would be completely against the industry grain. I assume that no one would sign up if I kept it open and I would be throwing money out the window. The other side of the coin is, the sign ups I do get most likely would convert, and I would end up wasting less time trying to convert leads that don't want to be converted. thoughts?
thank you!
We have a local RE Agency here that does that & I do not use them for that very reason as so many others allow full access. Then again the agency I use recently redesigned their website & although it allows full access it's now cumbersome so I went to yet another. I have recently noticed when fellow investors or potential buyers send me properties lately they are usually off Zillow.
Given what I see friends wives signing up for in the way of 'coupons', I would throw in an incentive (like a few $ towards a home inspection) if they sign up & then buy through you.
Depends on your business model and what a "conversion" is. If you are trying to get people to use you as a buyers agent, then I would say probably keep it open to maximize traffic. Are you making money on the listings shown? Do you make money displaying ads? Sounds like there is a freemium component to your model where they get something for free, but can signup and get more.
I guess we'd need more info on your biz model and goals to give you much of an answer.
This website is going to compliment my real estate sales business. I am marketing the website differently from my personal marketing. I am on the website but I am there as a "professional" not a owner. I am more interested in selling the brand of the website as the best local search site in my city. I don't want to be the main face of the website because I eventually want to take myself out of the equation and put other real estate agents on the site that would work the traffic that flows through and pay me referral fees on the leads. My goal starting off is to get two good clients a month from the site and move up from there. The only time I make money off the website is if I sell a house.
If the goal is to get clients, then I would leave it open so you maximize traffic. Keep the top of the funnel as big as possible. You could provide some added benefit to signing up like a newsletter or downloading a free ebook or report. Maybe you could produce a quarterly "State of the Market" report that is only provided to people that have signed up.
Just some thoughts. Good luck.
I have 2 websites. One with forced registration and one without. My site with forced registration is not as SEO friendly. I get many more page views with registrations left off. I get more people signed up with forced registrations, but they are weak leads that I have to follow up on. I am much more drawn to work with my non-forced registration site now.
Let me know if you have any specific data questions. I closely watch my website stats and analytics.
I've played around with both open and forced registration. Looking at the long term numbers the results ended up being about the same for us. Forced registration resulted in more "leads" however required more effort on our part to sift through them and find the motivated buyers. Leaving the IDX open resulted in only motivated buyers registering and/or contacting us in some way. At the end of the day the # of closings were about the same.
I've played with forced and non-forced and what I found was that allowing 3 or 5 searches before prompting the registration got me more leads. It's just a setting in IDX. From there following up with phone, email, good content and good sales practices etc. May get you the business.