This opinion piece is written primarily to address a question that I seem to be hearing more and more from within the real estate industry.
It also has relevance to property owners looking to sell your property. That is because I believe many agents when presenting a marketing campaign will boast – “we will feature your property on 5 websites” – with the next agent boasting “well we will place it on 9 websites!”
The reality is the number of websites is completely irrelevant – you could be on a million websites and still be missing the most important website – that is the point – you have to be on the right site – not every site.
Additionally the idea that your house in particular or NZ property in general should be featured on a US or UK sites is a misnomer – people from overseas do not look for NZ property on a UK site or an American site – they are smarter than that and seek out a NZ site.
Lastly the notion of an “International Property” website is at best misleading, and at worst a waste of money – except if you consider Google to be “The International Property Website”.
Given this preamble here is my address to the real estate profession on this topic.
As a real estate professional you clearly have a responsibility to promote your client’s listings to the optimal extent you can. Clearly promotion these days involves the web as the key medium used by property buyers. However, a critical question should be asked as to how many websites you should feature those listing on?
One of the greatest benefits of the web is that it has almost limitless capacity – estimated these days in the region of over 1 trillion web pages! – but clearly within this number are a significant proportion that are never going to be viewed – with a classic 80:20 rule applying – potentially in the case of the web and any specific category on the web more like the 95:5 rule, or even the 99.99:0.01 rule!
It is for this reason that I believe that you should think before offering your listings to be presented on just any website that happens to come along. In my judgement there are a number of questions that you should ask yourself or the prospective website.
- A website is meaningless unless it has visitors – you should ask the owner of any website to provide statistics such as Nielsen or Google Analytics. The key metric is unique browsers, this measures unique visitors and should allow you to judge and compare websites based on true audited audiences. Another critical issue is true traffic – not how many visitors they think they will have or how many they had last year – how many last week or last month.
- A website is a business – you should ask the owner of any website how they make money to pay to support the site. Are they relying on advertising or are they expecting you to pay. The question you should ask at this stage is “who needs who, the most” – is this website looking to use your listings to attract an audience to then make money from advertising?
- A website needs to have a track record and a planned future – you should ask the owner of any website how long they have operated and how they will support the website in the future. You do not want to find that the website closes down in 2 months or worse still is sold to someone else that you have no relationship with.
- A website should have a clear policy on copyright – you should get a copy of any websites terms and conditions. Make sure that you retain copyright such that this website cannot “sell” your listings / content onto anyone else for their profit; nor can they alter or change any of the content without your permission.
The expression of “there is no such thing as a free lunch” applies equally to the web as it does to any other form of business; and just as in any other area of business you have to be honest and say to yourself – do you want to waste your time uploading, managing, reviewing and checking your listings on 6 or 10 websites when in reality more than half of them generate very little traffic, no enquiries, but do take up your time?
The consumer in today’s online world is getting smarter – they more and more turn to Google to answer their everyday questions. Google does one thing exceptionally well – it makes sense out of the complexity that is the mass of information available to us these days. It is Google’s stated aim to organise and make accessible the world’s information. That being the case why not let Google help you judge as to which websites to put your content on.
Think about your prospective buyers for your home or one of your listings. Think about the kind of question they would type into Google – now do that yourself. Have a look at the results – these results on the first page should be your guide, these are the websites you should be on.
If you were to be really clinical then there were only a few websites you should place your listings on.
Naturally every listing should be on your own company website as well as major property portals. The reason for this is the fact that people want ease of searching and value comprehensive content that is what a major property portals can offer you.
So don’t be suckered into the first offer that comes by email saying that they have just the site you have always been looking for! – after all if you had been looking for such a site would you not have already found it and be on it!!
I’ll say it because you won’t.
In New Zealand you should place your property on Realestate.co.nz (if you have an agent) and Trade Me Property and nowhere else. Anyone seriously looking to buy ends up at either or both sites.
Trade Me’s site attracts a lot more traffic than realestate.co.nz, but any half decent agent co lists on realestate.co.Nz as well. What’s more they should not charge you for either listing given the potential commission and the low prices they pay.
I used to work at Trade Me, but speak for myself only.
Lance,
As ever I appreciate your comments and thoughts. I know that your advice is valuable and unbiased for those that follow the guidance of those who are experts in their respective fields.
Good article and well reasoned. And I agree – when I listed a house a while ago, I was offered advertising on three websites in the advertising package – TM, Realestate.co.nz and the franchises own one. Then I looked closer at the marketing quote to see that the franchise website included just one photograph as standard and in the quote was a further $30 to include more than one photo.
Naturally I declined their kind offer on the basis that anyone looking seriously would have probably already looked on the first two sites (which both included up to 20 photos).
As I was wanting to keep on good terms with the agent, I didn’t point out that I felt it was a nasty rort to try and extract every single advertising dollar they could get from me.
Alexa shows – http://3.ly/B3s – near on 50% inbound to realestate.co.nz from Google & Yahoo, only Barfoots show as company website, not in the preceding category but in the “after visiting” section, and that’s at just under 4% of realestate.co visitors heading there afterwards. No other company websites seem to generate enough traffic to register.
No doubt traffic is being directed to realestate.co.nz by the big search engines, and in relation to Google, there’s been an absolute plethora, especially from their main blogs over the last week or 2 regarding them upgrading their realestate offering even more…(eg; for instance, Google Australias just updated full page property details)
So yes its absolutely crucial to get your property listed on a site that Google ranks highly, because it looks like there’s something like a 50% chance that a home buyers first point of embarkation is a big search engine. (unless there is something in the matrix that means those visitors come via a localized Google search on those other company sites?)
When I’m searching for property I go to either trademe property or real estate.co.nz, google will just point me in this direction anyway. And surely having a house listed on both Trademe and Realestate.co.nz is better than just on the one website. If both sites boast high traffic then it makes sense to be on both in my opinion.
Mike
It is worth paying to ugrade on realestate.co.nz to a feature listing at $250 per week as evidenced by the data seen at http://www.realestate.co.nz/1187396/statistics which has seen far more traffic since converting this property to a feature listing.
This also makes the property appear at the top of a suburb search as seen here http://tinyurl.com/ybak5dw
We find homes that are featured sell faster than those further down the list.
that should have been $250 per fortnight http://tinyurl.com/ybak5dw
Just to clarify a point you made Ross – a featured listing provides the image of the property at the top of each of the search pages for that suburb – one of just 3 that are exclusively featured in a set 2 week period. The featured listing does not in anyway effect the ranking of the listing in the search results – that is governed as a default by the listing date – earliest first.
We are principled to provide impartial presentation of listing results by date of listing not influenced by advertising.
The question is the reach of the particular website or the ability to distribute the information to their audience and in some cases the way in which they present that information.
In my view the number of websites and their particular reach is a very relevant and valid technique in the overall marketing of a property.
The parallel can be drawn between traditional media, where it is accepted that a mix in the marketing ie NZ Herald, property press, suburban newspapers, and Real estate agency magazines are examples where each is used with a different value equation and market reach.
The Ponsonby news is a great example of niche marketing to a specific local market. You wouldn’t abandon that publication because there is another publication that also covers that geographical area. There are many examples of overlapping media. The Internet is no different in this respect.
The fact that a website has more unique browsers over another is simply a value or reach of distribution question. (Theoretically the more unique browsers the more potential reach or value) Given that Google is now in the business of displaying real estate for sale this (unique browsers) could become less relevant, as all websites can display their content equally in the Google real estate format (search by map) for free.
Another question is, are all unique browsers of equal value?
I would suggest that they are not. If a website “ A” sells cars and houses and has 150,000 unique browsers can we assume 50% of those unique browsers are car buyers not house buyers? And if website “B” only sells real estate and has 75,000 unique browsers are they of equal value, In terms of reach to homebuyers?
You could draw the same comparison in traditional media where the NZ Herald may have far greater distribution than say the (AK) central property press but the reach of the real estate section in the NZ Herald is diluted by the readers who are only interested in the Jobs section for example.
You must also consider “the accidental home buyer factor” who in both cases was not really looking to buy a house but was viewing that section of the publication or website and found something they really liked.
I foresee an increase of niche websites based on all sorts of things, locations, property types, ethnic groups, similar interests and Agents and a bunch if things we have not even considered.
Why would you not distribute content to multiple websites if the cost of distribution is zero? The point here is that the issue with traditional media is the cost of production and distribution.
The amazing thing online is that you don’t get charged more for a big ad v’s a small ad.
Imagine if a newspaper offered ¼ page ½ page and full page adds at the same price, what would you do? Take the full page right? So why put only 3 photo’s online ? why not put 30 photos a floorplan a video ? A long detailed description? Why not take as much space as you possibly can?
The only additional cost is the production. All the distribution cost has been eliminated. No trees are being cut down for paper no trucks are needed for delivery. The consumer does not even have to go out to the mailbox, they just switch on their computer and the content is delivered straight to their desktop.
Anticipating what you think the consumer may search for is not an exact science, we cannot assume that the website with the most unique browsers is also always going to be the first search result in google in any combination of search terms.
(in fact Google real estate will most likely be the first search result in Google in the future)
Thinking about prospective buyers and doing it myself I typed in “real estate Waikato” rather than “homes for sale Hamilton” , try this yourself.
http://tinyurl.com/yaptxp2
In summary is it important to be on a website that has the most unique browsers ? Yes but the cost is a consideration. (There are examples of a dominant real estate portals exploiting their market position with extremely high cost structures).
Should that mean that this is the only website (the one with most unique browsers) your advertise properties on the Internet on? Not in my view.
The more important issue is providing value to the seller for their marketing dollars. This then becomes an issue of determining the value of the reach of that particular website for the cost of advertising.
It is important to establish the value of any marketing and convey that to the seller.
Unlike most Real Estate Portals Open2view.com has no monthly fee but rather charges a “production cost” through our nationwide network of professional real estate photographers. The Open2view website distribution is essentially free (with photography). The website achieved in excess of 17,000,000 page impressions last month and is growing steadily.
The value of the reach or distribution is included in the Photographic cost.
Chris,
I appreciate such a rich and comprehensive comment – you should blog yourself as you have much to share with this industry (you have contributed much so far in such a great service as open2view).
I agree with some of your comments (richness and quality of content) and disagree with the comments about niche sites (not surprisingly given the view of the post in the first place).
I am not convinced that Google “real estate” will become the de-facto entry point for search – after all the most important aspect of any listing and the most important search criteria is images not location or map.
My view of niche is that niche website are vastly different in your example to niche newspapers. A niche local community paper will not be replaced by a niche community website. The principle of a community newspaper is all about local services, local stories and local products – peoples retail search experience is being adjusted as a function of the web where specialised sites specific to products are used to search and find and then locate – whereas the local paper is all about locate.
Reach and distribution are appealing to agents and clients alike – however the behavior is see and motivated me to write this piece is agents believing that placing listing on 5 websites all of which claim to provide national or international coverage and all offer the same functionality as the key sites – why replicate when the limited audience and 100% overlap add nothing to the presentation of reach.
Thanks Alistair
I agree with regard to the claims made, some may be a waste of effort. All I am saying is that… If there is a value ie there is a potential to reach a buyer at a reasonable cost then it is possibly worthwhile.
I agree the claim has to have some sort of value ie traffic or market differential.
I believe that open2view is a good example of a viable niche… ( and a complementary fit with the realestate.co.nz integration)
Agency and agent sites also and example of a niche in the overall market.
With regard to Google all I am saying is it is likely that they will (in the future) show their own real estate content at the top of the search results or add a category selection on the front page.
I still believe that you place the content where the consumer is….
Chris a similar search for “Real Estate Pt Chevalier” sees these results http://tinyurl.com/ygu3j2l where my own office site even rates on the first page. Use of the voices platform offered by realestate.co.nz also results in the #1 position on the list and you will see open2view in there also.
At this stage realestate.co.nz open2view.co.nz and trademe are the king hitters but I will always maintain my own office site which has been around since 1998 and while clients demand multiple website listings we will continue to provide them.
Ross
Just to clarify – are you saying that spontaneously your clients at listing presentations say to you “we demand to have our house featured on these websites / loads of websites / all websites??”
As to your own site – could not agree more – this is your profile to assist sellers establish the point of difference you provide – working 24hrs per day to develop client leads.
Alistair – they almost always want to know “how many” websites will our house appear on.
There appears to be an expectation that we will use trademe realestate an open2view and many past clients liked our own office site when they were buyers as it simply has all our homes listed in price order on the main page, no searching, no hassle – http://www.sellrealty.co.nz
There is still an impression that trademe is the key site to be on but i is realestate.co.nz and open2view that we receive the most questions/emails from
Great example Ross… this is what I was saying about niche websites, you have done a fantastic job of becoming the local real estate expert online.
You can clearly demonstrate a unique value in your website to a potential seller.
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