Updated 10/3/2009 and 1/24/2010

Some of the goals of any major real estate website makeover, such as the one I have recently accomplished for my own Denver real estate website, are to:

• Increase user satisfaction with more and better organized content, leading to longer average time on site, more average page views per visit, and more repeat visitors.
• Improve ease of use with good and easy to use navigation and clear calls to action
• Improve SEO factors, resulting in more organic search hits on more keywords
• Improve trust / authority factors, leading to more consumer / user registrations and contact forms completed
• Improve and simplify lead management back end functions, resulting in easier broker and agent lead management, and better lead to transaction conversion ratios

In this article, I will post some of my initial Google Analytics and other results, as compared to my previous website.

For these statistics, the following periods were used:

Before: April 1 through June 30, 2009, the final three months of operation of my old REW website.

After: July 1 through Sept 30, 2009, the first three full months of operation of the new Joomla/UIDX website.

Last 31 days: 12/24/2009 to 1/23/2010.

During the first three months of the new website, no significant new content was added. During the first month, there was a decrease in visitors and SE hits while the SEs adjusted to the new site’s urls. 301 redirects helped to minimize the negative impacts somewhat. From mid-October to mid-December, it was observed that Google Webmaster Tools count of indexed pages was not increasing, and was remaining relatively stable, which I attribute to minimal new inbound links to the site, and as a result, Google would only index a given number of pages, regardless of the actual page counts or use of a complete sitemap.xml file.

In November and December 2009, significant new content was added in the form of about 30 new dedicated subdivision specific pages, plus on-page embedded links to about 60 other subdivision specific pages, all in my primary market areas, and each of which results in a new url for SEs to find and index, for a total of 90 new indexable pages/urls. In addition to new content and urls, and partly offsetting their impact, 36 pages for communities far outside of my preferred market area were tagged “noindex,nofollow”, but allowed to remain on the site.

The idea was that since Google indexed page counts were not increasing, and given Google’s apparent tendency to cap indexed pages based on overall site rank, that allowing those pages to drop out of the indexes might open up indexing slots for the new content. From a marketing point of view, since I don’t service the distant areas, removing those pages from the indexes and SERPs would also mean fewer consumers using my site that I would not want to work with anyway, and more consumers doing searches for subdivisions in my target market areas would find the new pages. That seems to have been effective, as Google has since indexed between 30-40 of these new urls, including 22/30 of the new dedicated subdivision pages, and the other SEs have indexed even more. Plus, visitor counts are up somewhat, and nearly all of them are in fact within my target market area.

Average Daily Total Visits:

Before: 84   After: 90   Last 31 days: 100.4

Slightly up in 1st 90 days, and up steadily in the last 31 days, partly as a result of new pages / content strategy as described above. 20% total improvement over initial six months on the new site.

Time on Site per Visit (minutes)

Before:  6.00   After:  6.13   Last 31 days: 6.08
No significant change.

Average Page Views per Visit

Before: 11.52   After: 8.57   Last 31 days: 9.8

Initially down, now up a little. Partly explained by less search result browsing. Old site had 8 IDX results per page, new site has 25. Search results also default to most recent listings on new site, so repeat visitors rarely need to look at more than one page to see new listings since their last visit. Also partly explained by new site navigation structure, with its multilevel drop-down and slide-out menus, which lets users find and get to what they are looking for quicker, with less page browsing, and no need to click on main pages to get to sub-menus. The enhanced search form, with many more search parameters, probably also significantly reduces the number of searches and amount of search results browsing required, by providing more focused and precise search results for the user. In summary: This is OK because IMO users are actually able to use the site more efficiently.

Bounce Rate

Before: 33.77%   After:  37.37%   Last 31 days: 43.27

Slightly up. Primarily explained by many more MLS# and address specific SE hits due to more IDX details pages being indexed and better SEO on those pages than before because of significantly more content on each page, and those users typically perform only 1-2 page views since they go straight to exactly what they are looking for. This trend is more prevalent recently, and a good 20% of SERP hits seem to be MLS# specific or address specific, especially from Google and Yahoo.

Percent of New vs Returning Visitors

Before: 74.44%   After:  74.78%   Last 31 days: 69.92

Relatively minor differences. However, the decrease in this number indicates more returning visitors, which is a very good thing, as it indicated better user satisfaction with the site functionality and content.

Absolute Unique Visitors

Before: 5,686 (63/day)  After:  6,205 (69/day)   Last 31 days: 2332 (75/day)

9% increase in initial months, and increasing. Not huge numbers, but significant when compared to increase in average daily lead registrations.

Number of Different Keywords with SE Hits

Before: 6,014   After:  5,256 Last 31 days: N/A

Average Daily Lead Registrations

Before:  2.80   After: 5.62   Last 31 days: 6.0

Over 100% increase! Lead quality: About the same % of bad emails, bogus phone #s as before.

Lead Registrations as a Percentage of Unique Visitors

Before:  4.48%   After:  8.33%   Last 31 days:  7.98%

Almost 100% increase! Somewhat lower in last 31 days, with slight decrease again attributed to may more visitors from MLS# and address specific searches.

Lead Conversions to Transaction

Still too early to tell, but incoming calls, emails from users and showing requests have increased. Closings since website conversion have been pretty much the same as before, but average transaction amount (and resulting commission$) has increased by 30%, indicating more higher end buyers.

Conclusion

While some of these statistics are not what I had hoped or expected, the results are still in flux. Statistics for the new website first 90 days reflect a couple of missing days when Google Analytic was not running on the new website after I changed my Joomla template. They also include the first couple of weeks of operation, when Google and the other SEs were still adapting to the site’s new folder and page naming structures. The significant improvements in the most important statistics, average daily lead registrations and registrations as a percentage of unique visitors, are all that really matter to the bottom line.

Future Plans

• Increase appropriate blogging and blog comment activities on this and other “do follow” blogs to increase incoming links and link value.
• Continue to add subdivision specific content pages, focusing on higher value subdivisions and condo buildings in my primary market area.
• Improvements to IDX features, including Google map search, and specific search criteria and details pages for investment/income property types.
• Better follow-up on the leads that do register. This is a constant, ongoing effort.