Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
The average home builder website converts somewhere between 0.5% and 2.8% of their website visitors into leads. A well-designed homebuilder website built with lead generation in mind should convert at around 2% or higher. If your website is not converting at least 2% of your visitors into leads, it’s well worth the time and cost to make the necessary changes to improve your website conversion rate.
How To Calculate Website Conversion Rate
To calculate your website conversion rate, divide leads by website visits. If your website generated 400 leads in a month and had 20,000 visitors that month, you would have a 2% conversion rate. 400 / 20000 = 0.02 or 2%. You can use the same formula for calculating lead conversion for shorter or longer periods of time as long as you use the same date range for both leads and website visits. Make sure you are only using leads that signed up directly on your website for the calculation to be accurate.
If your website is being managed by an agency or other third party, they should be sending you reports each month that include the lead signup conversion rates. To get that information yourself you will need access to your CRM and a website analytics program such as Google Analytics. Your website leads should be entered into the CRM automatically when someone signs up on one of your website forms. The lead registration should include source data that allows you to sort them by company website leads. Google Analytics makes it easy to see all website visits over whatever date range you select.
How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
For your website to convert visits to leads at 2% or higher, it will need to have more than a single contact page signup form. Much can be learned from viewing real estate syndication sites like Zillow, Realtor.com and New Home Source. These companies have invested a large number of resources in discovering ways to improve lead signups on their property listing pages including registration form placement, simple forms that don’t require a lot of choices and information, as well as gated content.
Gated content is useful information for homebuyers such as community and floorplan brochures and other informational downloads that homebuyers receive by filling out a simple form. Gated content signup forms should be very simple and ask for name and email address only. You can also ask for a phone number, but it’s better not to make the phone number field mandatory or you may see a drop in lead conversion rates.
If it’s not feasible to make changes to your builder website directly, there are websites that allow subscribers to build custom landing pages with lead registration forms such as Unbounce that have a good deal of information on how to improve landing page conversion rates. These sites are also great for creating high-converting landing pages for marketing campaigns, community events, and low-traffic or slow communities. Paid search and social ads, organic social posts, and eblasts linked directly to your landing page should convert at a higher-than-average rate.
However, there is no substitute for having detailed information and lead registration forms on every community and property listing page on your builder website. Most web development companies can easily place those forms for you which should be above the fold, not at the bottom of the page. Most homebuyers have visited real estate syndication sites looking for new homes and are used to the layout, type of detailed information, photos, video, and 3D interactive tours that are available there, so make sure your website measures up or your visitors may not stay long enough to become leads.
Another great source of website and landing page leads is “coming soon” community pages. There should be some basic information about the community and location with a VIP signup form that adds registrants to a list to get early notice when floorplans, pricing, and homesites become available.
More Information
For more information about how to improve your website conversion rate, or to find out how Phrase Marketing can help your business, please contact us via our website.