If you are a busy agent with lots of clients, the thought of gathering statistics for all of your properties might seem daunting. You’d need to find out how many people visited each property and what number of enquiry emails you had, then look at comparable properties and combine it all to make a meaningful report.

This could take some time and may seem tedious, however each of your clients deserves the individual attention and feedback, particularly if they are paying for the advertising. But for the sake of your sanity, it’s best to look to an automated system to do the work for you.

One easy way to gather this information is through your advertising portal. Most of the large players will provide you with the raw statistics on each of the properties you have listed. Some of the more advanced portals will even package this information in a useful report that you can then forward on to your vendors.

If your portal does not provide such a service, you may need to do the grunt work yourself. No doubt you receive reports of some sort from all the different portals you advertise on as well as your own website. You should collate as much of this information as possible so you can provide your customers with a well-rounded picture of how their marketing is tracking.

Vendor reports are also a fantastic tool for you to compare properties and see which portals are producing better results than others, along with which properties are performing better and why. This knowledge is great for advising customers on how to achieve better results from their advertising.

Above all, remember to keep your vendor reports simple and only include the facts. Ultimately, vendor reports should provide a springboard for considered conversation between you and your vendor about what’s best for their listing.

Tune in to any technology blog this week and you’ll see one word popping up again and again: Facebook. At f8, Facebook’s conference for developers and entrepreneurs held yesterday, founder Mark Zuckerberg had plenty to reveal about the future of his social network, which is about to hit 500 million visitors per month.

Facebook’s developer blog outlines the biggest changes, the first of which is the ability to add “Like” buttons and other social plugins to any website. timesonline.co.uk describes this as Facebook’s “plan to control how you see the web”. Zuckerberg puts a different spin on it, writing “we are making it so all websites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone.”

Along with social plugins, Facebook is introducing something called the “Open Graph Protocol”, which turns websites into objects people can add to their Facebook profiles. “When a user establishes this connection by clicking Like on one of your Open Graph-enabled pages, you gain the lasting capabilities of Facebook Pages: a link from the user’s profile, ability to publish to the user’s News Feed, inclusion in search on Facebook, and analytics through our revamped Insights product,” Facebook’s developer blog explains.

According to mashable.com, the launch of the Open Graph will mean the end of the now-familiar Facebook Connect, which is used across multiple real estate websites.

Facebook’s latest changes are mainly aimed at developers, but what does it all mean for users? Will the changes have an effect on privacy? Zuckerberg addresses these questions in the following video:

Of course, no change to one of the world’s biggest online social networks is going to please every single user. But if Zuckerberg is worried about the naysayers, he isn’t letting on, finishing his blog post with these words:

“We look forward to a future where all experiences are this easy and personalised, and we’re happy today to take the next important step to get there.”

When it comes to website analytics, there’s a mess of information out there. We all know a good understanding of analytics is an important ingredient in website success. But if you’re short on time, it can help to zero in on a few key items. Today, we’ll look at the top five measures to focus on when sifting through your analytics data.

1. Unique visitors. In measuring your website’s success, it’s hard to go past the number of people visiting it. Increasing your unique visitor numbers could simply be a matter of promotion, or you may need to spend some time adding more quality content.

2. Popular content. Look at the pages that are attracting the most attention, then focus your energies on creating more of what your audience wants.

3. Bounce rate. We’ve looked at bounce rate in detail here. Put simply, a high bounce rate is a key indication that something about your website needs to change.

4. Referring keywords. Along with popular content, the keywords people use to get to your website are another way to discover what they are actually hoping to find when they get there.

5. Click stream. As we said in our discussion of online engagement, the way people move around your website shows what they are drawn to and what they ignore. This is just one more way you can find out what pleases your audience.

So, do you agree with our top five, or do you focus on different analytics areas? We’d love to hear your analytics tips and tricks in our comments.

[Image: analytics.info]

If your daily routine involves checking at least one social network, chances are you’re logging on to Facebook. In fact, new Hitwise figures are showing Facebook is now the most visited website in the US, surpassing even Google’s market share.

Before we proclaim the fall of the Internet’s Goliath, let’s take a closer look at these figures. According to Hitwise, visits to Google made up 7.03 percent of all website visits for the week ending 13 March, but Facebook just edged into first place with 7.07 percent. This is the first time Google has been overtaken since September 2007, when MySpace topped the list.

Matt Tatham, director of media relations at Hitwise, told The Wall Street Journal that the two websites could go back and fourth between top and second place. But while the totals are close, the amounts each website has grown are far from similar: Google share of total visits was up 9 percent over the same week last year, while Facebook’s was up 185 percent.

So it seems at least one of our predictions for agents in 2010 – that social media fatigue would set in – could turn out to be wrong after all. Of course, we always love to hear from agents about what’s working for them on the social web. And if you’re wondering how to make the most of it yourself, check out our golden result for social media ROI.

After surveying 1,300 agents and brokers, US real estate marketing company HomeGain has found that referrals are seen to be the most effective marketing strategy to acquire new clients.

According to the results, referrals scored 8.7 out of a possible 10 points for effectiveness. Featured listings were the second most effective strategy with 4.8 points, followed by email campaigns with 4.7. The top 10 strategies list reveals an interesting mix of traditional and newer marketing options:

1. Referrals (8.7)
2. Featured Listings (4.8)
3. Email Campaigns (4.7)
4. Postcards/Mailers (4.6)
5. Blogging (4.1)
6. Online Lead Generation Services (4.0)
7. Facebook (4.0)
8. LinkedIn (3.6)
9. Outdoor Ads (3.6)
10. Print Ads (3.6)

The top 10 marketing objectives for respondents in 2010 show another contrasting mix of old and new:

1. Referrals (8.9)
2. Email Campaigns (5.7)
3. Postcards/Mailers (5.4)
4. Featured Listings (5.2)
5. Facebook (4.9)
6. Print Ads (4.3)
7. Blogging (4.2)
8. LinkedIn (4.1)
9. Online Lead Generation Services (4.0)
10. YouTube (3.5)

What’s interesting is that the strategies agents and brokers found to be most effective in 2009 aren’t necessarily the ones they plan to focus on in 2010. The respondents are clearly aware of the fact that Facebook is growing in importance, for example, and that 2010 might be the year to consider adding YouTube to their marketing mix.

HomeGain says respondents are less likely to invest their marketing dollars and time on banner ads, pay per click advertising, outdoor advertising, and MySpace this year. Twitter was also included on the list of strategies losing popularity, despite its continued growth.

Do you think the respondents have basically the right idea when it comes to their marketing priorities for 2010? What would you do differently?

So you’ve signed up to Google Analytics, or started using a similar service to find out how your website is performing. The only problem is, the information on your screen might as well be written in another language. If this sounds familiar, have a look through our list of common web analytics terms for a plan-English explanation.

Backlinks: A backlink is any incoming link to a website or web page. Before search engines, these links were useful in navigating the Internet, but now they are more important in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO), as they are an indication of the popularity of a website or page.

Bounce rate: Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who came to your website and left without taking any action. See this article for information on how to lower your bounce rate.

Clickstream: The clickstream is the series of links a person clicks on while browsing the Internet. Analysing your clickstream can help you understand how your visitors are moving around your website.

Hit: A hit is the sending of a single file, whether an HTML file, an image, an audio file, or other file type. Since a single web page request can bring a number of individual files with it, the number of hits from a website does not reflect the number of visits or visitors it has received.

Landing Pages: By looking at your landing pages data, you can see where your visitors are first arriving at your website. Once you find the most popular pages, you can better place your advertisements and/or lead capture forms.

Outgoing Links: These are the websites you link to in your content. By looking at how many hits your outgoing links are generating, you can see what kind of content is interesting to your visitors.

Page View: A page view occurs when a visitor opens a page on your website. During a single visit, one unique visitor may open many pages and therefore create multiple page views.

Referrer/Referring Site: A referrer is a website carrying a link that brought visitors to your website. Links to your website in Twitter streams and in blog comments are counted as referrers.

Visitor/Unique Visitor: A visitor is a unique individual who comes to your website. The word “unique” is important here, because it means the visitor is a person who has opened the website once in a fixed time frame (e.g a day, week, or month). Visitors are also called “unique visitors”, “unique users”, “unique browsers” and simply “uniques”.

Visit: A visit starts when a unique visitor opens a website and ends when they move on to another website. One unique visitor can make many visits to a website.

[Image: javatuning.com]

If you’re an agent running your own website, the prospect of a detailed picture of how it’s performing will probably sound quite enticing. That’s exactly what the newly-established service WooRank is offering, and at the moment all its reports are free.

A WooRank report shows you three traffic estimates, gives a run-down of your in-site and off-site SEO, and measures your website’s usability. Areas that need work are clearly marked with an orange dot, or a red dot if things are really dicey.

As the WooRank blog explains, the aim here is to find out what you need to work on to get your website noticed by Google. “Only 16 percent of Google searchers look beyond the first two pages of search results,” the website warns.

Perhaps more exciting than receiving information about your own website’s performance is the option to check on your competitors. Because you don’t have to own a website to check its performance with WooRank, you can compare results from any web address you choose and see what everyone else is doing right (and wrong).

As techcrunch.com points out, WooRank isn’t the first to offer free online reports on website performance. Website Grader lets you plug in your website’s address along with those of your competitors, while HitTail offers a similar service with a free 60-day trial.

If you run your own website but haven’t heard the term “bounce rate”, have a seat. You might be satisfied with the number of people visiting your website, but if the majority of those visitors leave within a few seconds without interacting with any of your content, that’s something you need to deal with.

digital-media.net’s Brad Martens says website visitors will decide whether to stay and interact with your content within the first seven seconds. Give your visitors what they need within that timeframe, and they will be much more likely to investigate further.

But according to Google’s self-proclaimed “analytics evangelist”, Avinash Kaushik, seven seconds could be an optimistic estimate. Kaushik says bounce rate measures the “I came; I puked; I left” phenomenon:

“While metrics like visitors show the number of people who came to your site, bounce rate will tell you how many of those people were unimpressed and left your site without taking any action (not even dignifying the site with a single click!).”

So how do I measure my bounce rate?

Unsurprisingly, Kaushik promotes the use of Google Analytics to measure your website’s bounce rate. Google Analytics is a widely used option that measures up to 5 million page views per month for free.

Here at propertyadguru.com, we use the WordPress plugin Woopra Analytics. Of course, there are plenty of other website analytics tools available, such as Piwik, Clicky and Yahoo! Web Analytics, to name just a few. Because there are so many free options available, choosing one that works for your website doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise.

Ok, and how do I improve my bounce rate?

So, you’ve seen your bounce rate and it isn’t pretty. The good news is, there are plenty of things you can do to keep visitors on your website. Here are our top three suggestions:

Focus on where your traffic is coming from. Using your new website analytics tools, you should be able to determine whether visitors are finding your website via search engines, social media, or other websites. You can then start to make changes to ensure you’re attracting the right kinds of visitors. Ask yourself: is my website optimised for the right keywords? Is my display advertising showing up on the right websites?

Consider usability. Can visitors easily navigate your website to find what they need, right from the start? If you’re not sure, ask for some honest feedback from friends and colleagues. You could even add a quick survey to your website allowing users to tell you what they think.

Highlight calls to action. A high bounce rate need not be a tragedy if people are subscribing to your RSS or Twitter feeds, or becoming your fan on Facebook, within those first few seconds. With the Internet becoming more social by the day, it’s important to remember that these are the preferred methods of website interaction for many.

Bursting with ideas on how to improve bounce rates? Let us know your thoughts in our comments.

[Image: hirethings.co.nz]

If you’re a follower of realestate.com’s @housewatch Twitter channel, you will have already noticed their regular tweets showing information on mortgage rates, featured homes and realestate.com’s contact details.

These tweets are sent out automatically by realestate.com’s “bot” (tech-speak for “robot”), and were launched by the website’s director of business solutions architecture Dennis Kuntz in April this year. What you might not have noticed yet is that the @housewatch bot can do more than just regularly send out information – it can also respond to your requests.

Put simply, the bot responds to requests sent through direct messages on Twitter. Followers of @housewatch can start by direct messaging the word “commands” and they will then receive a list of the information the bot can provide along with instructions on how to send through their requests.

As Kuntz outlined in a blog post, the bot gives users access to a lot of the statistical information realestate.com has available on various cities, including crime and transportation statistics and weather information as well as real-time home values and home prices.

“All of the commands return a suitable snippet of information (suitable for 140 characters, that is) and a link to the full web page of statistical or home value data,” Kuntz explained. He went on to put the focus back on users, asking for feedback on his bot’s functions:

“Now, you might be thinking, ‘Ok, this is a neat novelty item, and you folks at realestate.com are oh-so-very-cool. But what the heck practical use is it?’ Well that’s where you come in – we want you to guide us in making it useful!

For example, since Twitter can be hooked into SMS, an agent might have easy access to data – home values or neighborhood/city statistical data – while out in the field; it could just be a voyeuristic little toy for consumers to ‘ask’ questions, etc. In addition, since it’s an in-house effort, we can modify it to our – and more importantly, your – hearts’ content.”

It seems realestate.com isn’t shy when it comes to experimenting with social media – the website launched a new social networking section last month that includes features such as user-generated blogs, forums, wikis and groups. The website also loaded virtual tours of all of its agents’ listings to a dedicated YouTube channel back in March.

Stats Explained

Portal sites bombard agents with a range of stats – each one bigger than the previous – and all designed to show why they are the biggest and the best site to advertise on. However, most of these stats are meaningless and dont actually tell the agent what they need to know. Here are some of the more popular stats put out by portal sites around the world.

Hits – now this has to be THE most meaningless statistic. It count how many times the server is “hit” when presenting a page to the user. Therefore two pages that look the same but are constructed differently will generate different numbers of hits. If you are quoted hits by a portal site – they probably dont have much to offer.

Page Impressions – this measures the number of page impressions or pages of information users look at – usually over the course of a month. For large sites these numbers can be massive – e.g. realestate.com.au had 528 million in August 2008. While a massive number, it doesnt mean much to the agent in one suburb.

Sessions or Visits – this measures the number of times someone visits the website – no matter what page they land on. This will also be a massive number and also not tell you, the agent, much about whether you should advertise on the site.

Frequency – this tells us the number of times, on average, a person visits a site and therefore gives you an idea of the popularity of the site. For example, a person who visits a site 3 times per month has a frequency of 3 and generates 3 visits. Sites with low frequencies (say <1.5 times per month) are usually generating traffic from SEO or SEM and that traffic is hitting the site and bouncing off. realestate.com.au, for example, has a frequency of just over 3 inicating the it has significant loyal traffic.

Unique Visitors or Unqiue Browsers – this attempts to measure the number of individuals that visit a site each month. Now this is probably not a true measure as it is calculated based on cookies and often people delete their cookies and therefore can measure the same person as being multiple people. Still, UV’s are as good a measure as you can get online.

Average Session Duration – this tells us how long a person stays on the site each time they visit. The longer the session time, the more properties they are looking at. Sites such as realestate.com.au have session times of nearly 10 minutes – this is massive and normally sites have session times of around 3 – 5 min.

Leads Generated – sites often attempt to calculate how many leads they generate. Now the reality is that they can measure how many emails are sent from the site to the agents and in some countries they can measure the number of phone calls they generate. However, they can not measure how many people visit the estate agent or just turn up at an open for inspection.

Detailed Property Views – when a user does a search on a property site, they generate search results and then click on the houses they like to see the property in detail – this is a detailed property view.

Stats the Matter

While all of the above are interesting, that is MOST important to an agent is what is happening in their suburb. Therefore all these stats about how well a portal site is performing at a global level is really useless to an agent as you want to know how well each site performs in your suburb.

Now the portals probably dont have this information or wont share it with you. However the stats you want to try to get a hold of are:

Searches Per Suburb – this is how many times a visitor to the site does a search on a particular suburb – the more that a suburb is searched, the more potential leads can be generated

Leads Per Suburb – this tells you how many emails and, if possible, how many telephone calls are generate on a suburb by suburb basis.

Leads Per Listing – this tells you how many emails (and calls) you are likely to receive for a particular listing in a particluar suburb

These are the measures that will help you work out how effective your advertising is on a particular portal site and allow you to compare how effective each portal site is in your suburb.