Jun 9, 2009 | By Mike Lyon
As you explore what new home listing services to utilize, it is extremely important to measure the results. It is not just about the amount of traffic but the quality of the traffic. Last week I created a poll and shot it out via Twitter & Facebook to over 1000 connections. The results are below.
What new home listing service gives you the most qualified traffic?(survey software)
Interesting results. Let’s look at the ways you can determine the quality of traffic using your website analytics. Here are a couple of key metrics you need to pay attention to:
- Visits
- Pages Per Visit
- Average Time on Site
- Percentage of New Visits
- Bounce Rate
Let’s use the example below to review.
| Traffic Source | Visits | Pages/Visit | Avg Time on Site | % of New Visits | Bounce Rate |
| Traffic Source A | 235 | 12 | 10:00 | 69% | 20% |
| Traffic Source B | 150 | 5 | 6:00 | 10% | 50% |
What story are these analytics telling you? Based on the key metrics, a visitor from Traffic Source A would be a more qualified unit of traffic than Traffic Source B. That doesn’t mean you need to cancel all traffic sources that don’t match the top producing sources. You just need make sure you aren’t paying too much for less qualified traffic.
You can also go one step further when you set up a "Conversion Goal" in your analytics. Basically, this measures conversions and tracks it back to the referring sources. This is another great metric to look at but you shouldn’t base all of the decisions on a conversion. Many people will find your site through a certain traffic source then come back later and fill out a contact form – making it hard to tie that conversion back to the actual source that they discovered your site through.
The web has given every marketing director a higher level of accountability.
P.S. I have been talking with a lot of builders lately who are presented with online advertising campaigns that are solely based on "impressions". Essentially, impressions refers to how many times the builder’s ad will show up in front of someone online. Be very careful, ultimately, you need to measure performance on click throughs – not impressions. That will tell you if your ad is getting in front of therightpeople. Showing an ad to someone looking at cars online is not your target audience.
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