The Debate is More Than Just Forced Registration
Posted by Milan Cole on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 4:13pm.I think this site and the discussion that it will encourage is about more than just forcing registration; it's about how we use the Internet to market ourselves as real estate agents. One of the things that is unique and special about Internet marketing is the unprecedented degree to which marketing ideas can be tested and measured. Since I think it is fair to say that most real estate agents hope to profit from their Internet marketing efforts, it seems to me that we would all want to maximize the bang for our buck that we are getting.
Now if anyone can demonstrate using meaningful statistics that it's possible for an agent to generate more business from not forcing registration on their website, then I would love to hear about it and see what you are doing. In our case, my testing has indicated that forcing registration results in a substantially greater volume of leads and that these leads are very similar in quality to the leads we received without forcing registration. Here is the results of a recent 6 month test that we ran:
Now if you look at the curve of the chart it follows the expected seasonal variation. So if we average out the 3 months for seasonal variation then we find:
3 months with unforced registration (April/May/June) = average 196
3 months with forced registration (July/August/September) = average 649
So we are roughly averaging a 231% increase in leads since switching to forced registration.
The question remains though, "How can we do better?"
To answer this question, we are going to try to improve our conversion rate, which currently stands at 4.5% of visitors or 6.6% of unique visitors. To do this, the first thing that we are going to do is to test different variations of the registration page text. The reasoning being that this is our initial sales pitch to prospective consumer, and my hope is that if we can do a better job of communicating the benefits of working with our company and the power of using our website then they will be that much more likely to want to register with us.
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Share4 Responses to "The Debate is More Than Just Forced Registration"
That's great info Milan. Thank you for taking the time to post it.
I'll admit that I have always hated forced registration. Recently though I realized that what I truly resented was being forced to register without that site making any attempt to earn the right to my info. With your site though the quality is such that I would feel that there was a very good chance that after registering I would find the info I'm looking for. Contrast that to some of the complete crap sites that come out of places like www.ezleadcapture.com where you're sure they're just going to take your info, not give you access to the info you need and then hound you daily. Those are the sites that have given forced registration such a bad rep.
Also I think it's brilliant that your site shows visitors the info they're seeking shaded in the background and then puts the registration form over it. It's no wonder you've had the success you've had - congrats!
Posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 2:41pm.
I just found all of these result and wanted to thank you very much as i am currently struggling with his same choice. I now need to decide whether to use forced registration "always" or "after so many # of properties are viewed" and if the second choice, how many properties to let them view first? Another concern I had was whether googlebot crawls all my "member pages" when forced registration is on or do they leave when it asks for them to register? If anyone knows this answer I would appreciate any thoughts. Otherwise thanks again for conducting this study as it appears to be heavily favored with "forced".
Posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 12:46pm.
@John- You will get the most registrations with 0 property views, and the number will gradually decline with the number of views you give them. Since you have an REW site it will definitely allow Googlebot to crawl the site regardless of registration.
@Brian- Yes, I find registration annoying too. However, I am in Business and my website is not a public service :) Forced registration gives my sales agents an opportunity to make their pitch, and the fact is that statistics have shown that a telephone conversation is far more likely to result in a sale then an e-mail exchange or browsing a website.
Posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 3:13pm.
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@John- You will get the most registrations with 0 property views, and the number will gradually decline with the number of vi..
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I just found all of these result and wanted to thank you very much as i am currently struggling with his same choice. I now n..
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- The Debate is More Than Just F..
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That's great info Milan. Thank you for taking the time to post it.
I'll admit that I have always hated forced registratio..
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- Week 5 Data Results: Forced vs..
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Hey Matt,
Thanks for sharing your findings with all of us. Much appreciated. :)..
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You are correct Milan, this is about more than just collecting leads...it's about converting them at the highest possible rat..
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You are correct Milan, this is about more than just collecting leads...it's about converting them at the highest possible rate and meeting their needs with improved customer service and talented agents. Your 3 month results are staggering! On the registration page front, we have tried some things using Flash with our registration page with the hope of increasing registrations. Maybe when we are done with this test we will look at testing some registration page ideas and share our results. Thanks for contributing here and we would love your feedback about what we have done with our registration page!
-Brandon
Posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 2:01pm.