Insight Into Insights

Posted by Ras Chunylall in Search on 30 September 2013

Tags: analytics, glossary, internet marketing, lead generation, marketing, online marketing

Each month, around the second, we send out the Prop Data Insights report which makes a month to month comparison in traffic volumes and traffic trends.  While not particularly indepth, this report is supposed to provide a quick summary of the past month's activity, highlighting points of interest or of concern.

The Insights report is compiled from your Google Analytics account as well as information stored in your website management system.  Below is a guide to the different sections along with a brief explanation of what each of the metrics actually measure and what they mean.

Marketing tip:

Each month we focus on a particular aspect of online marketing that should help improve traffic or converting the existing traffic from ordinary visitor to active lead.  These are all general tips that are aimed at better marketing real estate online.

Website traffic:

This section of the report gives a breakdown of the volumes and quality of the traffic.  This is a simple overview of the websites general performance.

Visits:
This is the total number of times that the website has been visited.  This includes all unique visitors and any return visits by them.
Unique Visitors:
This is the total number of individuals that have visited the website.  This would represent the size of your audience over the recorded period.
Average Visits per Visitor:
This is the how many times the average visitor has visited the website.
Pages Viewed:
This would be the total number of times that all pages have been viewed.
Average Pages per Visit:
This is the number of pages that the average user will view in each visit.  This is a good indication of interactivity or how "sticky" your website might be.
Bounce Rate:
This is the percentage of visitors that will view a single page and then leave.  Generally the lower this value, the better.

Visits By Traffic Source:

This section of the report gives a breakdown of where the traffic to your website is coming from.  This is useful in identifying what is working or highlighting an area that could be better utilised.  There is no perfect formula as to what percentage of traffic should come from any single source.

Organic:
This is organic or unpaid search traffic.  These are visitors that have performed a search on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing and found your website.
Paid:
Paid traffic is traffic generated to the website from sponsored search results.  These visitors are those that have clicked on an ad in the search results (primarily Google in the form of AdWords) and have reached your website.
Direct:
These are visitors that have entered the domain name directly into the address bar.  These are visitors that already know of your website from a previous visit or an offline source such as a business card or print ad.
Referral:
These are visitors that have been lead to your website by clicking on a link on another website.  These are often industry related websites, portals or other web services.
Email:
These are visitors that have reached your website though a branded email, be it a newsletter, email alert or email stationary.  While these are all recorded as email, we can easily identify the actual email that's been used to reach your website.
Other:
Other traffic is comprised of all other marketing efforts that might be in place.  These could be a serious of guest blog posts, banner ads or even internal ads that you'd like to measure.  These could be any form of traffic that you'd like to track separately to better measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns.

Listings, Subscribers and Leads:

This section of the report gives a total as to active leads, listings and subscribers to the various email services.  These are represented with a total of active entries as well as the number of additions over the month recorded.  A comparison is also shown indicating whether there has been an increase and by how much this may have changed from month to month.

Conversion Optimisation Analysis:

This section of the report concerns the conversion of website visitors into active leads.  This section you'll either see a "green thumbs up" or a "red flag" next to each point.  The green thumbs up would indicate that this particular point is taken care of while the red flag would suggest that a point should be acted upon.  more info

Photographs:
Listings with images are more likely to generate interest, the more catching the image the better overall impression a listing can make. Generally the more images the better.  We at Prop Data suggest that there be a minimum of 8 photographs on each listing.

Description:
Clear, in-depth and well written descriptions will go a long way separating one listing from another.

Mapped:
By mapping properties, those viewing the listing can get a better idea of the neighbourhood and surrounding infrastructure.

Virtual Tours and YouTube Videos:
By employing interactive mediums such as a videos or virtual tours you will better engage your website visitors and increase the speed with which a property can be viewed, assessed and short-listed by providing your buyers and tenants with the tools they need to view a property as if they were actually there.  more info

Agent Photos:
Agent photos are encouraged as visitors can immediately put a face and a real person to a listing and company. This ensures a more personal interaction that goes beyond just your website.

Captcha:
While useful in preventing unwanted spam, the use of a CAPTCHA can reduce your conversion rate with forms requiring additional information on submission.  more info

News Articles:

This monitors the frequency of update.  We recommend that this be updated regularly but at least twice each month ensuring that at the start of the new month that the home page has changed since the last visit.  more info