THE SITUATION
Platinum Residential is a Gauteng based real estate agency that specialises in residential property sales in the Midrand area. With more and more buyers and sellers starting their property search online, Platinum launched a website on 1 April 2015 to reach, engage and convert their online target market into high quality leads. However, the Platinum executives were not satisfied with their website’s performance and approached Prop Data to rectify the issue and create an effective online presence for their real estate company.
The client identified the following problems with their website:
- Poor website layout design.
- Poor reflection of the Platinum brand and it’s values.
- Poor user experience.
- Not mobile friendly.
- Low number of visits and page views.
- High bounce rate.
- No organic search engine rankings.
- No leads were generated.
Not stereotypical property images.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
The website is primarily designed to create a positive online property search experience with the purpose of gathering client data and ultimately generating high-quality leads. An intuitive property search facility is specifically designed to help users search and filter through listings in a quick and easy way. Search results and details pages are designed to easily allow visitors to take action through always visible (sticky) enquiry forms, sharing tools, PDF brochures and even QR Codes. Clever calculators, high-impact photo galleries and the latest mapping technology are all integrated to help a visitor make decisions and take action.
Advanced search to get visitors to what they want. Quickly!
Results pages that produce results.
Sticky filter and contact form. Easy sharing. Beautiful PDF version.
Showing off properties properly
Easy sharing and saving. Sticky contact form and all the details a visitor needs.
MOBI WEBSITE
With over 40% of visitors searching for property on their smartphones and other mobile devices, it is vital that we offer visitors a truly mobile property search experience. The mobi website is specifically designed to enhance the user’s experience and employs a combination of touch and geolocation technology to help users locate properties near them without searching.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
All search engine optimisation efforts were focused on property related keywords and phrases that were geographically specific to the Midrand and surrounding suburbs. Original and relevant website content was generated to provide useful information to the user and ensure that Platinum Residential met the longer tail search queries. The website was then optimised with careful consideration given to the URL structure, page titles, headings and breadcrumbs. Internal links were dynamically created to ensure search engines could easily reach all internal pages while maintaining the most relevant link profile for each internal page. Sitemaps were also generated and submitted to both Bing and Google with the aim of tracking crawl rates to ensure all listings were accessible to both search engines and website visitors.
THE RESULTS
1 July - 31 Aug 2015 vs 1 April - 31 May 2015
Through the redesign, development and optimisation of the new Platinum Residential website and mobi site, we were able to greatly improve the client’s online presence and achieve their online marketing objectives. In just two short months Prop Data was able to improve the website’s search engine rankings, drive high quality traffic to the website, better engage visitors, provide a superior property search experience and ultimately improve the website’s conversion rate and generate high quality leads.
Unique
Visitors
+477%
Total
Visits
+747%
Bounce
Rate
-44.64%
Pages
Per Visit
+274%
eLeads
Generated
+100%
For the period under review the total number of visits increased by +747% from 822 to 6 962 visits. Unique visits increased by +477% from 794 to 4 578 visits. Pages viewed increased by 3 082% from 991 to 31 530 views and the average number of pages viewed per visit increased from 1.21 to 4.53. There was also a significant reduction in the bounce rate from 73.36% to 44.64%.
Accounting for over 38% of traffic, organic search is now the website's single largest source of traffic and generates the highest quality of traffic. Visitors reaching the new Platinum Residential website through organic search record one of the highest number of page views and have the lowest bounce rate.
The mobi site has also enabled Platinum to reach widest possible audience with traffic from mobile and tablet devices increasing quite dramatically. These visitors are also showing a good level of interaction with the website and generating a large percentage of leads generated.
Note: The new Platinum Residential website was launched mid June 2015. Therefore, to measure the effectiveness of Prop Data's online marketing efforts, we have removed all data from June 2015 and compared the Google Analytics data from the last 2 months (April and May 2015) with the previous service provider to the first 2 months (July and August 2015) with Prop Data.
The Prop Data team was like a breath of fresh air in an industry that is still trying to find its way in the digital age. Their knowledge and expertise from SEO to design are world class and helps to propel your business to the next level. At the end of the day it is the measurable results that matter and our new website has created a cascade of new business and increased our organic traffic by 3,640%. The leads are of a much higher quality with significant decrease in our bounce rate and a higher conversion ratio.
Their backend system is easy to use and works seamlessly taking the tireless work out of loading multiple systems for property syndication.
Their energetic team helped take the frustration out of developing a new website and turned it into an exciting and fun project. With their on-going support and advice we look forward to achieving continual growth and a building of our digital real estate.