In part three of this blog series, we're going to dive into conversion metrics for your property management website. Acquiring traffic and measuring user behavior to optimize your website sets the stage for you to accomplish your primary objective: getting more property management leads.
To measure conversion, you need to define it—and you do that by setting goals.
Take, for example, this scenario:
You've decided to start managing vacation rentals as well as long term rentals. You've done a lot of research into what has worked for some of your peers in another state, and they've mentored you to the point that you're ready to launch your program. Your friends have told you that there are three signals that a prospect is going to be an easy sell:
In Google Analytics, goals are predetermined criteria like the list above. You define what a conversion/goal is because there are simply too many variables for Google to be able to qualify a conversion for you. In the scenario above, your goals might look like:
As with most things marketing, HubSpot takes a much more simplified view of conversions than Google Analytics. Why? HubSpot wanted to create a platform that made marketing more accessible to growing businesses. Not every business can afford to work with an agency—and not every business wants to.
Further, when you have a platform that ties your marketing, operations, and service together, it means you can get so much more from an agency than working with one that employs a number of one-off programs all cobbled together. HubSpot means to simplify your process, so you get more value—whether you are running it yourself, or with an agency like Geekly Media.
For this reason, a "conversion" in HubSpot terms is what most of us would naturally assume a conversion to be: a lead generated by your inbound marketing efforts. Since this is a very straightforward number, your focus for this property management website metric should be to look at the success rates of the tools that lead to conversions. There are two tools I look at when digging into conversions and how I can optimize a website for better conversion rates: Forms and CTAs.
To convert, a user fills out a form on your website. It can be as simple as asking for an email address for a blog subscription module to the far more complicated automated rental analysis form that captures full property data.
Both are considered a conversion, so you'll want to look at which forms provide the most qualified (likely to sign on) leads. Blog subscription forms are probably not going to net a sale as easily as a rental analysis submission will.
The view-to-submission rate will tell you whether your content on the landing page is compelling enough or whether your form is asking for too much in comparison to perceived value.
Are tenants constantly filling out a form meant for owners? That might mean that while your form is getting views, it probably isn't where an owner would be looking. Try moving it or changing the path to that form or using smart content to ensure only owners can see it.
This one is pretty valuable. Do users from Facebook fill out your form more than users from organic search? Learning where your submissions come from is useful data that informs you of where to drive traffic from.
You'll use call-to-action buttons all over a conversion-optimized property management website because they're very effective at getting a user to take a desired action.
A CTA usually leads to a page with a form; you'll look at CTA metrics a little differently. They go from views to clicks to submissions. You'll probably see a funnel effect here, but you can still gather some important data: do certain style CTAs get more clicks or submissions?
You can also look at CTA metrics based on content type: are your email CTAs performing well—but your blog CTAs aren't? These metrics can give you clues as to how to optimize your property management website to increase conversions.
If you want to get started applying some of the knowledge you've learned in this blog, a great option would be to download our Property Manager's Guide to SEO in 2020! We explain all of the elements of SEO that a new user should know and give you a 30-day plan for SEO success for your property management website! Stay tuned for our next blog on SEO to help tie together what you've learned and maximize your action plan!