So you’re ready. You’re a believer. You’re sold on the fact that you need a website for your real estate business. What’s more, you’re not just sold that you need a website, but you now know the importance of making a good first impression and keeping your design focused the visitor’s goals and the user experience. You’re raring to go and are prepared to invested time and money into crafting your perfect homepage. Now I want to let you in on a little secret.
Your homepage is not the most important page on your website.
If you read my first blog post then you know the importance of giving site visitors a very focused web-experience (focus meaning the ability to find what they are looking for) on the homepage of your website. And that’s true. With that said, the vast majority of your web traffic never comes through your homepage. And even for those that do, the homepage is still not the most important page on your site.
And I can already hear the questions being leveled at the screen:
What is the most important page on my website? How do I know what the most important page on my website is? You mean that most people won’t see rotating photos of my new kittens when they come to my website? What should I do?
Well, I’ll take a minute to answer those questions.
1) What’s the Most Important Page on My Website?
The truth is . . . I don’t know.
Not yet.
At least not without looking at your analytics. Which leads us into question number two . . .
2) How Do I Know What The Most Important Page On My Website Is?
Ana-whaat, you ask? “Analytics” is just a fancy word for data that shows how people have been interacting with your website. You’ll be able to see what pages are getting the most traffic, thus finding the answer to the ever-important question: What pages on my website are the most important?
If a page is getting more traffic than its counterparts, it reveals that there is something valuable the visitor expects to find there. People are coming to that page because they expect to see something specific. The more people going to that page, the more interest there is about that specific topic.
Knowing which pages are visited most frequently will give you the advantage of crafting even more related content.
For example, if you have a content page about “Homes with Swimming Pools” and that page is getting really heavy traffic, then you know there’s even greater potential to garner leads from that content. And lets not forget – what is the goal of your real estate website? More qualified leads!
Visitors driven to pages with the intention of finding very specific content are often more qualified than those that respond to calls-to-action for less specific content. If your goal is more qualified leads, be sure to include detailed, relevant content.
3) Will People See Pictures of My New Kittens?
Sorry. ‘fraid not.
4) What Should I Do About This Information?
Once you learn what pages are most visited, you can then look at your analytics to gain a deeper understanding of how people are interacting with those pages. Analytics provides us with an incredible level of insight into how visitors are using your website.
Got a high Bounce Rate? People aren’t easily finding relevant content. Seeing lengthy Time on Page stats? The opposite is likely true. These are the kinds of insights we can glean from good, comprehensive analytics. It’s not enough just to know what pages are getting the most traffic. It’s imperative to understand how effective those pages are. Once the analytics for a particular page have been fully explored, you have the opportunity to beef up that page with content, graphics, and calls-to-action that will be most helpful for the user and give you an opportunity to turn a site visitor into a captured lead. Design must be informed by data. Use that data to guide you where you put your design dollars.
Take Advantage of Analytics Now
Does your website have Analytics setup? If not, make sure you set it up now to track your most-visited pages. To go a step further, setup a Crazyegg report to see where on your pages the most people are clicking. This will tell you if you need to restructure your most popular pages or if people are finding what they need the way everything is now. See something in your Analytics you don’t understand? Let us know. We’d be happy to help decipher your report.
Until my next post,
Ryan
P.S. Design Powered by Data Combined with Our Powerful Dakno Admin!
Whether it’s our incredible new responsive Starter Theme, or a completely custom Superior responsive site, don’t forget it’s the marketing of the site with an easy to use CRM that connects and converts visitors to clients ($$$$)! Be sure to take a look at our monthly marketing packages that include our Dakno Admin/CRM/IDX/Blog.