New Jersey Realtor Roberta Baldwin recently phoned her Web site sales representative from www.njDreamHouses.com – and asked, “Why have my leads dried up?”

After taking a quick peek at her site’s Traffic Analysis Report, the sales rep was baffled.

“You’re getting between 500 and 600 visitors a week,” he told her, “and it looks like at least 30 leads a week too. Maybe they’re not all strong leads, but it’s way better than what most agents are getting from their Web sites.”

The rep suggested that Baldwin, an agent with Schweppe & Co., Realtors in Upper Montclair, NJ, start adding more listings to her site, more photos and/or virtual tours of those listings, and more original content to her site’s numerous pages.

Once Baldwin took his advice, her site really took off, she says.

In fact, her Hit Report for the week of March 30 showed that her site recorded 667 “referred” visitors – that is, visitors who were referred to her site by a search engine or a link they found while surfing the 'Net. (This number does not include leads who typed her domain name directly into their browser boxes because of her local advertising.)

Those visitors were responsible for 21,596 hits on her site, 1,267 separate visits, and they averaged just over 17 requests per visit.

Those are big numbers, but what do they mean? How did all those visitors find Baldwin’s site and how do the numbers translate into actual leads?

First, some Realtors confuse traffic report terminology, believing that hits and visitors are the same thing. They aren't.

A visitor, as defined by Marketwave Hit List software from www.PilotSoftware.com, usually is defined as a unique IP address. A particular IP address may represent a unique person but, more often, one IP is shared by many people.

A request occurs when a Web server is asked to display a page (and sometimes a graphic or other object). This is what’s commonly called a hit. Requests may be generated either by a visitor going to a page, or by the page itself requesting an object like a graphic. Therefore, using the number of hits to gauge a site’s popularity can be misleading, because pages with lots of embedded graphics can wildly inflate the real numbers. For that reason, the number of visits (or the number of HTML page requests) probably will provide a more accurate picture of a site’s activity.

A visit is a collection of requests that represent all the pages and graphics seen by a particular visitor at one time. For example, a visitor to your site may go to 10 HTML pages and indirectly request 25 graphic elements. Those 35 requests represent one visit. The total number of visits usually is more than the total number of visitors, because each visitor can visit the site more than once.

Baldwin’s Hit Report is provided by her site's developer, Best Image Marketing, Inc. which explains the meaning behind her numbers.

"Those 667 visitors the second week of spring, when the real estate market was really blooming, were brought to her site via three primary means," says Barry Kushner, spokesperson for Best Image. "First, Baldwin’s 5-month-old site already is showing up high on several major search engines and directories, primarily because Best Image built Search Engine Optimization (SEO) into the site’s architecture. In fact, if you search for montclair new jersey real estate on www.Yahoo.com, the Web sites of four Best Image clients – known as Number1Experts – all appear within the first 20 positions on page 1, standing out among 11,400 total results.

"Second, Baldwin’s listings – 38 at last count, which she enters herself using a tool called Instant Listings™ provided by the site designer – are found on various sites where people look for homes, like Yahoo! (http://list.realestate.Yahoo.com) and www.HarmonHomes.com. This is because Best Image uploads its clients’ listings daily to several of the Web’s biggest listings lists."

Those are two reasons why 328 of Baldwin’s visitors that week found her via Yahoo!. In addition, Baldwin paid Yahoo’s $299 ransom – recommended by the site designer – to appear on its Directory. Yahoo! has decided to make this an annual recurring fee for any business person not grandfathered in, but it’s worth the money not just for the extra Yahoo visitors, but because other search engines often use Yahoo’s Directory to build their own databases, explains Kushner.

A third reason why Baldwin’s site generates so much activity is that Best Image markets its directory and its brand – www.Number1Expert.com – on several major search engines. For example, if you search for Realtors on Yahoo, you’ll find the company’s Sponsor Result – Prefer an Expert Real Estate Agent? Insist on a NUMBER1EXPERT – with a link to its directory of top producing agents.

Friday was the busiest day on Baldwin’s Hit Report that week, with nearly 8,000 of her 21,596 requests coming on that day. Weekdays normally generate heavier real estate traffic than weekends, but it varies from site to site.

The vast majority of Baldwin’s visitors have been from the United States, obviously. But she also received visitors from nine other countries, including several from Switzerland and Italy who clicked on numerous pages. Were these foreigners planning to relocate to the Montclair area? Only time will tell. The bottom line is that without a powerful Internet presence, Baldwin never would have attracted these visitors.

Also, it’s interesting to note that of the 1,267 total visits to her site that week, 485 of them, or 38 percent, happen to be AOL users. That is, their IP address is noted simply as America Online. Which is reason enough for Realtors never to discount AOL's enormous user universe.

The most popular pages (pages most commonly requested by visitors) were Baldwin’s listings. Once visitors found the listings on Baldwin’s site, 269 of them clicked to see extra photos or virtual tours of those homes, only to have a popup window appear, asking them to register their name and e-mail address. Seventy of those people, or 26 percent, complied and filled out the Be My Guest™ forced registration form. Those 70 visitors were automatically entered into Baldwin’s buyer database, called Homecaster™, which enables the agent to work those leads regularly.

In little more than four months, Baldwin accumulated more than 500 names in that database, and it’s become her Internet farm. She is able to send e-mail to all those buyers, and group them by their price range, by the town they’re most interested in, or any other criteria she chooses.

Baldwin works her Internet database of names every Thursday evening, she says.

“I put together a simple, three-paragraph letter,” Baldwin says, “and I use my Homecaster contact manager that comes with my site to e-mail every buyer who’s ever signed up to receive my latest listings. I wait until late Thursday because many good listings don’t appear on our MLS until later in the week.”

Baldwin’s e-mailed letter lets buyers know that she can show them the very hottest homes that have just come on the market, and that “the market continues to be swift, with many new listings being sold in their first week…” This approach keeps her in contact with many buyers. She finds that her buyers want her to communicate via email first and foremost, she says.

“My buyers are almost exclusively from my Web site now, and they are more educated about real estate than buyers who call me at the office,” Baldwin explains. “They also tend to spend more money than non-Internet buyers. Because many of them are very busy professional people, they prefer dealing with me via e-mail. And I’m happy to oblige.”

Baldwin also has the ability via her site’s Homecaster program to e-mail her Realty Times eNewsletter, the Real Estate Update, monthly to her growing database. She can also e-mail her Market Conditions Report, her market opinion, to her customers. These products are dropped onto all new Number1Expert sites for free for the first year online.

Baldwin also says that because her site is imbued with a high level of professionalism, she seems to be attracting a very affluent breed of Internet buyer. People relocating from faraway places like the United Kingdom, for example, have been finding her site and contacting her. Some of them return to her site weekly until they find what they’re seeking.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I just have to make one little suggestion to these buyers and they become hooked on using my services.”

She also believes that because her site is content rich, it not only attracts a higher class of buyer, but she’ll be able to convert those buyers more easily over time into closed transactions. Her site’s Local Info section, consisting of 10 pages of local information that Baldwin is still in the process of creating, makes her site a true community resource, especially for relocation buyers unfamiliar with her market.

“When a buyer asks me for area information, I just direct them to my site,” she says. “And as soon as I get a break from this hot spring market, I’ll start filling in more information and photos on these pages. My site is high maintenance, but it’s also very high return.”

Published: April 25, 2003

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Blanche Evans is the award-winning senior editor of Realty Times, the Internet's leading independent real estate news service. She is featured daily on the Realty Times Video Network in the "Realty Viewpoint" segment. Blanche has been named one of the "25 Most Influential People In Real Estate" by REALTOR Magazine, and has been twice recognized as a "notable." In 2005, she was named "Top Reporter Covering the NAR" by Delahaye-Bacon's. Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. To contact Blanche, email her at . For more articles by Blanche, click here.