You’ve probably heard the phrase “conversion rate” tossed around quite a bit over the last year or two.
And that can be a great thing… or a bad thing.
Great… if the information the person or website is telling you is accurate… not so great if it’s inaccurate and you follow their advice blindly without doing some testing of your own.
Our Methods: Our members generate 10k leads per month through our platform and nearly 90k visitors each month… so the data we’re delivering in this post is based off of the data we have available – which is, as far as we know, the largest dataset on real estate investor website conversion available anywhere. So if your website converts higher, and you’ve generated at least 200 seller leads through your site… awesome! Kudos to you. I’d love to see your site 🙂
So first… lets dive into the basics of what conversion rate is (specifically for a real estate investor website) and then we’ll dive into why it’s important… how to do it right… and give you a few resources that we use ourselves to improve our conversion rates.
What Is Conversion Rate Anyway?
The “conversion rate” on your website is simply the ratio between the number of people who land on your website vs. the number of people who “convert” on your website to become a lead.
That could be a cash buyer lead, motivated seller, tenant, private lender… etc.
The “conversion rate” is pretty simple to calculate.
If you have 100 visitors to that page… and 15 of them put in their info on that page and opt in as a lead for you… that is a 15% conversion rate.
A Test In Progress On A Carrot Members Website: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running right now on a motivated seller website.
How Do You Find Out The Conversion Rate?
There are a few ways to find out the conversion rate of your website.
The easiest and most accurate is using a software tool… like Google Content Experiments in your Google Analytics account (FREE, but not very user friendly), or the one that we use… VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (about $49/mo, but MUCH easier to use).
You just have to get a bit of code from the software, put it on your website… and then you set up the test in the software. Let traffic come in and it’ll tell you how many people convert as a lead.
It may take you a few hours your first time to set up a test… and unless you’re getting 100 visitors to your website each month… it’s probably not worth setting up a test (it would take many many months to come up with any real info because your traffic is so low).
If you’re on a budget and are not techie… you can just count the number of leads you had come in in a certain time period… look up the # of visitors in that same time period on your analytics… then divide the two.
What Is A Good Conversion Rate For A Real Estate Investing Website?
One of the biggest misconceptions we hear all the time (and I once thought the same thing) about conversion rates from our real estate investor clients… is that there is a “normal” conversion rate for a website in our industry.
I wish there was.
But in reality… there are so many factors that can effect how many people convert on your website into a lead that a good conversion rate for a motivated seller website… isn’t a good conversion rate for a cash buyer website or rent to own website at all.
Factors include… where the visitor is coming from before they hit your website, is your site setup to convert well, credibility on your website, colors, your logo can sometimes make or break conversions, the time of the year (yes, that can matter), and more.
Cash Buyer Website Conversion Rates
On one cash buyer test we ran earlier this year… at one point that website was converting almost 40% of all people who landed on the page to a cash buyer lead (picture of test results mid-way through below):
Cash Buyer Conversion: Results mid-way through a “split-test” on a cash buyer website for one of our InvestorCarrot members.
That is a pretty darn high conversion rate… even for a cash buyer website (we’ve worked hard to get our sites converting high – that’s why so many people LOVE having their websites with our sister company Carrot!).
But later on in that same test… the conversion rate settled in in the mid 20’s.
Why?
In this case, the website didn’t change… it was mainly a “traffic issue”. She started doing Craigslist marketing which tends to yield a higher volume of traffic but lower conversion rate.
But on average… we’re seeing cash buyer websites (when people drive the visitor to our home pages which are geared to convert well) convert between 20-40% of visitors to a cash buyer with quality traffic.
Motivated Seller Website Conversion Rates
We’ve heard people come to us asking if our motivated seller websites are converting at “25% like they used to 5 years ago”… and the answer is.. nope.
5 or 6 years ago… before every investor on the block had a website… before 30%-40% of all searches were on cell phones (and most websites aren’t optimized for mobile) and during the recession when hoards of sellers were in dire straights and just needed out (and were willing to opt into any and every website online they could find just to get out of the situation fast)… the conversion rates on a motivated seller site could consistently reach 20% or more.
And that’s a stellar conversion rate for a motivated seller website.
But times have changed a bit and conversion rates these days are a bit softer for motivated sellers.
Sellers today have more choices as far as websites to engage with online… and they are pickier with who they’ll work with online. They want to see a website that feels credible, that they can trust, and that is easy to use.
So we’re seeing motivated seller websites (depending on the quality of traffic they’re sending to the site, and what they have done to their site to improve / decrease the conversion rate) convert from 7% to 20%. 20% is an outlier… and only with organic search traffic (SEO) or direct type in traffic (See pics of real tests from our Carrot clients below).
What We Consider Average For A Sellers Website (Your Site Should Convert At Least 8-10%)
Lot’s ‘O House Seller Leads: This website is a highly trafficked home buyers website. We’re building in some of our magic into his website. The same stuff that’s already built into our Motivated Seller websites.
And another…
What We Consider Really Solid For Sellers
A Surprising Video Test
And another…
What We Consider Stellar (this rarely happens long-term on a website. During this test this site got a GREAT stretch of quality traffic. But the test is still early… so the rate will likely dip below 20%)
Conversion Rate: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running right now on a motivated seller website.
All in all, you should shoot to have your motivated seller website convert at least 10% of your visitors to leads at a minimum… and work your way toward a 15-20% conversion rate (for a quality lead) on the top end in today’s environment with building solid credibility on your website, great quality traffic (Facebook ads suck for conversion rate for sellers, decent for buyers and tenants… but terrible for sellers).
Rent to Own / Tenant Buyer Website Conversion Rates
Rent to own tenant buyers and tenants of rental properties tend to convert pretty darn well when they land on a website that is setup to convert. A tenant (or even buyer) tend to be putting in their info on your site to see available properties… so it’s a much lower commitment than a seller has in deciding to sell their house to someone.
A Really Solid Conversion Rate For a Rent To Own Site
Rent To Own Leads Flowing In: In this actively running test on a rent to own website of a Carrot client in Birmingham… you can see in the early stages of the test their site is converting on average close to 40%. This isn’t out of the norm on our rent to own websites.
Our rent to own websites have been performing really really well. After several rounds of testing (and we continue to test and improve these sites for our customers each month) we tend to see tenant buyers converting on the website between 20-40%. One customer’s website even had a string of several months (and several hundred leads) where their site converted nearly 50%. Their traffic was very high quality. But from Craigslist traffic we’re seeing anywhere from a 20-35% conversion rate… and I just happen to know that the traffic on the above test is coming from a Facebook campaign.
