Research done by Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising, and comScore shows that the more a consumer engages your website, the higher the conversion. Eyeblaster's 'Global Benchmark 2010' report examined billions of rich media impressions and found higher engagement resulted in higher conversions. An increase in 'dwell rate' from 5% to 15% resulted in a 45% conversion increase. Dwell rate was defined as a mouse over or some type of interaction with an ad.
Image provided by eMarketer.
Research also showed that high engagement led to a 39% increase in brand-related search engine searches and there are many studies that show brand related searches have a higher conversion than non-brand related studies.
What this means for home builders:
In order to get a lift in leads, there must be ample opportunity for a consumer to engage you.
Ways to increase consumer engagement are:
- Good content - Site content should be comprehensive and relevant to the entire home shopping experience. This means school info, utility info, neighborhood info, area info, etc.
- Add video - This is the easiest and quickest component to increase engagement. Consumers love video - the constant rising video stats prove it.
- Have a blog - Post at least weekly and let consumers know the lights are on AND you're home.
- Have a Facebook fan page and converse with consumers.
- Have a Twitter account and converse with consumers.
Increasing consumer engagement takes time and money. If you home builders want a lift in online conversions, you're going to have to allocate more of your budget to the online world. From my perspective, as an industry, we're getting there slowly but we have a long way to go. There is still way too much money spent on traditional media and not near enough online. For goodness sake, all our consumers are online - spend the money there. All the tools are here for us to succeed; we just need to use them.
Jim Adams - CEO
