Data Post November 5, 2009 - Forced vs. Unforced Registration Test

Website Data for October 29 - November 4, 2009

We are now reporting data for our 2nd month of testing for the Forced vs. Unforced Registration Test.  For whatever reason, the week 4 numbers were the highest totals so far and this week the totals dropped a little.  Probably a market indicator, but we'll see what happens in coming weeks.  To track other test results and view comments and posts about this topic, check out: www.forcedregistration.com.

Raw Data:

  Saint-Paul-Real-Estate.com (Unforced)
BarkerHedges.com (Forced)

 Total Visitors

1,314 1,511
 Unique Visitors
 1,016 1,210
 Avg Pages Viewed per Visitor
 12.3 10.5
 Avg Time on Site per Visitor
 7 minutes 22 seconds 6 minutes 20 seconds
 Bounce Rate
 35% 42%
    
 IDX Registrations 249
 Showing Request Forms
 22
 Property Inquiry Forms
 24
 Other Misc Forms
 10
 Call In from Website
 00
 Bad Information Given
 0

1

Analysis:

Conversion Rate:

As usual, we start with a side by side analysis of the website conversion rates.  The conversion rate is the % of Unique Visitors who convert into a lead.  We calculate leads including all lead types, minus those that give bad contact information.  For Saint-Paul-Real-Estate.com (the Unforced Website), the conversion rate was 0.67% (7 net leads ÷ 1,016 unique visitors).  For BarkerHedges.com (the Forced Site), the conversion rate was 4.46% (54 net leads ÷ 1,210 unique visitors). For those that have been following these number from week to week, the conversion rate for the Forced site is developing a very consistent trend around 4.0% - 4.5%.  BUT, the Unforced site began at 2.26% and has consistently slipped each week to a new low under 1.0%.  It's probably safe to conclude that for total volume of leads, the Forced Site is considerably more consistent from week to week.

Leads:

Now that we have a few weeks of data to report, I would like to compare the total visitors for each site against the total unique visitors for each site.  Starting with the Unforced Site, there have been 6,403 total visitors since we started testing and 4,935 unique visitors during that same timeframe.  As a percentage, the unique visitor to total visitor percentage is 77.1% for the Unforced Site (4,935 ÷ 6,403 = 77.1%).  Let's compare to the Forced Site: 5,807 unique visitors and 7,494 total visitors.  This equates to a comparison rate of 77.5% (5,807 ÷ 7,494 = 77.5%).  So what the heck am I getting at by this comparison?  Much has been written about total traffic increasing as a result of Forced Registration...meaning that when you Force someone to register they are more likely to visit the website again, and again, and again.  So far, we are not seeing this trend develop with our test.  I will do another comparison test in a few weeks to see if the numbers change during that time.  My guess is we need to do a better job of following up with the leads that we are collecting to encourage them to return to the site.  And I know that dynamic host protocols can skew this data, but I'm just looking for trends...not necessarily a comparison of hard numbers.  Any comments on this topic from those with experience would be greatly appreciated!

Last week I wrote extensively about the comparison of non-IDX leads between the Sites.  In the previous 4 weeks, the Unforced Site has performed slightly better with non-IDX leads.  This week, the Sites performed exactly the same for net non-IDX leads: 5 each.  OK, so this number is completely pathetic and we have a LOT of work to do to meet our goals for next year, but it's the 1st week that the Forced Site has performed as well as the Unforced Site.  To me, this is the most telling trend so far and I will be VERY interested to see what happens in coming weeks.

Cheers,

Brandon & Matt

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