In a three part series, Inman News Real Estate and Technology looks at real estate professionals are using web analytics tools for site optimization, increasing traffic, and learning more about their site’s demographics and customer needs. And they are already incorporating and recommending Woopra for web analytics.

According to the article author, evaluating web metrics is a complex issue and not always possible with most web analytics programs which are for general sites, not real estate specific sites.

If the debate over whether agents and brokers should send their listings to real estate portals has largely run its course, the question remains: Which sites should you send listings to? And which sites are worthy of pricey listings “enhancements” such as better placement and content?

Tracking where to put your time and money for promoting your services and converting lurkers into customers is a challenge with the real estate industry. The article invites readers to comment on several of the packages most commonly used by Realtors including Hitwise, comScore, Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, and the real estate targeted Visistat.com.

As they evaluated all their different options, in part two of the series, they choose Woopra as the future of web analytics for the real estate industry. In “Woopra is in Demand,” they compared Woopra to Visistate and said:

One of the best-known tools for gathering Web site metrics is Google Analytics. But competitors such as Visistat and Woopra are targeting real estate professionals, saying they can provide more sophisticated analysis in an easier-to-use format.

…Like Visistat.com, Woopra aims to make Web metrics instantaneous and simple to do, while still providing advanced users with lots of options for interpreting the traffic that comes to their site.

…With its stealthy dark-blue backdrop, the Woopra dashboard has a slicker feel to it than Visistat’s bright, report-oriented layout, although both services have similar capabilities.

…Once users get over the application’s wow factor, Woopra, like Visistat, allows plenty of flexibility in analyzing traffic. Capabilities Pozadzides claims are unique to Woopra include the ability to tag visitors, set up notifications when they arrive at a site, and engage in live chats.

“If I’m a Realtor, that’s pretty interesting to me — to see my visitors and get instant notification when they visit the site,” he said. “Depending on how you want to deal with that, you could open up a chat, or if I didn’t want to be invasive, you could happen to give them a phone call five minutes later.”

What Do Real Estate Agents Really Need?

When it comes to the specialization features associated with the real estate industry, what do they really need? According to the article series, they need:

• Immediate response times to web inquiries.
• Live monitoring of web traffic and statistics in order to respond immediately.
• Ability to contact and communicate with customers in many flexible ways (phone, cell, snail mail, web contact forms, live chat, instant messaging…).
• Ability to track referrers online and off.
• Ability to track and manage customer and property data.
• Ability to track customers to specific property interests.
• Ad campaign tracking.
• Ad conversion tracking.
• Trends and fads through web metrics and click tracking.
• Site statistics to show to prospective clients.
• Use site statistics and analytics to influence clients to rethink pricing or marketing strategies.
• Ability to track comparable sales and market conditions.

There is only so much information web analytics programs can collect. However, the ability to tie them in with outside data makes programs like Woopra interesting to many real estate technology developers. Woopra will soon release our API to the public, opening the door to third party programs.

For example, the article explains how web analytics and statistics can help a Realtor with clients:

…it can also help agents land and work with prospects.

An agent or broker can show statistics about their site when making listings presentations, for example.

“You can say, look, I’m paying a fortune on Realtor.com and it’s paying off” in site traffic, Bean said.

Visistat.com enables brokers to say, “This is how hard I work to get to the top of search engines, and be able to prove that,” she said. “They can challenge (clients) to find another Realtor who can quantify and measure their traffic. It gives them the edge. They need to be able to not only speak to their clients about the presence they have on the Internet, but show them.”

The ability to run Web analytics reports on an individual listing might also help an agent build a case for a price reduction, she said.

There are many fascinating ways Woopra and other web analytics programs work with businesses to help them serve their customers needs. Do you have a good example? Want to share your story? Email Lorelle at Woopra.com and we may feature your business, website or blog here on the Woopra.