Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 21st February 2008
Portal traffic up despite downturn
The Nationwide UK consumer index fell to its lowest level in nearly four years last month. Search figures from Google Trends suggest consumer demand is down on this time last year in almost all overseas property buying locations.
Spain,
France and
Italy are all down year-on-year with
Florida the only location
showing any increase. Despite this, all of our
top five overseas property portals reported increased traffic on this time last year.
In January 2008, the number of searches on
Rightmove.co.uk increased 25%, while unique users increased on
Primelocation.com by 30%.
The Move Channel,
FindaProperty.com and
Lead Galaxy also reported year-on-year traffic increases.
There are a number of possible explanations for this contradiction. The most obvious is that the portals have increased traffic elsewhere to offset falls in the traditional buying destinations. Although this maybe true to an extent, figures from
Primelocation.com and Rightmove suggest the traffic increases have been across traditional locations too.
This leaves two possibilites. Either more consumers are bypassing search engines in favour of property portals or the property portal market is consolidating and the bigger players are taking a bigger slice of the cake.
Either way, the implication is clear. Divert more money into advertising on property portals and prioritise spending on the larger players, as this is where consumers are spending time.
According to Lynne Dickens, Marketing Manager at
Headlands International, their cost per lead on Google is rising in the face of declining demand in the holiday home market and increased competition from other agents. Lynne recently used the information on Globaledge.co.uk to help her shortlist a number of property portals. “It’s too early to evaluate the results,” she says, but with many of the portals charging around £10 per lead, it is likely her efforts will result in lower marketing costs and more leads for the business.
If you are looking to choose property portal partners, the most important factor to consider is your potential partners’ marketing activity. Indeed, all the portals we interviewed put their recent traffic increases down to better marketing. Gerard Doyle, co-founder of Lead Galaxy, attributes their increase in lead numbers to better search engine rankings and the launch of more sub-sites. He says: “Lead numbers are higher but (if you discount the improved search positions and the extra sites) like-for-like figures are down.”
Head of Rightmove Overseas, Justin Figgins, attributes a great deal of Rightmove’s success to its New Year television push and outdoor media campaign in popular UK airports, while Ann Wright at Primelocation.com puts their achievements down to their recent re-design and promotional efforts around it.
Although traffic numbers appear to be increasing for the bigger portals, evidence from FindaProperty.com suggests that agents and portals alike are having to work harder in tougher economic conditions. Acting Head of Marketing at FindaProperty.com Hilary Douglas says: “Compared to last year we are seeing an increase in visitors window shopping but fewer of them following up with email enquiries. In Europe, the enquiry-per-property rate has halved. It will be interesting to see if the increased visitor numbers turn into enquiries as the economy improves.”