After my last post I was asked to look more closely at traffic trends to realestate.com.au over the holidays (thanks, Glenn and others). What really happens? Is it different by state? This post is in response to those questions.
(Note, this post is in direct response to requests for info. I’m not trying to force realestate.com.au down anyone’s throat here. Also, my apologies for the different chart sizes; I’m still getting the hang of inserting those.)
Here are the key results:
Regarding leads, I was frankly surprised. I’ve provided the numbers as well as the chart, so you can make sure I didn’t screw up the math.
I had guessed that the increase in traffic in January would reduce the lead: UB ratio, but the ratio actually rose that month, so there were more leads per browser rather than fewer.
Assuming those leads represent serious homebuyers, that’s another reason agents might not want to take a break from their business in January. Apart from the leads themselves, this is another indication that rather than slow, the real estate market heats up in January.
Nov 06
Email leads 415,000
UBs 2,959,862
Ratio 0.1402
Leads:UBs Ratio 0.1402 (Or 14 leads per 100 UBs.)
Dec 06
Email leads 352,700
UBs 2,477,354
Leads:UBs Ratio 0.1424 (Or 14 and a quarter leads per 100 UBs.)
Jan 07
Email leads 562,000
UBs 3,342,880
Leads:UBs Ratio 0.1681 (Or about 17 leads per 100 UBs.)
I also looked at the UBs per state for you.
The 2005/06 Christmas season had a stronger December (11% down from Nov.) in terms of unique browsers than the 2006/07 season (16% down from Nov.). (However, in absolute numbers, 2006/07 had far more traffic.)
In both seasons, January popped back by with 34% (2005/06) and 35% (2006/07) growth over December.
Here’s something else I never would have guessed. Tasmania is the only state to have it’s traffic increase each month, right through the Christmas season (in 2006/07) This has little effect on the overall numbers because of the relatively small amount of traffic in Tasmania vs.—say—New South Wales. However, it would be interesting to learn more about what it reveals about Tasmania.
Does anyone have any ideas for the reason behind this anomaly? Perhaps a Tassie agent out there?
PS: Note that this isn’t an answer to every question raised in response to the last post, but I’m sure over time we’ll get to just about everything, together.
5 Comments
Dion
Dave. It’s Christmas, have a holiday mate. Let’s save all things REA for next year.
PaulD
Dave,
In January 06, my office had 14,048 UB’s (from REA only) that looks to be about as much as the whole of Tassie combined. The big increase over the following year was probably just more and more agents coming on stream and more and more property being available, rather than any other mysterious reason.
Dave Platter
Thanks for sharing that, Paul.
Glenn Batten
Dave,
Thanks for that. Interesting to note that your stats are about double those of PaulD’s. I trust this is because the browser is unique but the emails are a total count .. ie. so if somebody emails three agents, then as far as your stats they are only one unique browser for three emails… but as far as the agent’s stats are concerned thats one unique browser and one email.
Also, PaulD and I were raising the issue of the trend of those stats over the years. I believe that more people are tending to phone now rather than use the email facility (mainly because of the lack of response from many agents) and thus I believe that the yearly trend has been slowly down for emails per UB. PaulD stats seem to confirm that as well. Is that what REA is seeing?
Lucas commented in the other post that Domain is higher now than 04.. but the answer did not really match the question so I dont know if that is a case of just picking two years that gave them the best answer or whether thats all the info he has.
Interesting to note the monthly increase in January was 34-35% for the last two years. I looked around that period and found the drop off and spike for those two months for us were particularly in the 2 weeks wither side of the new year. Traffic on the website (not all look at property as we have 150+ other pages on the site) to the first 2 weeks of January was 250% of the last 2 weeks of Dec so I reckon that is where most of your 35% will lie.
Dave Platter
Glenn, interesting observations. Thanks.
A comment regarding what you say here: “Interesting to note that your stats are about double those of PaulD