The quickest path to more leads

Note: 1000WATT offers full Usability Testing and conversion analysis for real estate websites and apps. We take care of everything – recruiting participants, developing tasks, conducting the test, recording the test, and identifying specific improvements you can make to boost conversions.

If you’re not sure why you should perform usability tests on your website, read on.

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If someone walked into your office today and said, “I see three or four simple changes you can make on your website or app that will increase the number of leads you’re getting significantly,” you’d roll your eyes.

But the results of usability testing can be both that simple and that dramatic.

Usability is much more than colors, nav items, button placement, copy and making your users feel good.

Usability, ultimately, is about conversion. If you help the people using your desktop site, mobile site or app get what they want, you will be much more likely to get what you want – a phone call, a showing, a listing appointment or whatever your goal may be.

Leads are the prized outcome of your efforts to make it easy for your people to find what they’re looking for.

Given the importance of leads in this business, it’s surprising that more brokerages don’t regularly conduct usability tests on their websites as part of a strategy to both increase direct leads and improve conversions with the traffic they’re already getting.

We think it may have to do with these three assumptions that are dead wrong:

1. We just redesigned our site. We’re good.

Wrong. This is a fantastic time to do some usability testing of your site – unless you and your vendor did regular testing with real users throughout the redesign process.

Redesigns are exhausting. They take a lot out of you and your team. When they go live, it can be a relief to finally put that baby to sleep.

But, in this case, you’d be wise to continue to wake the baby for usability testing.

The digital world never stops changing. All that hard work that went into your redesign is basically pointless if you just flip the switch then walk away to focus on other things.

Testing will help you uncover pain points and identify new opportunities.

2. This isn’t core to our business right now.

You may not think your website’s usability is core to your business, but it is.

Even if you’re the type of brokerage that flies high on good old-fashioned person-to-person referrals, you’ll benefit greatly from testing your website.

In other words, business may be good already, but who would turn away a 30% increase in the amount of leads you convert directly through your own website?

The answer is no one!

3. We don’t need usability testing. We have analytics and do data-driven testing.

Analytics will tell you what happened. You absolutely should view them and use them to help guide your thinking.

But where analytics fall short is failing to answer why things happened.

• Why did so many users drop off at exactly the same point in the registration process?
  
• Why did so many users miss the call to action at the top?
  
• Why did no user choose a path you intended for them to easily navigate?
  

Usability testing gives you a first-hand window into the answers to all of these questions and more.

It never fails to turn up important insights. And when those insights and recommendations are acted on, it always results in more leads.

And that’s really what it’s all about.