Expert Tips to Master Google Analytics for Real Estate in 2023

laptop that an agent will use to master google analytics for real estate

Understanding the motivations of luxury home buyers and sellers as they start their journey is helpful in a variety of ways, and harnessing the power of Google Analytics for real estate through your website can provide a critical competitive edge.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), nearly half of recent home buyers began their search for properties online. Long before reaching out to an agent, the study found that many potential buyers had already done a substantial amount of research online, which helped them take a more active role throughout the buying process.

Agents who use Google Analytics to understand their clients are on a path to more leads and stronger performance online, with clearer insights into traffic, user engagement, marketing efforts, and new trends. Younger demographics will continue to rely on online searches for real estate, so becoming well-versed in Google Analytics now can provide you with an important bridge to buyers and sellers in the future.

What are website analytics?

laptop showing google analytics for real estate website

Website analytics tools enable the collection, analysis, and reporting of website data, and provide a window into how users engage with a website. The primary goal of these tools is to use new information to optimize a website and identify useful patterns in the data.

Real estate agents can use website analytics to:

  • Supplement their business goals
  • Drive and track their website goals
  • Create calls to action that boost engagement and generate more leads
  • Determine KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure goals and find out whether they are succeeding or failing
  • Boost their overall website strategy
  • Determine ways to improve user experience on the website
  • Learn more about who is visiting their site, such as users’ location, age, gender, and more
  • Determine how users behave

For many luxury real estate agents, Google Analytics is the analytics tool of choice, thanks to its user-friendly characteristics and integration with other Google services. Google Analytics is free, doesn’t require advanced computer skills, and provides a stream of real-time data that can be funneled into an overarching strategy.

With a willingness to learn on the go, Google Analytics can provide the framework to take your website to the next level. But how can you take advantage of Google Analytics to maximize outreach to home buyers? Read on for our expert tips.

Set realistic goals

Before you get started with Google Analytics, first clearly determine the goals for your website. Will it provide an educational resource for your clients, or establish yourself as an authority in the real estate industry? Is it meant to grow your audience by generating more, higher-quality leads?

Ensure your goals are as specific as possible, without becoming too fragmented. Goals can be amended as necessary, but it’s helpful to limit ambiguity and tailor goals specifically to the state of your business. Once realistic goals are in place, you’ll be in a position to harness the power of Google Analytics (or another analytical tool).

Determining your goals ahead of time will anchor you in your analytics journey. Based on the numbers you see, you’ll be able to determine whether you’re succeeding or failing at reaching your goals and determine which changes you’ll need to make in order to succeed in the future. Without clarity around your goals, it will be much more difficult to interpret your website’s performance.

Get started with Google Analytics for real estate

laptop sitting on desk

Google Analytics is simple to install on your website. However, if you’re not tech-savvy, you may find the setup process a little intimidating. The good news is that the basics of Google Analytics can be mastered in a couple of ways. The Google Analytics Academy is designed for beginners, making it especially helpful for agents who just need a little push. It’s also useful for those who have used Google Analytics in the past, but require a refresher.

For those who’d like a little extra help, we recommend you reach out to your web developer or a trustworthy SEO consultant to help you install Google Analytics. There are also many online guides available. Google Analytics also isn’t the only player in the space, there are a host of other website analytic tools you can use instead.

Once the tool is installed, you will have access to a wide range of invaluable tools to help you measure your website’s overall health. It’s worth keeping in mind that Google is set to transition to Google Analytics 4 in July 2023, although the switch shouldn’t be too taxing for those using the older version.

Brush up on website analytics terms

agent sitting at desk taking notes

No matter which website analytics tool you choose, you will come across a variety of unfamiliar terminology. We have done the research on your behalf, gathering the most common terms you will run across and defining them in one place.

Regardless of which analytics tool you choose, you’ll come across common terminology for understanding website performance. Below are some of the most common terms:

Visitor metrics

One of the metrics website analytics allows you to track is the number of visitors to your website. Visitor metrics include:

  • Visits: This is the number of visitors who have traveled to your website in any given period of time.
  • Unique visitors: When a person uses a cookie on their computer, they are only counted once in a certain period of time—even if they visited your site multiple times.
  • New vs. returning visitors: New visitors are those who have never been to your website before, while returning visitors have. For now, those metrics are measured through cookies. For example, Susan visits your website once and is counted as a new visitor. Your analytics then places a cookie on her computer. Until that cookie expires, Susan will count as a returning visitor if she visits your website in the future.
  • Average duration/time on site: This refers to the average amount of time users spend on your website. It’s calculated by dividing the total amount of time spent on your website by the total number of visits.
  • Page views: This refers to the number of pages that have been viewed on your website. Page views are calculated by dividing the total page views in a given timeframe by the total number of visits in that same period of time.

Once you know who your visitors are, web analytics can help you determine where your traffic is coming from.

This metric is referred to as common traffic sources. There are a total of four common traffic source groups, and depending on which analytics tool you’re using, you may find that there are a variety of subgroups as well.

The 4 common traffic source groups

1. Direct: Direct traffic visits your website directly by typing your URL into the search bar, or if they have your website saved as a bookmark, by clicking the bookmark. Sometimes traffic is counted as direct traffic through other routes, such as untagged links and bad redirects.

2. Search: Search traffic refers to users who visit your site after finding it in the SERPs (search engine result pages). Most platforms allow you to track Paid, Natural, or Organic searches.

  • Paid Searches: Visitors that reached your site after clicking on a Paid Search ad you paid to show up for them. These searches are based on certain search terms.
  • Organic Searches: These visitors found your website by searching certain keywords, and your website showed up in the SERPs organically. They then chose to visit your website based on your resulting webpage’s title and description.

3. Referrals: This type of traffic is referred to your website from another website. This can happen through a blog in which your website was mentioned and linked to. Referral traffic does not visit your website through search engines.

4. Other: Any other campaign-based traffic that you have tagged for specific tracking purposes, such as social media links or email marketing links, falls into this category.

Understand the 13 essential Google Analytics reports for real estate websites

Google Analytics data is broken down into subsections, with each portion providing a different type of insight into the user. Consider the 13 reports that are most valuable when it comes to Google Analytics for real estate:

Channels

This is where you find out whether your marketing efforts are paying off. Google Analytics channels are broken down by traffic groups, such as direct search, organic search, paid search, referrals, and email. Through channels, you can see exactly how users are getting to your site and determine whether you have the right marketing approach.

Google Analytics makes using and understanding channels fairly easy; the default channel group ends up working for many agents. For those who want a little more customization, you can add new channel groups or edit the default group in a way that caters better to your website. These channels can be a powerful tool and provide some of the most valuable data about prospective home buyers.

Source/medium

Source is the place your website traffic comes from, like Instagram or Google, while medium describes how they got there, such as through a referral link or an organic search. Both source and medium give more specific information about your traffic compared to the broader “channel” categories like “Social” or “Organic Search”. Simply put, source and medium details help define these broader channels. By exploring these categories, you can better understand the flow of traffic to your site.

Behavior flow

Once you know how a potential home buyer is getting to your site, behavior flow tells you what they’re doing once they get there. One of the biggest benefits is seeing what content is engaging users and what content isn’t generating much enthusiasm. Behavior flow can also pinpoint content issues that could be minimizing overall user engagement.

Additionally, you can find patterns that show the pathway of the average user. A user might start on your landing page, move over to your top real estate holdings, and finish a session with your contact information. With behavior flow, you can start to understand how users are experiencing your website.

New vs. returning visitors

Although this sounds self-explanatory, there are some quirks to be aware of. Someone who visits your site on a mobile device and then on a PC can often be considered two different visitors. The goal here is to cultivate return visitors while generating a steady trickle of new ones.

Three subsets in this category (sessions, behavior, and goals) are also very illuminating. With the sessions tab, you can see the total number of sessions for new and returning visitors. Within the behavior tab, the bounce rate shows you whether visitors are looking at a second page or leaving quickly. You can also use the goal’s subcategory to figure out if visitors are engaging the way you hope they will (e.g., signing up for your newsletter).

Landing pages

A landing page is simply whatever page a visitor happens to land on, but the analytics report can provide a nice breakdown for a real estate website. The landing page report can tell you if users are landing where you think they should, how long they’re engaging, and whether they’re triggering conversion events. For most agents, a conversion event usually is something like a user contacting or requesting more information after viewing a landing page.

Top events

Nearly any event can be tracked through Google Analytics. Examples of events include form completions, link clicks, video views, and plenty of others as well. The key is knowing what’s important to your real estate business. Although an automatically collected event, like a page view, will give you basic information, enhanced measures can track things like page scrolls and file downloads.

While Google’s Universal Analytics provides plenty of event tracking, agents should have even more data control within event tracking after the transition to Google Analytics 4.

Exit pages

An exit page is the last page that a visitor looks at before closing the session. Although the data about your exit pages is helpful in a variety of ways, mostly the information is used to see what went wrong. Did you not answer the question a user came to find out? Is a low level of readability sending visitors to a competitor? These are questions you can find answers to within your exit page reports.

They also can help you determine how effective your calls to action are. If visitors are leaving instead of triggering a conversion event, it can be time to dig back into your CTAs and try again.

Search terms

The search terms, or keywords, that are driving traffic help you understand how effective your website is at competing for the attention of visitors. Within the source/medium section, you can head over to the keyword subsection and get some basic information about search terms.

Unfortunately, the information here can be limited, and changing over to Google Analytics 4 might not improve the situation. Instead, you can connect Google Analytics to the Google Search Console for a much better understanding of how search terms are sending traffic to your site.

Content drilldown

Content drilldown provides similar information as the “all pages” section, though it can help you understand your traffic by page category. Are visitors mostly going to your listings’ category? Are they finding their way to your “Success Stories” section? Although smaller sites might not find content drilldown that useful, larger ones can use content drilldown to effectively audit the content and architecture of the site.

Location

Location reports are especially helpful for a real estate agent website. Looking at the location of visitors tells you whether you’re getting traffic mostly from those already in the area, or whether you’re dealing with out-of-towners. Even if the location data is only a close approximation of a visitor’s geography, the patterns that emerge can be very telling for an agent.

Age/gender

Generating demographic reports is not an automatic feature in Google Analytics—you’ll need to enable the feature during setup. All you have to do is enable Advertising Reporting as well as the Demographics and Interests feature. Once enabled, you can get an excellent idea of the demographics that are actively perusing your real estate website. Without having at least some insight into demographic basics, you’ll have a much harder time tailoring your web content and reaching potential home buyers/sellers.

Devices

As the NAR report suggests, home buyers are increasingly turning to mobile devices for researching real estate. This means that you should be scouring the Devices report on Google Analytics to make sure you’re keeping up with the trend. If your website is attracting more PC than mobile traffic, this could be a sign that you need to improve your website with the mobile experience in mind.

This is why it’s also helpful to have a good idea about the demographics in your area; in areas with a predominately older clientele, higher PC use might be perfectly normal.

Frequency/recency

This is an area where you can easily customize the results to get a better understanding of how often visitors are returning to your site. Although the basic information points to your site’s return value, you can also break down your data by demographic to give you helpful insights. With this information, you should be able to enhance your lead-generation strategy to ensure you’re maximizing your outreach.

Frequency and recency also inform you about how well return visitors are driving conversions (essential actions). Websites with high frequency/recency rates and low conversion rates can begin to make the necessary corrections after evaluating the frequency and recency report.

Get the most out of Google Analytics with Luxury Presence

Although building an aesthetically appealing website is a helpful step for any real estate agent, analytical tools will take your website to a completely different level of effectiveness.

Built for the busy real estate professional, Luxury Presence’s platform can help you get started with Google Analytics and begin the process of optimizing your digital brand. By using data and insights into user behavior, you can boost growth and engagement now, while also building a strategy for whatever comes next.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you tap into a data-driven approach to finding clients online.

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