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Who are you again?

Understanding new and returning visitors to improve your customer experience and increase your conversion rate, says digital marketing expert, Nelly Berova.

Nelly Berova

Link to Marketing featureIf you want to give your digital marketing a reality check, it’s worth having a delve into Google Analytics to see how your customers are behaving. Specifically, you need to look at your returning visitors – those people who have been to your site before and who you’ve brought back with your relationship building techniques.

We’ve analysed our clients’ websites which showed that as many as 50 per cent of estate agency enquires could be coming from these returning visitors. Yet they make up just 20 per cent of people arriving at your site. We look further into what you can learn from new and returning website visitors.

Who are new and returning visitors?

Anyone who visits your site for the first time, from a new device, whether their phone, tablet, home laptop or work PC, is classed as a new visitor by Google.

Nelly Berova image

Nelly Berova

A returning visitor is someone who comes back to your site for a repeat visit (within a period of two years). They may be drawn back because they’ve seen a website banner advert, as part of your remarking strategy, elsewhere on the web, or on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Alternatively, you may have caught their attention with a well targeted piece of email marketing.

Finding out more about new and returning visitors

To understand how your visitors are behaving, you need to interrogate Google Analytics. From Google’s audience behaviour data, you’ll be able to see how many new and returning customers came to your site and what they did – whether they moved to another page, or left altogether and how long they spent there. By setting up your own conversion goals on Google Analytics, you can also find out whether these customers responded to your desired call to action – booking a valuation, scheduling a call or filling out an enquiry form, perhaps.

Unpicking customer behaviour

It’s not surprising that returning visitors are a lot more readily-converted than new ones. Few people visit a website and are convinced to commit to a purchase there and then – in most cases visitors are browsing or doing their research. But they are interested. Your job now is to build on that interest by developing a relationship with them.

Analysis of our clients’ sites shows as many as 50 per cent of estate agency enquires could be coming from these returning visitors.

This is particularly true of the estate agency business, where you’re dealing with people on the verge of making life-changing decisions. Take the example of a landlord who already rents out a property, but may be thinking about changing agents. They might be passively looking at what you have to offer but not ready to move their business right away. A strong follow-up campaign will reinforce you brand, assuring them you’re a contender and place you front of mind when they’re ready to commit.

What to do with this intelligence

You need to make sure you have everything in place to really capture the attention of your new visitors and make sure they return. This means having a confident, recognisable brand, an optimised website that takes people where you need them to go and all the steps in place to direct your new visitor on a clear customer journey.

There are two main things to concentrate on here – we touched on them both earlier:

Retargeting (or remarketing) – this means boosting your digital marketing by showing your adverts to people who have already visited your website, as they continue to browse the internet or their social media accounts. It involves placing a piece of code (a pixel) on your website, which adds a cookie to your customer’s browser. _ is cookie tells Google or Facebook to target the customer with the right type of advert. It works because it ensures your ads are seen by people already looking at your site, whether they are buyers, vendors, landlords or tenants. Plus, it happens instantly.

Email marketing – this more traditional approach involves getting your new visitors to give you their email addresses in return for something of value such as an ebook, checklist or place on a webinar. Once you have their details you can build that crucial relationship with precise information geared to them and their pain points – guides to staging a home or understanding pricing strategies for would-be vendors, for example.

Some of this might sound a bit technical and it’s true you’ll need someone with a head for stats to dig into the analytics for you. However, the key message is quite simple. Unless you recognise the importance of nurturing new visitors and bringing them back to your site, with techniques such as remarketing and email marketing, you could be missing out on a substantial number of enquiries.

Got a question? Contact Nelly and her team: www.artdivision.co.uk

March 1, 2021

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