This Little Light of Mine. . .

March 30, 2007 |

I saw a post on the Inman blog that covered the debate about requiring registration for access to real estate web sites. I found the post to be quite relevant for two reasons. 1) My wife and I recently rolled out our new website (no registration required); and 2) I recently discussed this exact issue with another agent from another market. It seems to me that it is worth continuing the discussion here.

Personally, I am against requiring registration for access to real estate websites. I guess that is pretty obvious, given my own site. Sure, my website has lead generation forms, but only for people who WANT to fill them out. Obviously, I want to work with people who want to work with me. For those who don’t, I’m certainly not going to try and extort information from them.

I see the benefit of not requiring registration to be two-fold. First, I know that everyone that registers on my site is doing so because they want to do so. They like the site, and they like the information it provides, and they would like more of that information. The second benefit is an extension of the first, these people have qualified themselves. I don’t have to email every John or Jane Doe that registers in order to determine their level of interest. I don’t have to waste time and effort on people who are simply trying to browse. For the consumers, they don’t have to waste their time and inbox space with emails that they didn’t want in the first place.

I know that personally, when I go to a website that requires registration for routine information, I usually move on. The registration had better offer me a unique benefit that simply isn’t available anywhere else. This isn’t true of most real estate websites. And if it is true of a site, if the site is really offering unique and valuable information, why would anyone want to hide that information behind a wall?

My goal is to build a site that offers the highest-quality information in the most effective way in order to give the consumer the greatest possible benefit. The more people that have access to this site, the better. It makes my life easier, and more importantly, it makes their lives better.

This little real estate light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. . .

[tags] real estate, realtor, charlottesville, virginia, web 2.0, re.net, real estate webmasters, marketing, real estate marketing [/tags]

Posted by Daniel | Filed Under Buying, Industry Issues, Selling 

Comments

7 Responses to “This Little Light of Mine. . .”

  1. Jim Duncan on March 30th, 2007 9:10 pm

    The new site looks great.

    [Reply]

  2. Daniel Rothamel on March 30th, 2007 9:33 pm

    Jim,

    Thanks for the compliment!

    [Reply]

  3. Waldo Jaquith on March 31st, 2007 2:56 am

    Speaking only as a consumer of real estate, ain’t no way I’d register to look at listings. There’s less than no way. You’d have to be nuts to think that’s a good idea.

    [Reply]

  4. David Smith on April 1st, 2007 11:19 am

    Daniel,

    REW Sites are great. You new site look very good. However, your blog isn’t fitting inside the area allowed. You or Aaron might want to check on that.
    Congratulations. It is a great looking site.

    [Reply]

  5. David Smith on April 1st, 2007 11:20 am

    BTW those little urchin trackers you have there are creating about 34 W3C validation errors on every page where they appear.

    [Reply]

  6. Reuben Moore on April 3rd, 2007 8:14 pm

    Hi Daniel -

    This business about registration just kills me. Why? Because I totally agree with you. Heck, I even put a note on the index page of our site proclaiming it to be “Registration Free.” And, I have no intention of changing this policy. However, I am aware of many in this business, locally at least, who swear by this practice. Yes, they say, it turns off a fair number of folks, but we get so many good leads by requiring registration, we just don’t care.

    Just another example why people prefer used car salesmen over real estate agents.

    BTW, nice looking new website….

    [Reply]

  7. Glenn on December 19th, 2007 9:03 pm

    Daniel,

    Since 1998 we have provided Internet marketing services to Realtors and have worked with Realtor in 39 states. Many clients from 98 and 99 are still with us. We ran tests on the registration question and found that three times as many people entered the MLS search when they did not have to register. In either case very few people subscribed (less than 5%) to the service in order to recieve updates on new listings. We were not satisfied with the results and continued to search for a way to significantly improve the conversion rate.

    Our research concluded that over 90% of the website visitors do not want to communicate with a Realtor and are not ready to buy a house. Based upon this conclusion we changed the website presentation saying “No one will contact you unless you request information”. With this change we have consistently achieved a 10% to 15% conversion rate (ten to fifteen visitors out of each 100 provide their search criteria and contact info).

    [Reply]

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