User Behavior

Making Better Property Websites

By Geneva Ives on Aug 16, 2016 in Marketing

If you’re at all involved with property marketing, you’ve probably been part of more than a few discussions about property marketing websites and their ability to convert prospects to leads and leads to leases.

Great web conversions depend on your ability to truly understand your website visitors. How do they behave on your sites? What do they care about? How easy is it for them to get the information they need and take the next step?

During this week’s Yardi Marketing Forum in Seattle, our very own Tudor Manole, development project manager for RentCafe, will lead a session that takes a deep dive into user behavior on property websites through analytics, user testing, and real-time recording. For those of us unable to be at the forum in person, here is a quick synopsis of his presentation, “Gold Star for Good Behavior,” as well as a few insights that you may be able put to work on your own sites to increase web conversions.

At a glance, can you tell whether a website – in any industry – will convert or not?

Yes and no. Great web conversions depend on the ability to craft a simple user experience that is intuitive, uncluttered, and can be navigated without instructions. So visibly, a straightforward site with a clear user journey is a great start. But there is other data we have to take into account to create a successful website too.

What is user experience and why is it important?

For a website to convert leads, it has to have a user experience that helps prospects complete the conversion process instead of abandoning the site. User experience (UX) design means observing user behavior in many different ways, and natural use of product is one that should not be overlooked.

Natural use of product is the use of a product in which the user’s actions are not affected by the person or people conducting the study. Unlike focus groups where users’ actions can be influenced by the environment, natural use of product allows us to observe authentic behavior.

At Yardi, we use HotJar, which allows us to record visitor activity on our websites in video format. Our UX team then spends hours watching recordings and observing behaviors, allowing us to draw meaningful conclusions in regard to how visitors interact with our clients’ property marketing websites.

Why was this an important initiative for Yardi? 

One of our goals on the product here is to never be satisfied. We’re always looking to make things better. This is very true with the websites that we build for our RENTCafé clients.

We realize that there are many vendors out there providing property marketing websites. Some are good, and some are better. We want ours to be the best for our clients, and also for our clients’ clients: renters!

We know that a website is the best not when someone says so, but when it serves its purpose. For our clients, that purpose is to fill vacancies, and for website visitors it’s to find a home. With this initiative, we have set on a quest to help our clients’ websites serve their purpose. And as with everything else Yardi does, we invite our clients to join us on this quest.

For example, we have partnered with Pinnacle to learn more about visitor behavior on their RentCafe powered property marketing websites, and we are working to refine the user experience and improve conversions – not only for Pinnacle but for all our clients.

Are there any stats from the partnership with Pinnacle that you can share?

Some of the websites that we have tested for them have seen a 100% increase in conversion rates, and the newly optimized pages that we have turned on for these websites have decreased abandonment rates during the application funnel by 20%.

How can Yardi be a partner in achieving website success?

Yardi is invested in continuous innovation and this shows in what the RentCafe platform has become in recent years. We take important steps to maximize the potential of our clients’ websites through conversion optimization efforts. We are also give our clients the tools they need to drive traffic to their websites, and then target these visitors with nudge marketing messages while they are navigating on the sites, in order maximize leads and generate more leases.

What are some industry best practices to ensure property websites get a “Gold Star for Good Behavior”?

• Put some focus on floor plans. Our studies have shown that 2D and 3D color floorplans engage more than black and white floor plans. And give your floor plans meaningful names rather than letter-digit combinations that people don’t remember.
• Images drive engagement. It is now easier than ever to take high quality photos of your apartments and amenities, so don’t let that slip between the cracks and make sure you have amenity photos as well as interior and exterior images.
• Use enticing calls to action on your most important buttons and links. Change boring buttons to action-oriented buttons that resonate with the user whenever possibility. Try “Find An Apartment” rather than “Availabilities.”
• Everything that doesn’t help/isn’t relevant hurts. Providing or requesting information that is not helpful to a potential renter in the decision making process will most likely cause confusion rather that supplement their knowledge, and may drive the visitor away from your website. To maximize your conversion rates, try to collect the information that is important to you later in the application after you’ve captured the lead.

Thanks for the great tips, Tudor! For more insights from his live session today, be sure to check out the #YardiMktgForum hashtag on Twitter. If you have specific questions about user experience, you can also also tweet Tudor at @TudorManole.