[Backed By Data] What is a Good Conversion Rate for Your Real Estate Investing Website?

You’ve probably heard the phrase “conversion rate” tossed around quite a bit over the years. And that can be a great thing if you’re testing your conversion rates… but not so good if it’s inaccurate and you follow the next “guru” advice blindly without running your tests (or for Carrot members, we do this for them).

Carrot is one of the leading real estate website platforms. We are confident that our members generate 60,000+ leads per month through our platform and nearly 1.7 million sessions each month because we have such an extensive data set available to us from which to conclude.

So first… let’s dive into the basics of conversion rate (specifically for a real estate investor website). Then we’ll dive into why it’s important, how to do it right, and give you a few resources we use to improve our conversion rates.

What Is Conversion Rate?

The “conversion rate” on your website is simply the ratio between the number of people who land on your website vs. the number of people who “convert” on your website to become a lead.

That could be a cash buyer lead, motivated seller, tenant, or private lender.

The “conversion rate” is pretty simple to calculate.

If you have 100 visitors to that page and 15 of them put in their info on that page and opt-in as a lead for you, that is a 15% conversion rate.

In other words, it’s…

Conversion rate percentage = (Number of people who converted on your website / Number of visitors to your website) x 100

At Carrot, we’re constantly testing our customer’s websites to see what converts visitors best.

A Test In Progress On A Carrot Members Website: This is a shot from an actual test we’re running on a motivated seller website.

How Do You Find Out The Conversion Rate?

There are a few ways to determine your website’s conversion rate.

The easiest and most accurate is using a software tool… like the one we use… VWO.com (about $49/month and easy to use).

You have to get a bit of code from the software, put it on your website (really easy to do inside a Carrot account – hit up our support if you need help), and then set up the test in the software. Let the traffic come in; it’ll tell you how many people convert as a lead.

It may take you a few hours your first time to set up a test, and unless you’re getting 100 visitors to your website each month, it’s probably not worth setting up a test (it would take many, many months to come up with any real info because your traffic is so low).

If you’re on a budget and are not a tech person, you can count the number of leads you had in a specific period — then look up the # of visitors in that period on your analytics and divide the two.

*Or, if you’re a Carrot member… and you’re getting over 500 visitors a month to your site and 15+ leads a month, we’ll do your conversion rate and optimization testing for you! Just let us know through support. 

What Is A Good Conversion Rate For A Real Estate Investors Website?

One of the biggest misconceptions we hear all the time (and I once thought the same thing) about conversion rates from our members… is that there is a “normal” conversion rate for a website in our industry.

I wish there were.

But in reality… there are so many factors that can affect how many people convert on your website into a lead that a good conversion rate for a motivated seller website… isn’t a good conversion rate for a cash buyer website or rent-to-own website.

Factors include:

• Where the visitor is coming from before they hit your website. Are visitors finding your website organically through social media or paid ads? *Paid ad conversion rates can also be deceptive. A Google Ads campaign targeting a state or national can have different (usually higher) conversion rates compared to a local campaign
• Whether or not your site is set up to convert well (like all of our Carrot sites are)
• Credibility on your website… High-quality testimonials can increase your conversion rate by 34%
• Colors
• Your logo can sometimes make or break conversions
• Button CTA… Changing your CTA can increase the conversion rate by 49.5%
• The time of the year (yes, that can matter)
• Page speed
• and more…

Cash Buyer Website Conversion Rates

On one cash buyer test we ran… at one point, that website was converting almost 40% of all people who landed on the page to a cash buyer lead (picture of test results mid-way through below):

Cash Buyer Conversion: Results mid-way through a “split-test” on a cash buyer website for one of our InvestorCarrot members.
That is a pretty darn high conversion rate… even for a cash buyer website (we’ve worked hard to get our Carrot websites converting high – that’s why so many people LOVE having their websites on Carrot). But later in that same test, the conversion rate settled in the mid-’20s.

Why?

In this case, the website didn’t change… it was mainly a “traffic issue.” She started doing Craigslist marketing which tends to yield a higher volume of traffic but a lower conversion rate.

But on average… we’re seeing cash buyer websites (when people drive the visitor to our home pages which are geared to convert well) convert between 20-40% of visitors to a cash buyer with quality traffic.

Motivated Seller Website Conversion Rates

We’ve heard people ask if our motivated seller websites are converting at “25% as they used to 5 years ago,” and the answer is no, they’re not.

5, 6, 7 years ago, before every investor on the block had a website, before 50%-60% of all searches were on cell phones (and most websites aren’t optimized for mobile). During the recession, when hoards of sellers were in dire straights and just needed out (and were willing to opt into any and every website online they could find to get out of the situation fast), the conversion rates on a motivated seller site could consistently reach 20% or more.

And that’s a stellar conversion rate for a motivated seller website.

But times and markets have changed a lot, even over a year, and conversion rates are a bit softer for motivated sellers.

Sellers today have more choices regarding websites to engage with online and are pickier with who they’ll work with. They want to see a website that feels credible, that they can trust, and that is easy to use.

So we’re seeing motivated seller websites (depending on the quality of traffic they’re sending to the site, and what they have done to their site to improve / decrease the conversion rate) convert from 7% to 20%. 20% is an outlier… and only with organic search traffic (SEO) or direct type in traffic.

What We Consider Average For A Seller’s Website (Your Site Should Convert At Least 8-10%)

Lots of House Seller Leads: This website is a highly trafficked home buyer’s website. We’re building some of our “Carrot Magic” into his website. The same stuff that’s already built into our Motivated Seller websites for our Carrot members.

And another…

What We Consider Solid For Sellers

A Surprising Video Test: This test is on a Carrot member’s website that gets 100% of its traffic from SEO (using our 3 Lead Per Day Training). But we ran a test recently to see if a video would increase the conversion rate on her website — the result is surprising :-)

And another…

What We Consider Stellar (this rarely happens long-term on a website)
during this test, this Carrot member got a GREAT stretch of quality traffic.
The test is still early… so the rate will likely dip below 20%.

Conversion Rate: This is a shot from an actual test on a motivated seller website.

All in all, you should shoot to have your motivated seller website convert at least 10% of your visitors to leads at a minimum… and work your way toward a 15-20% conversion rate (for a quality lead) on the top end in today’s environment with building solid credibility on your website, great quality traffic.

In a recent conversion test on motivated seller sites, we also found a potential 55% conversion rate increase by making one simple change to the hero section.

Conversion Rate: Hero sections that increased conversion rates by anywhere from 25 to 55%

Rent to Own / Tenant Buyer Website Conversion Rates

Rent-to-own tenant buyers and tenants of rental properties tend to convert pretty darn well when they land on a website set up to convert (like our Carrot sites are).  A tenant (or even buyer) tends to be putting in their info on your site to see available properties… so it’s a much lower commitment than a seller’s decision to sell their house to someone.

A Solid (But standard on Carrot) Conversion Rate For a Rent-To-Own Site

Rent To Own Leads Flowing In: In this test on a rent-to-own website of a Carrot member, you can see in the early stages of the test their site is converting on average close to 40%. This isn’t out of the norm on our rent-to-own websites.

Our rent-to-own websites have been performing well. After several rounds of testing (and we continue to test and improve these sites for our customers each month), we tend to see tenant buyers converting between 20-40% on the website.

One member’s website even had a string of several months (and several hundred leads) where their site converted nearly 50%. Their traffic was very high quality coming from a Facebook campaign.

Summing Up The Basics Of Conversion Rates For Real Estate Investor Websites

Improving the conversion rate of our Carrot platform is something we love to do, and it’s fun.

We’re running 50 tests on our Carrot member’s websites… actively working to improve the conversion rate of our platform every month. We do the same thing for our real estate agent websites, too!

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Hit Me With Your Conversion Rate Questions Below!

So… do you know the conversion rate on your website? If so, hit me with a comment below!  If not, hit me with your URL, and we’ll look at your site and give you some feedback.

And as always, if you feel Carrot may be a fit for your real estate websites and want better results online, we’d love to have you in the Carrot community. Check out our plans and hit us up with questions anytime!