Tips for Turning Your Online Visitors into Buyers

Barb Jorgensen -- Expert Business Source, 2/10/2007 11:57:00 AM

If your sales pitch begins the minute a prospective customer walks through the door of your model home, you’ve already wasted a lot of valuable time. These days, home buyers begin their shopping on the Internet, and builders should be ready to meet them there.

“We used to think the selling floor was in the model,” says Leighton Collis, founder and managing partner of Boston-based Liquid Advertising, a real estate marketing services agency.“The reality today is that the selling floor is actually online.”

A website can be an inexpensive and valuable tool for qualifying and managing prospective buyers, Collis says. “Buyers visit a builder’s website four to six times before they go to a model,” he says, “but that activity is frequently overlooked.” With the right information gathered from these virtual visitors, builders can prioritize their leads and respond to the hottest prospects first, while building relationships with longer-term planners.

The key, he says, is asking buyers the right questions and providing them with the information they desire most. A few Web basics:

• Give them what they want. Home buyers most often are seeking floor plans, information about local schools, and a way to “experience” a home, such as a 360-degree photo or virtual tour.

• Provide a registration form to capture critical contact and other information from prospective buyers. “This day and age, builders shouldn’t have sites without a registration form,” says Collis.

• Make it easy. Allow buyers to use checkboxes to answer simple questions (e.g., “building new” or “relocating”).

• Give them a chance to ask you questions. Forms should have open fields to allow prospects to request specific information. “A question from a prospect is an opportunity to make a friend,” Collis says. “Responding to a question or addressing a problem builds the way toward that all-important first phone call.”

Although most registration forms ask customers about their timeframe for construction, builders often overlook other important questions that can help them prioritize their leads more effectively. These include:

• Are you relocating? “These are obviously hot prospects – they may fly in, tour a model, and close in a weekend,” Collis says. This information should be sent to a mailbox that is monitored 24 hours a day. “The more quickly you call them back, the more likely it is that they will tour one of your homes,” he points out. And you don’t have to have a staffer sitting by a computer 24/7; consider a Blackberry.

• Are you interested in existing inventory? If the answer is yes, Collis recommends responding immediately with a list of available homes, not an automated “thank you for your inquiry.” Then have a staffer follow up.

“These are very simple techniques that help you get to your best prospects first,” Collis says.

Ultimately, Collis adds, turning your website into an effective lead generator boils down to common sense: saving people time. “Time is a precious thing – for some, more so than money – so make it easy for customers to do their homework online,” he explains. A final tip: Don’t post content once and let it languish: “For Pete’s sake,” he says, “run the site with the same standard of customer service that you would run in a model home.”