How to increase REI website lead conversion from 3 to 100 times
Websites with fast page loads generate many times more warm leads than traditional “Wait to be served” websites.
Table of Contents
Problem
Users prefer websites with a quick page load. Mobile users are particularly impatient. Page loading within 3 seconds is considered tolerable.
How many users stayed on a website as a function of the delay they experienced:
Every second beyond 3 seconds loses 10% of your visitors and leads.
CMS Performance Rating
Terminology
- Performance Score is a synthetic parameter. It varies from 0 to 100. For simplicity, think of the Performance Score as a website conversion (“Percentage of visitors who wait until the website is loaded”)
- CMS. “Content Management System” is the program or service on which a website is running (WordPress, Weebly,…)
- TTI. “Time to Interactive” is the amount of time it takes for the page to become fully interactive
- “Demo” is the website where CMS performance was measured.
CMS Speed Rating (mobile device)
| Performance | CMS | TTI | Demo |
| 100% | Jet Website | 0.9 s | TobyInvest.com (our website) |
| 36% | Brivity | 13.3 s | Colerealestate.net |
| 29% | Godaddy | 11.5 s | Tailoredhomesrealty.com |
| 27% | Plaster (WordPress) | 14.9 s | Karladorsey.com |
| 20% | WordPress | 15.7 s | Skylinehomesolutions.com |
| 19% | Premier Agent® (Zillow) | 18.1 s | Zambranohouses.com |
| 13% | Luxury Presence | 31.0 s | TaniaWuRealEstate.com |
| 12% | Wix | 46.5 s | Sgvhumane.org |
| 11% | Weebly | 17.7 s | Ymebahamas.org |
| 1% | Squarespace | 22.2 s | Picathingswelove.com |
The rating is very tentative. It gives a general idea that most websites have serious performance and download speed issues. The purpose of the rating is for you to check the performance and speed of your website (link to the check service below).
Solution
The creation and maintenance of the website are relatively inexpensive. The main costs are spent on bringing leads on the website - articles, SEO, Google AdWords, … You need to spend about $5000 to get one good lead on the website.
But if the productivity of your website is only 20%, then you lose $4000 out of $5000 for each lead. In this case, urgently increase productivity to at least 80%. Then you can get 4 times more leads for the same lead generation costs.
Only websites with 80-90% performance and download speeds of 3-5 seconds are cost-effective for lead generation activities. Before you start investing in a lead generation involving your website, be sure to check your website’s performance and download speed (link to Google service at the bottom of the article). If they are low, hire a specialist and increase the productivity of your website to 80-90%. You will pay a specialist relatively inexpensive and only once. Then you will receive motivated sellers for years at an inexpensive price.
The main ways to increase website performance:
- Optimization of heavy content (graphics, video,…)
- Setting up a website to speed up downloads (caching, deleting heavy plug-ins,…)
- Change of shared hosting to specialized. For example, “WordPress hosting” costs about $30 per month
- Change the CMS to a faster one. Beloved by investors WordPress, REI specific websites on the basis of WordPress and website builders like Weebly are usually very, very slow!
Links
- How the Performance score is weighted
- Time to Interactive
- Check the speed of your website through Google. It gives you a Performance score, Time to Interactive, and 5 more parameters. It also gives a recommendation for your webmaster on how he can improve your website’s performance.
