Agent Tips: Web Traffic Vs. Cold Hard Leads

We've got to clear the air about something that's been frustrating us for quite some time now. As of late, it's come to our attention that some agent website and marketing providers have been passing along pretty hokey information to their clients, which we think is pretty un-fair.What we're referring to is the passing-along of website traffic information, wherein each visit is being referred to (incorrectly we might add) as a lead instead of a visit. Not only does this confuse the marketplace by defining a lead as web traffic, but it also provides agents with a false sense of achievement. This miscommunication is completely inappropriate as it's causing hard working agents to believe that these website and marketing providers are legitimately creating leads for them, making their business look totally awesome when it's totally not.  Remember, these are the same people that encourage this absurd behaviour: Agent Tips - Footers. Yes, You Need Them!Digging deeper, let's look at WHY website traffic or unique visits are not in fact cold hard leads and how we can more accurately define the two.Let's say you're handed a report at the end of each month that declared "Congratulations, you received 67 new leads this month". The first question you should ask (aside from running to check your obviously huge bank balance), is how much 'real' interaction did I get from this?  Did I speak, email or create genuine dialogue with all of these 67 people? Unless somebody interacts with your website by contacting you, requesting more information from your listings, phoning etc. their visit to your website is NOT to be considered a lead - it's just that, a visit to snoop around your website.A lead on the other hand is classified as ONLY people who show intent to do business with you. That's it. If anybody's telling you otherwise, stop paying them, because they clearly don't know what they're talking about. And about those 67 views; unless these guys are properly optimizing your site to generate real qualified leads (and don't get us started on the overly agressive 1990 web 1.0 tactic of lead capture forms) you can most definitely assume that at least 90% of that traffic was your competition snooping around your site, 5% your family, and 5% your very own unique visits... sorry to break it to you.I guess this "calling-out" wouldn't be appropriate if we didn't present a solution, but by golly you'd better believe we have one, actually, make that two, and oh boy are they good. Allow us to introduce to you our esteemed EstateVue Search Website - a turbo-fuelled juggernaut of a website designed and backed by our team of Search Engine Optimization experts to generate traffic and create genuine leads for our clients; none of that mumbo jumbo "the other guys" have been passing off to you. We even put your contact info in your footer. If that last comment went over your head click here.  If you're already one of our SEARCH Hybrid clients, then maybe we can entice you with this shiny new penny; the newly launched Single Page Property Website.  This one's even valid for *gasp* non-EstateVue clients. Wait, do those kind of agents even exist?For more information on our awesome websites, blog posts, and all things EstateVue, follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. We promise it's worth it.