Mark Eibner:  Welcome to Broker IPTV.  My name is Mark Eibner and we are on official Friday afternoon skype in with Ed Kohler and Ed Kohler is with "Hay Stack In A Needle" and also the author of Technology Evangelist and Ed welcome to the show.

Ed Kohler:  Hi Mark how are you doing?

Mark Eibner:  Super, hey in the spirit of our Friday skype in, just wanted to kind of take a subject we can talk about for three to four minutes, share with our viewers today we are going to be talking about different types of searchers and could maybe you can define for our audience what do you mean by searchers.

Ed Kohler:  Okay in this case by searchers what I mean are people who are over on Google or Yahoo, who are in the real estate market in some way and it turns out that if you take a step back and you kind of think about how people are you know what they are typing in search engines, they had a lot of different phases in the buying process and I think a lot of people with their websites haven't yet created content that addresses all the different stages that someone maybe at.

Mark Eibner:  So what type of information should people have these different types of searches?

Ed Kohler:  For example a lot of real estate websites do a pretty good job of the home search process, so it's really kind of buy side what they have out there.  They tend to be a little weak sometimes on the information they provide to home sellers.  For example a home seller they are trying to figure out you know what's my home work of course that's a very important question to them, but of course they are also trying to figure out if my home is worth this you know what can I expect to get out of it if I sell it and what can I achieve on my next buy with what I have left after you know selling my home and that type of information like that depth of information for sellers is something I don't see a lot of today.

Mark Eibner:  You talk about just basic evaluation tools like a Zillow evaluation something like that?

Ed Kohler:  Yeah it can also be in the form of blog post and just helping people understand all different things involved you know when a transaction from selling one home through buying the next, you know giving people some guidance and also you are kind of demonstrating your expertise.

Mark Eibner:  Sure yeah excellent ploy actually being a little more transparent coaching people through the selling process, so they can get to the buying process, maybe area stats or zip code stats, dial stats something of that nature?

Ed Kohler:  Yeah and that's in the buying process there is also the phase of trying to figure out where in town is a good place to lay off and trying to understand you know what can I get from my money, is that something that I think is still trying to be figured out of mine, for example say someone works in a downtown of a metropolitan area and they want to spend $300,000 and they hope to have a house with a yard because they have a dog or something, so you know there maybe some compromises they need to make in terms of how far they are willing to drive and different types of neighborhoods of things that, type of information that can help guide people towards what neighborhoods or suburbs or whatever should they even be considering and so that kind of stuff they kind of get people pointing the right direction is another area where when people are what said it, you are [Inaudible] [00:03:15] about what sort of terms you might type into a search engine where you could have content that kind of addresses that.

Mark Eibner:  You bet any good sites you can name off the top of your head that agents or companies or demonstrating this type of information for different types of people in searches?

Ed Kohler:  To me the most of I see today is mostly agents who have taken ownership in neighborhoods where whatever neighborhood they happen to work or city they happen to work in, if they have created a blog where they just decided I am going to document everything I can about this and share what's going on, people stumble across those through search because blogs tend to do very well on search engines.

Mark Eibner:  You bet.

Ed Kohler:  But I haven't seen much about words tying it together where they tend to be a stand alone blog and then separate you know an IDX type website, and they are starting to be some mergers there but it's not as elegantly tied together in most cases as it could be.

Mark Eibner:  Okay so we are talking about kind of hyper localism really that's what it's coming down to?

Ed Kohler:  Yep.

Mark Eibner:  Super well once again some great information Ed on our Friday afternoon skype in; appreciate you being with us today.

Ed Kohler:  Thanks Mark.

Mark Eibner:  And we will see you next Friday and so for more great information make sure to keep your browser on Broker IPTV.

Posted in Broker IPTV's "Industry Icon", Real Estate Industry Events, Main category

Mark Eibner:  And welcome to Broker IPTV.  My name is Mark Eibner and we are having another Friday afternoon skype in with Ed Kohler, Ed Kohler is with "Haystack In a Needle" and also the author of Technology Evangelist and Ed welcome to the show.

Ed Kohler:  Hi Mark how are you doing?

Mark Eibner:  I am doing great.  Hey so keeping with the spirit of our viewers, giving some great tit bits of information in a three to four minute time span today we wanted to touch briefly on Google Analytics.  Ed maybe could tell our viewers out there Ed what is Google Analytics, where does one get it and why should we even care about it?

Ed Kohler:  Okay Google Analytics is one of the most popular web stats programs on the web today, so of course provided by Google and if you go to google.com/analytics or just Google, the term Google Analytics you will find it.  The stats program is a relatively easy thing to install, you just put a little bit of code on every page of your website and then Google will log all the visitors to your website and keep track of where they came from, what they looked at, how long you spent on your website, all kinds of things like that so its weird way to kind of keep track of what, how people are using their website and where people came from.

Mark Eibner:  So you say they could go to Google it's a free piece of software they can get a snip of the code and it has to be inserted on every one of their web pages in their...?

Ed Kohler:  So if you work with the web developer you could ask them to set up a Google Analytics account, in fact they may already be running one on your account for you, if you set up a blog for example you may have to just go in and paste a little bit of code into your blog's template like in the footer file for example and then that will just carry across all of your pages.  So it's really a one time thing to get things set up, it's not too bad.

Mark Eibner:  So things that will be measured I guess types of browsers people are using where they are coming from like a time on the site what about key words in the search box that got them to the site?

Ed Kohler:  Yeah Google are first I would, a lot of information about visitors to your website, so it will show you where they came from, whether its they clicked from another website, whether they typed in, your domain directly to call a direct visit or if, if someone ran a search and came over, it will also parcel the jet search turn that used to arrive at your website, so it's a lot of different ways of slicing it out, if you do any online advertising they can also break that out separately whether its Google ad words or ad over on Zillow or Trulia they can track that as well.

Mark Eibner:  So any other key metrics that people should be paying attention to specifically real estate brokers and brokerages?

Ed Kohler:  Well real estate is kind of a tricky one for online metrics in some ways because unlike e-commerce where you have really kind of high volume and a lot of transactions because you are, people are buying something that only costs you know tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars instead with real estate the transactions are very large and the lead volume is just lower because of that.  So its within Google Analytics you can track conversion, so someone fills out an online form on your website you can track that back to where that person, what they originally searched for to get to your website and that will help you figure out what sources of traffic are the ones that are most valuable for you, but short of that another way that you can kind of figure out what's working and what isn't isn't, is to look at the balance rate from different websites which is a measure of people coming to your website looking at one page and then deciding to leave.  If you happen to like say buy an ad in a local newspapers online website and you notice that the balance rate is very, very high for whatever reason the traffic is coming over its not finding really what they are expecting, so they are leaving after one page view, so that's a sign that for whatever reason its just not working, so keep that in mind.

Mark Eibner:  Well I think one thing that's unique to the Internet search world here and working in the Internet in general as far as true analytics is unlike some of our past pieces of media, television and newsprint etcetera you can truly track your results literally click by click where they came from, where they are going, how long they have been there, very unique proposition.

Ed Kohler:  And but generally one thing that, that's still missing today that will, eventually will get worked out is, its very difficult to track offline leads that your website generates.  So if someone calls you after looking at your website that's not necessarily being tied together, but if when people call you be sure to ask them you know how did you find lot about me and you know keep track of that in your CRM system.

Mark Eibner:  Great well hey once again Ed great information for the Friday skype in.

Ed Kohler:  Thanks Mark.

Mark Eibner:  I appreciate your being with us today.

Ed Kohler:  No problem.

Mark Eibner:  And for more great information about real estate marketing technology and everything else involved in the industry make sure to go to brokeriptv.com.  Thanks we will see you next Friday in our skype in.

Posted in Broker IPTV's "Industry Icon", Real Estate Industry Events, Main category