NovaLoca Blog

Further to my blog in January, “NovaLoca ranked ahead of EG Property Link”, our rankings have now improved even further! Thanks to our continued efforts we now rank a massive 104,572 websites ahead of EG Property Link.

We are really pleased with this result and are inspired to reach even greater heights. We have an ongoing programme of investment in SEO (search engine optimisation) and our current success is testament to this. The most exciting part is that our latest SEO work will not even be released onto our site until next week.

Much of the SEO work carried out by various websites is a long-term investment, as results are often not realised for six months. Beware of listing on sites that draw traffic from sponsored links – although they can increase traffic this way, it is not a long-term investment for them and can be switched off quickly if the site can’t keep up with payments. 

We have been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of some research conducted by The Technology Studio, which reveals NovaLoca.com as the leader of all UK portals and as number 3 in the UK for all commercial property websites in the UK. We will update you when the full league tables are released.

Miranda

Data collected by the Novaloca.com team shows that our search tools are making our database of available commercial properties for sale and to let even more effective.

Visitors to Novaloca.com are finding exactly what they need more quickly. Each visitor to the site in January 2010 viewed a similar number of pages showing full details of properties on Novaloca.com compared with a year earlier, but a higher percentage of these viewings are becoming leads. In January 2009 an agent needed 51 views of its property details pages to result in a lead but in January this year the figure had dropped to 44, showing that the value of property views has risen by around 13% year-on-year.

And with traffic to the site growing well, the number of leads remains on an upward track. There has been a jump of 45% in the number of unique visitors to Novaloca.com year-on-year as well as continued growth in traffic since the start of 2010 – we have already recorded a 10% increase in site traffic in February compared with the previous month. So while fewer occupiers overall are enquiring about property amid the current economic downturn, the number of enquiries on Novaloca is actually rising.

We have noticed that the number of leads generated per unique visitor is down, perhaps reflecting market conditions, with occupiers interested but not yet ready to commit to a new property. But the good news is that we are attracting so many more unique visitors to the site that this more than compensates for the cautionary climate, as the site is actually delivering 19% more leads to agents.

Agents have told us that with budgets coming under restriction there is generally a lot less money available at the moment for marketing properties in more traditional ways, and this has added to the growing interest in online options, as these are proving to be much more cost-effective.

There are now well over 20,000 properties registered on Novaloca.com including office space, retail properties, industrial units, leisure facilities and land opportunities. To get all your properties listed on NovaLoca call Chris on 01767 313380 or click here to register and start adding properties today.

Miranda

It’s official – our leads are better quality. A survey of enquiries generated by NovaLoca, the online commercial property search specialists, shows that 97% of leads come direct from occupiers. Agents have reported that leads coming from NovaLoca are of the best quality – better than the competition – as they are direct enquiries from occupiers about specific commercial buildings for lease or sale.

Occupiers are using NovaLoca to see preliminary details of commercial properties to let and for sale and have chosen to enquire further about them. This means that each of these leads is more likely to convert, as they have already ruled out unsuitable properties. Even if the enquiry does not lead directly to a deal, these leads are also more likely to result in a client – who will be able to benefit from other agent services.

Using NovaLoca is thus proven to generate good numbers of high-quality leads, each carrying the potential of two revenue streams.  

by Miranda Munn MD

Every commercial property agent is aiming to attract potential occupiers to the property they have on their books. If this is you, then you need to be available when your customers call. If they can’t speak to you then they may go elsewhere to find their commercial property. But with meetings and site visits filling your day and often taking you out of the office, how do you know when your customers are likely to call and when you should be available to answer their enquiry?

When Do Your Customers Contact You?

Here at NovaLoca we analysed property enquiry data over a three month period and found that 45% of enquiries are made by telephone suggesting that people want to speak to people when looking for commercial property. 55% of enquiries where made via email. With this in mind we analysed the data further to discover at what times throughout the day these enquiries were made.

· Telephone enquiries are fairly consistent throughout the working day (9am – 5pm) with peaks at 10am and midday.

· Few calls are made before 9am or after 5pm, with no calls at all between 10pm and 7am.

· Email enquiries peak between 11am and 2pm.

· Enquiries via email drop off after 4pm, but increase again at 8pm before declining throughout late evening.

· Email enquiries are made throughout the evening and night.

When should you be available to speak to your customers?

The data suggests that the first hour of the working day is important for ensuring enquiries made overnight (by telephone and email) are responded to. The data indicates that replying to emails may be where your time is most needed first thing in the morning. Overnight telephone enquiries should also be followed up during this period.

Mid morning to mid afternoon (10am to 3pm) appears to be a busy period for both telephone and email enquiries. Therefore, it would be beneficial to ensure there are sufficient people available during this period to speak to customers directly as well as responding to their emails.

Although the number of telephone and email enquiries decline during late afternoon they do continue, especially emails. Therefore, your time is well spent responding to enquiries during this part of the day too. However, fewer resources may be needed at this time than during the middle of the day.

Read our full article to discover more about how this information could affect your commercial property agency or contact the NovaLoca customer services team on 08443575260 or email info@novaloca.com to find out how you could conduct your own research and analysis of how and when your customers contact you.

“There just aren’t enough hours in the day”. Have you ever uttered these words or heard someone else saying them? The key to getting it all done – prioritisation! But what do you place at the top of this (very long) list? For property agents, surely it’s making sure the properties on their books are being sold or let. So how can agents ensure this happens?

NovaLoca has analysed property enquiry data over a three month period and found that 55% of potential occupiers made their enquiry to the agent by email and 45% made their enquiry by telephone. Evidently, being able to actually speak to someone at the agency is still highly valued by the occupier when they are looking to buy or rent a property. After all, isn’t “People buy from people” a truism?

With this in mind, how much time in your daily schedule is allocated to answering the telephone and talking to potential occupiers? To give an idea of the answer to this question, we continued our analysis of enquiry data on NovaLoca to evaluate the occupiers experiences as they contacted property agents by telephone;

· 41% of calls lasted less than 30 seconds

· 1.3% of callers got an engaged tone

· 6% of callers gave up waiting for the phone to be answered

So what does this mean for your agency?

41% of enquirers (calls less than 30 seconds) are almost certainly being put through to an answer phone, where they may or may not leave a message. Either way they don’t get to speak to a real person. Alternatively they are being told the agent is not available. Although they get to speak to someone it’s not the ‘right’ person so they are not able to be immediately helped.

More than one in 100 enquirers got an engaged tone so again they go away without actually speaking to anybody. Surely they could be passed to a colleague, entered into a queue for their call to be taken as soon as someone becomes available or at the very least put through to voicemail.

1 in 16 potential customers are lost because the call is not answered within a reasonable period of time. These people are left with a very poor view of the agent and company – surely this should be eliminated in any professional organisation?

However, it does suggest that the companies and agents that get these simple things “right” can really positively differentiate themselves versus their competition. The good news is that there are relatively simple steps that can address these issues.

How can you improve the telephone customer experience?

· Automatic Call Redirection – enables you to have one telephone number that can redirect a caller to a mobile number if the call is not answered in the office. This would ensure that you can take important client calls wherever you are, or you can have the calls routed to your colleagues if you are busy.

· Hunt Groups – allow you to route calls to multiple telephone numbers at the same time, the first person to answer the phone has the call connected to them.

· Call Queuing – allows you to setup call queues ensuring you do not loose potential clients if your line is engaged.

The most important point is that no matter what, potential occupiers should be able to speak to a human being if at all possible, rather than leaving a message or not being given the opportunity to do either. However, asking the enquirer to leave a voicemail should be used as a last resort (although this is far better than having no option to do so if there is really is no-one available who could answer the call) as the enquirer may go elsewhere whilst they are waiting for you to get back to them. Therefore, messages must be checked throughout the day and replied to immediately to minimise the chances of this happening.

There are a number of companies offering these services like www.switchboardcontrol.co.uk. We would strongly suggest investing the time in finding one which works for you and see an improvement in the number of conversions of telephone enquirers to people buying or letting your property. If you want a little help in where to start, please call one of our customer services team at NovaLoca on 0844 3575 260