Is your estate agent sending you your Rightmove report and leaving you baffled? Are you looking at the results and feeling none the wiser?
Relax, we’re here to explain all….
When your house is for sale on Rightmove, statistics about who’s looking and clicking are compiled behind the scenes, and we estate agents have access to those numbers. We share them with our clients, and explain to them what they mean, why they are important, and what we can do to improve them, if they are not getting the viewings we hope for.
In Rightmove, clicks count
When you first put your home on the market, the number of clicks your advert gets can be a really accurate indicator of the likelihood of an early offer. Of course, you want to get the best price for your home, so early market feedback is useful.
To get the best price, you need at least one offer, ideally in the first twelve weeks of marketing.
And to get offers, we need viewings that follow the ‘Three Qs’: quick, quality, quantity.
Quick – a lack of early viewings is a sign that something is wrong. Maybe the price is too high, the launch has been badly timed or the house is not showing well online. Getting early viewings is a really positive sign everything is right, and an offer shouldn’t be too far away.
Quantity – to get the best price for your house, you need at least a few viewings, otherwise you won’t get the feedback that’s so valuable. Too few viewings can also mean that your eventual buyer holds all the cards, as you have no ‘plan B’ buyer to fall back on if your buyer suddenly decides to drop their offer. Once there are a few people interested in your house, you have a much better chance of getting your asking price, or close to it, as the buyers’ natural competitive tendencies are revealed.
Quality – there is little point in getting lots of viewings if those viewers are not in a position to buy, or if your home is entirely unsuitable for them. You need viewers that can actually buy, in other words, buyers that have sold their home, or who are in a cash position to make an offer and proceed with buying your home.
Activity counts when you’re selling your home. If you out your home on the market and you don’t get a single viewing in six months, it’s very unlikely you’re ever going to get your asking price. No one wants to buy a house that no one wants to buy.
to get the viewing, you first have to get the click.
The click on Rightmove is when your home gets found in a search, maybe someone is searching for:
- £500,000 – £750,000
- in the Lake District
- 4 bedrooms
Once they see a list of results, filtered to their criteria, they choose which homes they see that they like the look of, and click on just those. They may scan through the photographs, take a look at the floorplan, check the location, and read the description.
At the bottom of the description is the link to the brochure, and by clicking on this, the buyer has usually decided they’ve liked everything they’ve seen so far. Therefore, at this point, the aim of the brochure is simply to sell the viewing. And that’s exactly how we design our brochures – with this single aim in mind
It’s what we call the ‘buyer’s journey’ through Rightmove.
There are several milestones in our buyer’s journey, and it starts with your home getting found in the search results on Rightmove.
It sounds obvious, but when we are approached by someone whose house isn’t selling, we first make sure it’s been listed with the right information. I was once contacted by a lady with a huge Victorian villa, who just wasn’t getting any interest at all on her house. It turned out her home had been listed as a one bedroom flat in error, instead of a seven bedroom detached house. No wonder she wasn’t getting any interest!
Another common reason for not getting found in a Rightmove search, is if the house has been listed at what we call an ‘Asda price’: an asking price with all the nines. If your home is listed at £699,999, no one looking from £700,000 will find it in a search. Yet at £700,000 exactly, your home will be shown to people looking in both the search bandings; which is potentially twice the chances for your home to be found online by buyers
Get the click
Once a buyer has found your house in their search, we need to make sure they are attracted by the ‘summary advert’ – this is the brief advert that contains your main photos and a short description of your house. The purpose of this advert is not to get a buyer to book a viewing; they rarely do from this summary advert. Its purpose is to get someone to ‘click’ to look at the description page. This is where your buyer will either click back, or book a viewing, so it needs to be a great advert for your house. To make your advert clickable, you need to have a terrific main image, and a really punchy, carefully-crafted description.
Your photos and brochure need to ‘sell’ a viewing
If your house photos are beautiful lifestyle images, professionally taken, and your brochure is attractively designed and full of the finer details that buyers love, then booking a viewing is a buyer’s next natural step.
Don’t forget the floorplan too. We find a clear, detailed floorplan really helps a buyer to see the accommodation on offer before they book the viewing. This means you’ll need less viewings on your home before you get an offer. If you’re not sure if your floorplan is good enough to attract and inform a buyer, click on the ‘floorplan’ tab on your Rightmove advert and make sure it’s clear, you’re able to zoom in, and it contains both dimensions and overall floor area.
How do the Rightmove clicks translate to a successful sale?
We know there is a direct correlation between the number of people who click on that first summary advert on Rightmove, and the number of viewings you will get. And of course, more quality viewings leads to better offers. So getting those Rightmove clicks is vital.
Rightmove sends us statistics on clicks for all the estate agents in the area, as well as our own. So we know that our click rate per property per day is currently 188.7, which is twice as high as the next agent in our area, and more than four times higher than the lowest number, at 44 clicks per property per day.
How do we get these high click rates? By following the buyers’ journey set out in this article and making sure that at every step, we are attracting the right buyers for each house, through the images and words we use to promote it. Less an art than a science, getting the formula right for your house will mean you’ll have a much better chance of generating viewings quickly, in quantity, and of a higher quality. And that should get you the offer you need on your home.
If you’d like to know more about how your Rightmove advert can help you sell your home, or if your home is on the market and you’re not sure if your advert is good enough, we can help. Just drop us a line or pick up the phone. We’d love to hear from you.
Sam and Phil
