Is real estate ready for Mobile Phone websites? If you are thinking of forking out 1000’s of dollars building a mobile phone website the following statistics may change your mind for now.
The following are some statistics for a Google Mobile Phone search on accommodation. These statistics are gathered from January 1, 2010 until April 29, 2010. I am using these statistics based on the search term Lorne Accommodation. As a comparison I will give the stats for the same search term when a browser searches via their computer.
Mobile Phone Statistics January 1 – April 29
- Mobile Phone – Search term (Lorne accommodation) 594 Impressions*
- Computer – Search term (Lorne accommodation) 68,044 Impressions*
* the amount of times browsers type in the search term
This is a massive difference in how a browser tries to find accommodation in this region.
Below are stats on a real estate agency based in southern Victoria. It shows the amount of visits dating from January 1, 2010 until April 28, 2010. The first row shows how many times people accessed the site using their mobile and the second row show how many visits via the browsers computer.
Real Estate Agent Website Analytics January 1 – April 29
- Mobile – 442 visits, 1770 page views, average time on site 3mins 24secs
- Computer – 19,904 visits, 116,768 page views, average time on site 4mins 26secs
10 Comments
Andy Del Vecchio
Its an interesting statistic Peter.
That would make it around 1% of users being mobile?
The thing to remember is that these users would be truly mobile as well. Most would be probably sitting outside of the actually property, checking on the price, bedrooms, etc as they look at the home in front of them.
or,
sitting in the area looking for where there are homes, already for sale, because they like the place.
so they are probably worth more than the average pc browser because they have more interest already in the area or the home sitting in front of them.
less of a window shopper, more of a real prospect for buying.
what do you think?
Nick
I have my trusty N85, which is no big massive iPhone or N900 (I wish it was the latter) but I have never really liked surfing mobile sites on it.
Its Webkit based browser is stunning at rendering normal un-altered websites on to a 2.6 inch screen.
A mobile site is unnecessary and it annoys me personally.
What you *should* do however is make sure your website does actually work in a mobile browser. How embarrassing would it be to have a potential buyer bring it up on the move and your site explodes all over the screen?
And a point that helps computers as well – make your site fast.
Mobile networks arent very fast, so your site has to be.
I always cringe when the bandwidth meter hits 1.5 meg for a single page.
Bill
Andy, I think you could be right, personally I have only ever used my iphone to search for property information when I have been driving past a home that spiked my interest.
To actually sit down and use the phone to browse through a agent site or portal is just too frustratingly slow to make the phone practical for researching in a similar way one would use a PC browser.
IMHO
PaulD
Andy, would you ever spend money chasing 1% of ANY market ? It doesn’t matter how good they were, the people who looked at the properties on their mobile device, probably also looked at it later on their laptop. If you want to cater for such a small sector of the market then be prepared to waste a lot of money doing it. The time will come – it’s just not here yet.
Charlie
It’s not here yet, but the mobile trend is coming. Already I see 3% of our site’s traffic to iPhone alone (and rising from 1.5% two months ago), and we don’t have an iphone app yet. The only really useful app in the marketplace is probably Domain’s, and that’s only a simple search with a nice save to favourites function. In the States, real estate apps allow you to point your camera phone at an apartment block and see what’s for sale and what’s sold (and video a street to do the same thing). 50% of all mobile traffic is from iphone apps, so while there may only be 7 or so real estate apps in the marketplace now, there will probably be 100 in a year’s time.
Agree though – browsing on a mobile is slower than on PC, but it’s also convenient when you are away from the office PC and at the weekend want to check something while out and about.
Stats are showing that by 2013 mobile traffic will be higher than PC traffic – it’s a trend that is coming, and maybe the trend for 2010 (as my earlier post on this blog in January tried to demonstrate!)
One other thing – you don’t need to spend thousands to have your real estate site look good on a mobile; it’s just a different (scaled down) design; $500 should do it. An app? – they cost thousands (and there’s a lot of designers jumping on that band wagon).
Andy D
@ paulD
maybe if that 1% were the 1% that were actually interested in buying that property.
Then it’s good value ?
PaulD
Andy D — So you are saying that 100% of the 1% are buyers ????
Fairly long bow to draw I would have thought . If the sun didn’t come up tomorrow it would be dark all day as well.
Andy D
maybe a long bow,
but they ( the 1%) might be worth pleasing because they could be, and may be more of a certainty to be serious.
And if all it means is allowing them to access listings quickly from their phone while they are hot to trot, then maybe its worth it.
besides i think that today it may be 1% but that should change…
: )
Wayno
Hi Guys
Just my 2 cents worth, I have read a couple of articles recently that may show all of us where the internet is going and we really need to gear up to be part of it.
The guy who actually invented the internet (got 2 computers talking to each other over a distance) has stated that the internet is just a young baby and is not even a young child yet let alone becoming a teenager. His interview was fasinating in that here we are thinking the internet is a huge thing and he is saying it is still in nappy’s.
The other article of great interest was from google, they are in the process now of trying to figure out how to handle all of the data that will be sent or put on the internet in the neaxt 10 yrs. They are saying that is how quick the internet is growing, because of listen to this: that it is because of the amount of people just beginning to understand what and how the internet is all about and what it can do. Another great article.
Michael
These numbers only represent those searching “Lorne Accommodation”. Logically this means that these searches are from people who use the word accommodations as opposed to rooms, rentals, hotels, etc. I’d posit that those doing searches using more common words and phrases are higher on mobile phones (since rental is quicker and easier to spell on a mobile device) and that since mobile is so geo-centric, simply searching “hotel” in Google Maps on iPhone will show you all of the hotels in your vicinity. Doing an apples to apples comparison doesn’t work for a number of reasons:
-those entering data in a mobile device will opt for shorter words
-there is nothing in your numbers showing what tool was used for search. Just on an iPhone it may have been Google through Safari, or it may have been any number of apps like Expedia, Kayak, Google Maps, Yelp, etc.
“Accommodations” isn’t a typical search term. Maybe if you work in the industry, but not from users.