COMMENT
Are Apps history? Property agents don’t need an App, they need a mobile website, says Peter Orr, Director, Intelligent Mobile.
T
he best advice across all business sectors now is to start with a mobile website and not an App. Consumers naturally gravitate to
the web and are now doing so in huge numbers via mobile search, so a mobile website should be the priority. Having researched the UK property
market in detail, our advice to estate agents (indeed all property agents and house builders) is the same: avoid the hype about Apps and invest in a mobile website. The agent will get a much better return from investing in a mobile website. In our view, Apps are a short-term fad. We believe that the promotion of Apps,
which has sparked a ‘gold rush’ of agents signing up, is indicative of confusion in the market and is a bubble that will shortly burst. We’d like to warn agents of what we call ‘the App Trap’. We have published a Guide which sets
out the some of the pros & cons for a investing in a Mobile Website/native App. and regular Mobile Metrics Reports. the next is due out shortly and has even more compelling stats about the growth in mobile search. The number of visits and re-visits to a
property mobile website are significantly greater than to an App. The reasons why are logical: (a) A mobile website will work for all
devices and so provide access to all your customers. An App will only cover the audience for that device, which currently in all cases is a small per cent of an agent’s total target market. (b) Our research indicates that an iPhone user is at least 20 times more likely to search for information via Google than via an App on iTunes. It is a common misconception that because the main type of phone visiting an agent’s desktop site is the iPhone, that the agent therefore
28 JULY 2011 PROPERTYdrum
needs an iPhone App but the iPhone user would rather use Google! (c) The number of users returning to Google and in the future Bing (about to be launched as the default search engine on Blackberry), will be far higher than to those returning to an agent’s App. According to Pinch Media, only 5 per cent of users return to an App after 20 days, less than 1 per cent after 90 days. (d) Most small estate agent Apps will
remain invisible on iTunes and so attract very low traffic. According to Pinch Media, to make any impact and be rated in the Top 100 Apps on iTunes requires at least 5,000 to download your App in a day. One look and iTunes confirms this – iTunes is an elephant’s graveyard of estate agent’s apps with low ratings and poor reviews. (e) People’s behaviour on their mobile phones is mirroring what they do on their PCs and laptops; they search for
information via Google. Apart from for the main property portals, such as Rightmove and Zoopla, which heavily promote their Apps, property searchers are not looking for estate agent Apps in great numbers. Why? Firstly, by using Google, people are following a pattern of existing behaviour. Secondly, finding and then downloading an App involves additional steps and so is a barrier to traffic. This point was recently made by Steve Conway the head of marketing for the leading hotel brand Premier Inn, who having gone down the App route are now investing in a mobile website in order to ‘open up its mobile booking to many more customers’. (f) Whilst there is no question that the leading property portals have very successfully Apps – the same logic does not apply for most estate agents, even national brands, with more limited marketing resources.
Approximately 15 per cent of all web traffic now is mobile. That means not
having a mobile site is like closing your website one day each week.” GooGle (15 Feb 2011)
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