That's a *great* question Lisa!

The short answer is the best number to focus on is closed escrows. That's how we get paid.

I'd rather have 1 visitor a week that converts to a closed escrow than have 10,000 visitors a week that just browse the site and never come back.

But, real estate is a numbers game. And having more visitors certainly increases the probablity of one of those visitors becoming a client.

So, it's really a little bit of both for me -- a balancing act. If no one can find your web site, no one can become a client. But if you don't have compelling content to retain a visitor, it doesn't matter how many people find your site.

How's that for a non-answer!

There's a guy in Alaska that was visiting our site a couple of times a week for over two years. I could see him in my stats. You could tell it was the same person (based on his location in a town in the middle of nowhere with a population of about 400 people. It had to be the same person, the odds of two people in that place regularly visiting the site are overwhelming). He *never* did anything to generate a "lead". We had no name, email, phone, nothing. Somtimes he'd spend a couple of minutes on the site, sometimes up to an hour.

Then one day he called. Said he'd been on our site weekly for over two years, monitoring the market, and "getting to know us" (those were his words) and that he thought the time was right to sell some land he owned near Phoenix. An hour later we had the signed listing for $945K.

The point of that story is, without the kind of content he needed he never would have called us. And because of that content, he didn't even really need to talk to us until he was ready to act.

So visitor loyalty is HUGE. But you've got to balance that with the need to attract the loyal visitor in the first place.

Lisa

How about have a lot of vistors and a lot come back! I think both vistors and retur visitor are important factors since larger numbers of visitors increase your odds and give you an indication of how good your site is delivering the right message. If you have big numbers and not many prospects than you need to work on you web content. Good content means they will be returning and large numbers mean more returning and more opportunity. However I am not a big fan of the monthly report other than to see where the numbers for the top websites are and how I am doing in comparison to their total numbers of visitors. The comment section of the report I pretty much ignore since it can get you frustrated when it tells you are below average since it is based on percentages and not the total number of prospects. You could have 200 prospect in a month and if you had 6000 visitors you would get a below average on the report for prospects generated. This is because the average sight turns 4% of the visitors into prospects. So if you are taking a less targeted approach to generating visitors your visitors may be high but not as good as a focused approach. This is a matter of choice on how you want to market your site. I use the broad method and try to attract a lot of visitors and a percentage of them don’t stay long. However, I also generate a large number of good prospects and have a good close rate on those that I get off my P2 site. I spend about $600-700 per month to promote my site but in the first three months of 2007 it has returned $50 for every $1 I invested. I can’t get that type return on any other form of promotion.  This is slightly up from last year but has been this way for the last several years. So, I think the broad marketing approach is the right way for me but target marketing may cost less but has more competition for the leads and I feel in the long run is a more difficult way to go.  I am not even sure there are savings on the cost side since if you use PPC the cost will be greater. My PPC averages about 17¢ a click. Targeted clicks for the top search phrases can run over $1.00 a click. In the end it is all about how many of the prospects turn into clients.  Visitors + Good Content = Return Visitors = Clients. More Visitors + Better Content = More Return Visitors = More Clients.