IDX Registration

[austinbroker]

RE: austinreferralrealty.com

I have never required registration to my home searches (on any site), but lately I have been contemplating testing it out. From people who have tried both ways, what difference in conversation rates do you see?

Here a post from Morgan on the "Increase use of IDX Increase Conversion??? thread...

I am an advocate of forced registration for REW IDX users - I noticed you don't turn yours on - not going to get a huge volume of leads that way.

I have a custom REW site. Is there a way I can turn home search registration on/off?

I am currently receiving targeted traffic through address and MLS# searches. I believe this is because Google can easily crawl all the individual listing pages. After placing a required registration, will Google still be able to search all my pages?

The only thing that matters is selling more real estate. If I can get more leads by adding the IDX registration I guess a slight drop in traffic doesn't matter much...

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

[webmaster]

Registration will not effect the Google spidering of details pages at all

To turn it off / on you just post a work order in the REW CSR forums. (Must be done by a programmer)

I will let individual customers reply if they wish on the benefits.

[MikeNY]

Ronnie I have done both and to be honest the results were almost the same, force vs request. Though my request does ask them to please sign in but they are able to bypass if they like, they often sign in anyway. I just changed it again tonight back to forced when they click the listing/photo for more details and at some point I am sure I will leave it at forced but only after the click the details, I find that is the best way to do it. Let them see the listings but when they click for more photo's or details then they must sign in - at that point they want to see the details so they will sign in.

Is your IDX a REW custom IDX?

[austinbroker]

Thanks for the info, Michael. Yes, I have a REW custom site.

[MikeNY]

Thanks for the info, Michael. Yes, I have a REW custom site.

I really like how your photo and contact info pops up on the right on each listing, nice IDX you have there.

[Web Agent]

Ronnie,

I had been a long time proponent of no registration. Morgan finally shamed me into trying forced registration and after 3 weeks I think I will always stay with forced registration. The key is what you do with the leads once they register. I do not require phone numbers but probably 20% put them in any way. I have a 7 e-mail drip campaign I drop them into and if you put some thought into those e-mails and ask the users questions, you'll be suprised how many will engage you and start the dialogue.

[AaronSOLD]

That's a great testimonial. Do you force it @ the first view or after xx detail views?

[Web Agent]

Forced once they want the detail view. The problem discussed on previous threads with letting them see 3 or 4 detail views is some users may feel that it is a bait and switch type game IMO.