Both the number of visits to Rightmove and the amount of time people are spending on the site have hit new highs over the past week.
The portal recorded its busiest ever day on Wednesday 27th May, surpassing six million visits for the first time, the figure being 18% up on Wednesday 29th May 2019.
The busiest day for time spent on the portal was Saturday 23rd May with over 47 million minutes spent collectively.
Rightmove has found a new wave of buyers is now entering the market.
Of those who had no plans to move earlier in the year, over a quarter of them (28%) are now saying they are planning to move.
Rightmove’s Commercial Director and Housing Market Analyst Miles Shipside commented:
“Usually we record our busiest days of the year in January and February and almost never when there is warm weather, so the combination of pent-up demand being released, new people entering the market and no half-term holidays during lockdown has led to this late spring boost.
“The challenge agents are facing is handling this surge in enquiries, having a process to deliver virtual viewings, and setting up socially distanced and safe physical viewings.
“This means that although numbers of sales agreed have improved from being down 90% to currently being 47% down compared to this time last year, it’s going to take a considerable time for a return to sales agreed levels seen last year and at the start of this year.”
EYE wondered whether the record traffic figures might make a difference to agents’ perception of Rightmove and in particular what effect there might be on the Say No to Rightmove Campaign.
We put the questions to them:
1. Does this news make it harder for ‘Say No to Rightmove’ to sustain its campaign?
Rightmove’s attempts to ignore the financial pain that the UK property industry has experienced, and continues to experience, is further proof of the discord between them, as suppliers, and the agents, their clients. It’s important to remember, it’s agents’ stock that drives that traffic.
It’s also Agents £s that drive their profits.
2. Will the news mean that fewer agents will consider Rightmove’s charges to be unreasonable?
All reasonable projections for house sale volumes for 2020 confirm the UK will experience one of the worst year’s in over a decade for completed transactions.
Faced with this fact, agents revenues will be massively curtailed and consequently, the pressure will never be greater on Rightmove to reflect on their own charging model and treatment of their client agents.
3. Will the news result in fewer agents making the decision to leave Rightmove?
The industry itself will not be deflected from their desire for reasonable tariffs and fair treatment, so it remains entirely on Rightmove to take action not to lose agents.
Their current PR and marketing spin feels like an attempt to prep their clients for a return to their pre-March 2020 business model; something Say No To Rightmove has continuously advised the Rightmove board against.
Put simply, if agents do not give Rightmove quality content, there will be no record traffic!
Comments (28)
……..and the sound of relief and “The Great Escape” Theme tune begins to radiate from the walls of Rightmove HQ.
Built on the “Art & Interpretation of Numbers” ……..Quality means nothing to Rightmove, merely Quantity.
Perpetuating it’s relevance by Advertising & Marketing which recycles the myth that Rightmove is “something”…..
…….when it really isn’t.
Unfortunately, it’s divide & conquer policy remains …….and it relies on us playing our predictable role.
I know the individual answer however it’s only the collective answer that will have the desired impact.
All agents know how vanity stats work, it’s like when we tell vendors we have 200 people registered who “may” be interested in their house even though they haven’t seen it yet. At the end of the day Rightmove are doing a great job in boosting the market image in the UK and agents should realise that this publicity is priceless because none of us can individually can afford to spend that much on PR. When Covid started in China we put our fees up to cover any associated recession. Yes you lose the odd one, but when you are now charging a third more than your strongest competitor who cares ? I have just spoken to another excited viewer this evening and asked her where she looks for houses, Rightmove. She had heard of Zoopla but didnt like it as much, and hadnt heard of ANY other websites for houses. The house has only been on for 2 hours. The owner so far is DELIGHTED. If you cannot afford the fees then fine, other sites do work, but if you can afford the fees who wouldnt want to be part of a group who can throw xxxxx millions at PR at a time when our industry has never needed this help more ? I know the unfairness of it all. blah blah blah, reminds me of the days when we used to charge 1.5% and then all a sudden we all crumbled because of purple wotsit thing. If we had all held our ground back then no one would need to be worrying about paying rightmove less than one sale a month.
Deary me.
Even if RM produced the number of leads over a set period, i bet it still includes the “Further Details” requests (despite everything and more on the advertised details) which NEVER respond to an email, text or call (probably ANOTHER mystery shop we have not asked for).
Unbelievable!! So 10% of the UK population logged onto rightmove in one day? Simply untrue!!
I am someone who works things out. I know how they generate the traffic and time on site but more importantly why they do it; so they can boast about their traffic numbers and time on site stats to anyone gullible to believe what they are being told.
Agency principals didn’t go the university to study the internet marketing, they rely on people who did. Those people learned what they learned to pass an exam, the tutors taught them the same stuff so they could answer a question that would be asked of them. The people advising agency bosses are passing on what they learned. Whether or not it’s right, the piece of paper says it is.
I am an agent (exFNAEA) I can cope with contacting 50 people to arrange 10 viewings to sell one house. Give me 1714 applicant to sift through to find 1/3rd of a buyer and I couldn’t cope.
The numbers defy explanation yet everyone is convinced traffic is good!
But you haven’t worked out what a marketing funnel is, it would seem.
How wonderfully ironic!
Over 20% of all agents listing properties for sale or to let in England & Wales do not use Rightmove.
If you are really and truly fed up with Rightmove send in your cancellation – simple.
If you are fed up with Rightmove’s rhetoric and haven’t joined the Say No To Rightmove campaign it’s very easy to sign up and increase the pressure for change! Visit – saynotorightmove.co.uk
Why not have real useful and tangible information, such as unique visitors, Sales vs Lettings users etc.
Their primary aim is to ensure they continue to be visible in the public eye. As an industry, we need to stop promoting them so vigorously.
We need transparency over their charges across the board, which I know is probably unlikely.
Throwing away the pens, stickers and calendars should just be the start…..
If people stay on Rightmove, then do not be surprised when the price goes up! Rightmove does not attract the visitors without our stock. If you are scared about leaving Rightmove, then finish your membership and then just list any houses that the vendor particularly wants on Rightmove with Doorsteps.co.uk for £99. You still get the leads and unless you are listing huge numbers of properties per month you are probably quids in! If Rightmove are happy to allow these agents to use the website, then use it against them.
It’s only the industry’s stock that attracts the buying public. Take it away and RM have no value to the public. It’s THAT simple
I bet they dont differentiate with the “traffic” between enquiries and “others”
I myself am constantly referring to the portal (portals) regularly to check our own listings look correct, to see what others have listed and to check whats available in case I have my own buyers and can secure a share/half comm sale.
Im sure many many other agents do the same If they dont differentiate between buyers and “other” traffic the figures a badly flawed Has anyone asked that question???
As far as deflecting Say No, its the opposite, it will only make the campaign stronger as, if they want to bandy this irrelavant giures around, they need our stock! #togetherwearestronger #agentsunite
Most of the traffic is Peebee checking on #portaljuggling
The public would not even have a clue about ‘No to Rightmove’ yet. Only in 6 months or so time when they see more properties on the other portals will RM see the slide in visitors.
The public can know. Let your database know in a newsletter as we have. It’s amazing how many have spoken about it. They are savvy people!
I don’t mind staying on RM if the cost remains at the current level, but if/when it returns to silly prices – I’m off.
Maybe they have been busy. We are not on Rightmove, we left, we listed a property late last week and by referencing Google Analytics we have had so far 1,204 visits to this property on our website. Four viewings over the weekend to serious buyers and the deal was tied up yesterday, Sunday, resulting in a delighted client and purchaser. Of those 1,204 viewings on our website, a number will have been a encouraged into viewing our other properties online as well. Pay all that money to Rightmove and they don’t encourage their viewers visiting their customer websites, far from it . They don’t appear to consider the paying agents as their customers, but the browsers as the customer. The key for the agent is to know the number of units sold or likely to be sold in your area and then plan how to access those buyers.
I negected to say 7,475 hits on Facebook for this new listing. Note approximately only 850 second hand homes sold in our area in the last 12 months. Now, if the portals could all state active buyer hits, then that would be something to really take note of.
I would be very interested to know – of the Rightmove traffic – how is it divided between professional use (RM plus, agents checking their stock, etc) and public use with buyers/renters? Why do Rightmove dwell on visits and not actual lead supply? I suspect because the numbers from rivals are closer to their own performance.
We speak the same language! 100% need to know the drill down on these numbers
Its smoke and mirrors
And, lets face it, what else did people have to do during lockdown?
I bet traffic was up accross the interent
I was speaking with a good friend in the fashion world. There web site business has tripled in last few months..
Best figures this year !!
Need I say more?
This is just funny! the M25 defence- please don’t go we’ve got lots of traffic and its been sat there for hours.
When Miles can correlate traffic and time on site to viewings there will be a valid reason for mentioning it but claiming there are suddenly 6 million buyers all eager and able to buy property is nonsense.
“The portal recorded its busiest ever day on Wednesday 27th May, surpassing six million visits for the first time”
6 million visits in a single day.
How many ‘new’ buyer leads were sent throught to agents desktops for the morning of 28th May?
6,000,000/3500 activity centres means every agent listed with Rightmove should have received on average 1700 new enquiries last Thursday morning, did that happen? If it did no-one on social media was letting on
there is no correlation between portal traffic and time on site and leads sent to agents [he would have boasted about that too]
As soon as there is no correlation between traffic and leads there is no correlation with viewings and no correlation with offers or completions. It is foolish to spend money you haven’t got on something that can’t be measured.
Robert well over 95% of portal visitors are dreamers so in this respect, they have a lot in common with Rightmove.
it is actually well over 99%.
99.975% of traffic cannot possibly result in a completion. The numbers are so ridiculously rubbish I would roast any marketing director who proposed spending the marketing budget on any campaign that was less than 4% effective (Junk Mail level)
1500 completions will come from all portal traffic for a single day, if it takes 6,000,000 traffics to generate that the odds of a traffic resulting in a sale is 1in 4000, 0.025%! That is 160 times less effective than junk mail! It beggars belief
What I cannot fathom is why agency principals compare the cost of portal advertising with print advertising without considering the relative KPI’s, 4000:1 v 25:1. To put portal spend on the same basis as printed property adverting Rightmove ARPA should be £6.80!
It should make no difference at all to the campaign. There would have been record numbers on whichever portal had the AGENTS stock of property – people are looking to improve their lives, bored at home home, or just partaking in one of Britain’s favourite pastimes – looking at houses. The public will follow the houses – no matter where the WE the AGENTS choose to display them.