WhoshouldIsee Tracks

Dawsons visit the Site Doctor

1

What’s in the video?

The Dawsons site is modern, striking, fresh, simple and clean.  In sum: there’s a lot to like.  So in this video our site quack has a look for some ideas which could drive the site further.  It’s an interesting case, as the SEO performs well, and the usage stats are strong – however our conclusion is that this is largely due to weak competition so an easy bar to jump over for SEO, and a lack of Rightmove driving disproportionate traffic into the site.  The video proposes a string of structural fixes and smaller ideas (many of which focus on conversion into enquiries), which would take it from simple and good, to a properly world class marketing engine.

We hope you enjoy it:

 

Summary Prescription:

The site is simple and clean.  There is lots to like in the design.  Aside from one issue with the search bar on the homepage on some computers, the layout is easy to understand.

There are lots of opportunities to improve the property search pathway and improve the property details page.  Eg the simplicity of the site sees it with no map of results (at least that we could find), the option of adding infinite scroll, and sorting out the left hand bar so that on mobile it doesn’t push the results 3 screen scrolls down.

The speed of the site is fine.  Good actually.  Though obviously it’s always possible to crank it up and go faster.  But no big issues here.

The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) really had us thinking.  The fundamentals are ok, and page titling etc. is reasonable on branch pages.  Yet branch pages rank fantastically.  Upon analysis we put this down in part to luck in naming the page titles “Dawsons Estate Agents” (thus scoring the critical SEO terms on every branch page, where they aren’t in the H1 titles).  Infact, there aren’t (that we noted) any H1 titles at all.  So why does the site rank so well?  We believe this is down to stellar Domain Authority coupled with either structurally flawed competition, or competition that has too big an SEO target (trying to optimise tens of branches, across hundreds of town and village names, with only a little more Domain Authority).  In short: easy competition.

And there is a gaping opportunities to introduce a user profile system.  Both to gather intelligence on users, but also to engage them into contact, and to sign them up for email alerts.  With so much traffic entering the site (due to strong natural business characteristics, plenty of property stock etc, coupled with no Rightmove “umbrella” shielding the site from direct applicant traffic) there is a real opportunity if you get this right.  Most agents would kill for the traffic you have per branch, so let’s really harness the opportunity you have and squeeze maximum value out of it.

Aside from that, the video is packed with the usual basket of 50 or 60 detailed ideas to improve user flows, and conversion rate.  Indeed conversion opportunities, alongside of a proper user profile system are, in our opinion, probably the biggest opportunities the site has.  If you implemented the whole lot, we can easily see the site generating as much as 30% higher conversion rate to valuation enquiries.

We hope it helps.

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