Our performance update - August 2023

Experiments are boosting vendor conversion rates

We recently changed our agent valuation page to emphasise that getting an agent valuation is free, encouraging more users to book one through us.

The result was a 20% improvement to the session-to-lead conversion rate on zoopla.co.uk/valuation.

We’ve also worked on new ways to keep those who aren’t yet ready to sell engaged, nudging them into sending a valuation lead to an agent.

When a homeowner completes our instant valuation form, we now retarget them with an email that sends them back Zoopla to get a more accurate agent valuation.

This has been running for the last 3 months and is converting over 7% of the users who click the email into an agent valuation lead.

Opening up more opportunities from price reductions

One change we’ve made is related to a big market trend: price reductions.

Our research shows 6.5% of homes have been reduced by 5% or more in recent months. So, we’ve split out our email alerts to help you highlight your price-reduced listings to relevant customers.

We see high lead conversion rates for price reduced listings, so separating these out means your listings are getting seen more by price-conscious buyers.

We’re making our marketing work harder during slower periods

We optimise our marketing plan to capture sellers, buyers and renters at peak seasonal moments.

August marks the start of a seasonal slow-down in buyer and seller activity. And even more so this year, given pressure on buying power caused by high mortgage rates.

We know millions of people already use our comprehensive data and insight to better understand and make moving decisions – we get 4m unique users of our house prices page every month.

So, we’re focusing on educating and empowering people to move right now, by:

• Helping people who want to move find the answers they need through our customer content, such as how interest rates rises might impact the market and mortgage availability, and areas where it’s cheaper to buy than rent
• Helping your customers find this content by activating it in creative ways on our owned social channels – which we can achieve as the most followed UK property portal on social media
• Our content is helping the nation move, by highlighting price reductions in different local areas to persuade sellers to be realistic when it comes to pricing
• Our PR efforts continue to show up everywhere in national and regional media. Our recent story, which focused on first-time buyers, found that four in ten under 40s are ‘giving up on the idea of owning property’. We coupled this with Zoopla tips and advice to get on the ladder, which was picked up by everyone from The Sun, to The Times and LBC

Changes to Audience Connect based on your feedback

We’ve listened to your feedback on our Audience Connect product, and have developed a new offering to better suit your needs.

Audience Connect extends your social targeting reach, giving you access to our high-intent, first-party audiences.

We heard you wanted to get more targeted in your local area – and that you wanted to target other audiences, like buyers and investors.

That’s why we’re now trialling a new Remarketing solution for our customers that lets you tailor your targeting to do this.