Zoopla says that “dozens” of agents who left it to trial OnTheMarket have now returned.
Yesterday evening, OTM dismissed the latest blast from Zoopla as “hand-wringing” and said Zoopla was continuing to lose business to it.
In a statement yesterday, Zoopla also said that the launch of OTM in January had barely affected its own audience.
The group said that traffic to its websites and mobile apps reached 50m visits in March, with mobile accounting for a record 62.6% of all visits.
It said that Zoopla’s audience “has been largely unaffected by the launch of OTM”.
It went on: “According to both ZPG internal data and confirmed by independent research firm Hitwise, ZPG traffic since the end of January has been on average more than 25 times greater than OTM’s with the gap between the two websites widening over the three weeks to Easter.”
Zoopla spokesperson Lawrence Hall added: “We are delighted with our continued strong audience levels and the value we are delivering to our members.
“It is a tough market and attracting a significant audience and delivering high levels of appraisal and applicant leads along with brand awareness for our members is what we are focused on.
“Our members enjoy a significant competitive advantage over non-members and we have now seen dozens of members who left us to trial OTM return.”
An OTM spokesperson told Eye: “More hand-wringing from ZPG as it continues to lose business to OnTheMarket.com.
“We recently passed the 5,000 offices mark, having added over 800 offices to membership since the turn of the year. The great majority of these have left Zoopla to join us. We continue to grow our membership on a daily basis.
“Members tell us that leaving Zoopla has made no difference to their instruction-winning capability and that they are receiving at least as many good quality leads from their overall online presence as before.
“They report that the property-seekers they talk to are enjoying the clear and elegant search experience and the faster response times offered by OnTheMarket.com whilst vendors and landlords appreciate the quality of presentation of their properties and the absence of spurious and unhelpful data and distracting advertising around them.
“As a new portal, we do not yet have the level of casual browser traffic enjoyed by the duopoly portals – much of which is driven by property alerts. Our focus is on attracting the much smaller number of active property-seekers in the market and generating good quality leads for our member agents.
“Our traffic grew during March, with more than 1.5m unique visitors coming to us. More than nine pages were viewed per visit, indicating a good level of engagement and one comparable with other major portals. The number of repeat visitors increased significantly and trackable email and telephone leads were also well up.
“We anticipate continued strong growth in consumer usage as our multi-million pound advertising campaign continues and active property-seekers increasingly appreciate the service and the fact that more and more agents are launching their new properties exclusively with us first.”
What utter rubbish. I was talking with staff members of a certain London independent chain of agents, and they were telling me that not only they were ‘surprised’ by the lack of leads from OTM, but also that they were pushing their management to reverse their decision as they were loosing landlords to their aggressive competitors.
The fact is, OTM is performing pathetically and for all of the efforts from my local competitors to emblazon their offices with RAF logos, consumers simply aren’t interested.
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“Aggressive competitors”…nearly 3 months in and my London agency has not had ANYONE mention Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket or portals in all that time on a valuation, not one person. We have not lost any business over our choice of portal and to be fair we’ve not gained any business from it either. Our clients or prospective clients have never spoke about it.
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-With respect it isn’t rubbish Harry and to claim so suggests you and those staff haven’t quite got to grips with how internet advertising should fit into an agents marketing strategy. In the same way as a Pot Noodle shouldn’t be regarded as the first choice of main meal for the day the property websites shouldn’t be the primary source of an Agent’s applicants or sales.
Working an applicant and client register might require effort and skills those staff have not got but they ought to realise how vulnerable that lack of skill and commitment makes them and how arguing for a return to a system that is reliant on them being able to delegate their workload off onto the portals makes them first in line for the consultation process.
I am not making comment about what is right or wrong about either of these squabbling sibling’s arguments but to place any emphasis at all on hits, page view time on site or audience shows a total misunderstanding of the basics of agency and what has been achieved by Agent’s Mutual.
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Instead of whacking the dislike button how about tapping out a reply to say why you disagree? Perhaps you could ask Rightmove and Zoopla to add a “type a reply” feature that works out what is being said and posts whenever someone has an opinion or viewpoint that doesn’t fit with yours! Well worth anther £500/ month I reckon.
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Zzzzzzzzzzooooooooopla… another day, another comment… if they are sooooo active, why is there a gigantic chasm between their share price and RM’s? Estate Agents don’t rate Zoopla, Investors don’t and neither do the Public.
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It’s because Rightmove have 10 times less shares issued than Zoopla , I’m not sure you understand how shares work if your talking about public perception .
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Danny… you know exactly what I mean… what is the point of Zoopla?… if one wants to invest, invest in Rightmove.
If as I and thousands of other Estate Agents want… an industry focused Property Portal without the shareholders/excessive profit/annual price hiking etc…
then… OnTheMarket fits perfectly. It provides an national online advertising platform which forms part of my marketing strategy without the distracting stock market babble that blights The Duopoly.
Mr Chesterman tells us his company serves the consumer… not the monthly subscription estate agency members. Rightmove serves itself, albeit funded by, yet again, monthly subscription estate agency members.
OnTheMarket.com… thankfully, neither of the above.
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What I want is an advertising source that I don’t have to sign in for 5 years and doesn’t dictate where I can advertise. When you say what’s the point in Zoopla, if it had never existed I would be paying £1000 an office by now to Rightmove , I’m sure of that . As a commercial enterprise you can’t just wish someone out of existence , it’s like saying I sell houses so what’s the point in Countrywide ? They exist because they also sell houses and I’m in competition with them .
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Also to your point about it being a national portal for everyone . That’s not what I believe this to be . It’s run by the former head of Primelocation , set up by savills , knight frank etc. I sell 3 bed Semis in Yorkshire all day long , their latest blog which I was sent was a feature about on the balcony. The lowest price property to feature was £700,000 , the lowest rental… £2,500 PCM . It’s fairly clear to see what audience they are looking for , it’s not mine . Zoopla actually works well for me and I’ll continue to use them until that changes
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Quite. National broadsheet newspapers, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Fabric Magazine, British Airways Business Class magazine etc etc..
What proportion of the marketing budget is being spent attracting the top end of the market?!
What next, powering the Country Life website?!
Very much ‘for the people’ this one!
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Come on EHenderson…. “Quite. National broadsheet newspapers, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Fabric Magazine, British Airways Business Class magazine etc etc..”………What about ……National tv advertising during Coronation Street and Eastenders, trevor mc donalds mafia, jonathan ross, the chase, carry on up the jungle!!! Newspapers Glasgow herald, evening standard, digital…BT.com…….Come on at least make your comments balanced(as you don’t have a hidden agenda?) or were you expecting them to advertise in “whippet owners monthly”, “pay day lenders gazette” “socialist worker” or perhaps on the website “how to fill your day on the dole”!!
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As I have said before, it will damage my business if a monopoly is re-created in Rightmove, hence my very clear position on this project.
Jonathan Ross etc has a small share of the top end but it does reach those types of people (plenty of top end people watch TV). Advertising in the BA Business Class magazine does nothing for regular agents.
Will be hilarious to see if if anything does happen with country life etc. Plenty of people just see this as Primelocation re-run anyway and any moves in that direction will simply confirm that.
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That’s the funniest thing I’ve read on his board. Made me laugh. I suggest you do a little reading on the stock market. Shall we perhaps compare Apple or Microsofts share prices to Rightmove? MS currently trading at 41.42.
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This sums up the crazy thinking behind this project and the problem that is brewing if OTM do make more progress (which I doubt).
GPL, you’re jumping around on Zoopla’s grave (prematurely), laughing maniacally. When the music stops you’ll be left with a monopoly, a 10 tonne gorilla.
I’d laugh if it didn’t effect me, but it does. Rate rise letters due soon.
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Forgive me EH… I don’t care about Zoopla or Rightmove… but I care enormously about the Estate Agency Industry as I live & breathe it and have done so for almost 30 Years.
If every single real/true estate agent in the UK doesn’t see the life being drained away from our business by The Duopoly…. then there is nothing I personally can do about it. If I could, believe me I would!
In the meantime the torch burns or dies with OnTheMarket.com and those fencesitters who have not joined.
I will be extremely sad to retire from this industry in the future if The Duopoly remain in control of the online advertising part of our business, however if that is the case then every single estate agent who failed to support OnTheMarket.com can shoulder the responsibility that it is their lack of commitment to the future of our industry that means they will always dance the Portal Monkey Dance as The Duopoly Organ Grinders Grind them into complete & utter submission. Those agents will forever dance for their Duopoly Masters!
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I wonder how many of those 1.5m visitors were agents having a look? a lot would be my guess
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The might be 1,000,000 Realtors in USA but not quite that many here!
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I just asked the technical department, our testing alone out of this office in 3 weeks accounts for something between 5000 and 10,000 visits to Zoopla. It could be that every bit of increased traffic on the both main portals is me!
We are running micro managed testing looking at hits, page views and traffic trends, we have locked down testing to strict password access to control who and isn’t looking just to track traffic. With the world wide nature of dynamic IP addresses, compounded by a multitude of data access routes (broadband 2g / 3g/ 4g (GCHQ?)) no-one has any genuine idea of who is who and what is what.
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Pretty desperate stuff. Let’s not forget OTM has only been up and running for less than 3 months. There’s not much point bigging up your audience numbers if you’ve got less and less stock to show………..
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So, what is surprising about this? Surely, if is not the least bit surprising that some people will get cold feet. However it would be more interesting to know how many have moved in the other direction – probably 10x more. (-:
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As a bystander i really am not interested in the OTM Vs Zoopla debate, I am much more interested in how OTM is doing Vs RM – Any firm numbers on how many agents have left RM yet?
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Come on smile……you know that is irrelevant at this extremely early stage, and you also know its a very small % (if you want the numbers PIE did them a week or so ago).
Yes, Rightmove is strong, Yes Rightmove is stronger as a result of OTM, and Yes, you will need OTM to be an alternative when Rightmove continues to increase fees each year(until unaffordable), continues to sell more of YOUR customer data to 3rd parties,continues with its private listings, starts to sell financial service adverts, conveyancing and anything else associated with your industry.
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Sorry Wilko think you have taken my comments in the wrong context.
I am board of hearing about Z VS OTM lines have been drawn everybody has an opinion which is dished out daily. Nothing either side will say will change anybodies mind.
I was not having a pop at OTM re RM – I am just more interested in that battle, I do not expect 2000 agents to have left RM at this time. I am however interested to see how many took the step and what the experience has been like.
I am interested as this is the how OTM will get me to sign up (and probably others), if they are talking more about RM and what they are going to do i am at least interested in it.
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*Bored* – I really should read back before posting!
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The Z boys are having off then? Everything is brilliant, http://www.onthemarket.co.uk hasn’t touched them, every agent that has left is an idiot and should come straight back, the share price thing that they were all obsessed about for years isn’t an issue and it’s all about the consumer now, blah, blah………yet every day they dribble on a load of cobblers for us to laugh at about this little 2 month old website. Strange people – Jonnie
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“dozens have returned”!!!!!!!! Really, is that a number (out of 1000s) that Zoopla are proud to boast about??? How many new advertisers have they attracted who didn’t advertise with them or OTM????
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Zoopla, considering your claim that OTM aren’t effecting your business, you sure do spend a lot of time putting out press releases about them. Why?
Could you drop it for a week or two? Or preferably longer. Please!
The real measurement of portal success for me is not the number of ‘hits’, or whatever you benchmark with; it’s the number of quality leads I receive: the number of successful lets I get. Don’t care much about the rest of it.
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On the other hand MF how can those of us not on OTM decide to join if we don’t have updated facts and figures. I am sure there are a lot of agents out there using a wait and see philosophy. The OTM/Z battle appears far from over or clear and no tipping point seems to be in sight.
Whilst the bickering is amusing real facts and figures are what I really want to see.
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Dozens have returned, WOW hold the front page.
Why are RM being so quiet about the whole thing?
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It is clear from the loss of agents and advertised stock that OTM has impacted Z since its inception. OTM should be congratulated for delivering a platform on time, with the support of so many agents in advance of seeing a finished product.
The hard work for OTM starts now as they must demonstrate the viability of the platform by generating leads and new instructions for their member agents that will be driven primarily by the consumer.
From an agents perspective, the motives for joining OTM make sense to me, but the reality is it needs to deliver value to its members over an above the emotive logic for joining.
The key to the value chain in property portals is the consumer. They drive the action in terms of enquiries. Audience growth theoretically = more enquiries which = more listing agents which = more inventory which lends itself to continued audience growth.
Unfortunately, OTM as a new entrant doesn’t bring with it a new strategic capability, be it, technological or otherwise and quite frankly the consumer audience doesn’t care for portal politics. they care about accessing a site with the largest marketplace of available properties in their desired search area.
It is fair to say that Z is hurting and have quite rightly instructed a 3rd party research agency to protect their position and provide the statistic fact that they have a wider consumer audience than OTM and if this is where the eyeballs are, then potentially agents are losing enquiries, thus they stand to deliver better value as a marketing partner as it stands currently and those members choosing to list with OTM are paying a fortune relative to the value they are receiving.
Despite the constant deflections from OTM that the figures are ‘wildly inaccurate’ or wrong, they have at no point supported this with a the source of their data.
Accessing free sites like similarweb ( http://www.similarweb.com/website/onthemarket.com) are supportive of Hitwise’s findings.
If OTM are to continue to build on early momentum and acquire new members, they should now begin referencing their data sources vs making unsubstantiated claims.
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“Dozens leaving apparently”….let’s be honest Zoopla have ran out of things to say.
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Here’s the only real stat that matters to a real estate agent.
Right Agent, Right Property, Right Marketing, Right Buyers, Right Negotiation = SOLD.
Let’s strip all this convoluted stat cr@p out as a great deal of it comes under the heading of Analysing the Bleeding Obvious!
The best thing our industry could do is wash these statistical plonkers down the nearest loo!
When Apollo 13 seemed doomed the reality was astronouts making filters out of bits n bobs… all the stat folk ran around but the life & death bit?…. the guys in the spacecraft!
In a previous career, forgive me!… I occasionally aved peoples lives by taking action there and then! and the point of this comment is not bigging myself up!…. it is saying that our industry is blighted with statistical bystanders justifying their positions and actually detracting from the job that is right in front of us, staring us in the face…. that old fashioned thing?…. Estate Agency!
Let’s just get on with Estate Agency!
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With respect GPL it can be simplified even further. Win more, Keep more, Sell more! (Win more isn’t just about volume)
In respect of Apollo 13 it wasn’t quite as you have portrayed. Sure it wasn’t the bean counters who did the thinking on the ground (no doubt one of the accountants raised a concern that the backflow filter wasn’t on the life saving schedule) but there was a set of support staff who worked out what there was to work with and how it could be lashed together.
For the past 20 years I have been ground staff to the industry, providing exactly the right support when it was needed. Get in touch with the AM gold members who have seen what I have cobbled together from nothing with nothing and ask them if I have built something capable of keeping agency fit, healthy and on track.
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