Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but they definitely keep us in the dark. I had to race home from speaking at Retail Fest about the importance of using your metrics and analyses to grow your eCom business, just so we could finish off getting our house ready for sale (open house today, I should be cleaning, but I’m typing this instead).

I asked the real estate agent about our listings on domain.com.au and realestate.com.au and their performance; impressions, click-through rates, and whatnot. He looked at me with the same expression my Golden Retriever gave me when I was trying to teach her to play chess. He said ‘we don’t have access to that information’.

This is dumb. How can a business (the real estate agent) function without being able to pass on these metrics to the client (me and my wife)? How many times has it been favourited (the real estate equivalent of Add To Cart)? Any shares metrics? How long are potential customers staying in our listing (the rea estate equivalent of Time On Site)?

The fella across the road from us is having an open house at 12pm today, whereas we are having one at 12:30pm. I messaged the real estate agent and said ‘Hey buddy, any chance you could put some signage out an hour early about our house, so we can try and grab some of the potential customers that are coming to see old mate’s house across the road’? His reply was ‘wow, I hadn’t thought of that’. This is the real estate equivalent of ‘You may also like’. So easy. Just do it.

Saying all this though, he is actually a really nice guy. He is clearly a very successful real estate agent, and I’m sure he will sell our house for the upper dollar range we’ve asked for.

I think I just can’t help putting my eCommerce hat on and wanting the metrics. You cannot make informed decisions without metrics.

#ecomtheworld, some might say.

Real Estate agents are stupid

eBay’s ‘Listing Quality Reports’ - where they are, and why they are awesome