Are Rightmove Playing Real Estate Catch Up?

In September 2006 we speculated as to whether Rightmove.co.uk would add any new technology to their site on the back of surge of new startup entrants into the UK property search space such as Nestoria, Ononemap, Zoomf,  Extate and Properazzi to name just a few, or whether in the absence of any real threat to its huge market dominance has led Rightmove to rest on its laurels and ignore its fledgling competitors.

Over the past year, the face of UK online property search has seen remarkable change so on the back of record half-year results out last week from Rightmove showing yet another increase in revenues up some 68 per cent to £25.4 million, we thought we’d revisit Rightmove to see if the marketplace giant with 19 of the top 20 UK homebuilders and 9 out of 10 properties listed in the UK has chosen to up its online game or is still just master of all it surveys.

In the world of Web 2.0 some sites change their design almost as often as you or I change our socks but Rightmove has remained steadfast in its decision to look the same in the past 7 years, upgrading its look just 5 times and electing to keep a simple 90′s navigation as its core. I’m guessing that being a marketplace leader makes this less of a priority but with an internet generation of property buyers coming of age and the blistering pace with which internet technological advancements are hitting the online world, will there come a point where Rightmove’s users will demand a higher level of property search experience?

Rightmove have to their credit been subtly introducing new features from their most recent foray into mobile search enabling property search on the go and a search toolbar addon which is move by Rightmove to encourage brand loyalty. Rightmove also has an Sold House Prices, its Automated Valuation Model (AVM) application is designed to accurately value UK residential property which could be applied in a similar format to US property search pioneer Zillow.com.

Earlier this year, Rightmove made its biggest competitive move to date electing to include an interactive property mapping feature by choosing to link its property listings with Aboutmyplace.co.uk, which displays important local area information but with Rightmove this appears in a seperate pop-up window. This is a surprising move given the plethora of Web 2.0 real estate sites who have already seamlessly integrated a mapping function as standard into their site design and search operation with many going that extra mile by mapping more than just a basic property location to include schools, sold prices and even mobile masts and it is this which in my opinion paves the way for a far smoother property search experience. This decision appears to be a lazy way for Rightmove to compete without having to develop the technology, but when a user clicks on an individual listing and is then taken offsite to completely different website on a new webpage which doesn’t map comparatively similar properties alongside it, time-consuming, clunky and unhelpful are just some of the thoughts that spring to mind.

Since February a new three-tier system of advertising has been introduced, Rightmove Choice is now used by one in five agents who are paying to have their homes pushed up the pecking order to be displayed at the top of the results page in a similar fashion to Google Adwords or Ebay which further brings into question Rightmove’s ability to serve up good property search.

Property search in my eyes deals with the ability of a active property buyer fulfilling his property search needs online by ending up with shortlist of properties to view which match his or her living requirements. The search element of any property website is the key to the user experience and should help them to narrow down their search to just a few properties. Rightmove has all the hallmarks of classic online property search but has severely limited its search ability by opting to leave out a key feature for users to refine their search by keyword/tagging, which comes into its own in both UK and Overseas property search by allowing a user to easily navigate to homes by “Polaris World” (a major spanish developer) for example rather than having to trawl through an infinite number of Costa Calida listings and in the UK rapidly find houses for sale on just a certain street.

What do the numbers say?
A media fascination with metrics means a websites popularity is judged by its numbers so lets review the stats:

Rightmove Website Statistics for July 2007
Total visits:                 29 million
Searches:                     61 million
Registered users          3 million
No of properties         1,095,000

Percentage increases from last year:
41% increase in Total Visitors
49% increase in Searches
30% increase in registered users
25% increase in the number of properties

View last years figures here

So what can we deduce from this?
Well firstly a 41% increase in site visitors is impressive and the increase in Searches falls in line with this statistically. The number of registered users is significantly less than total visitors which indicates that the majority of all those new vistors to the site are electing not to register, a rather transiant approach to property search which shows poor brand loyalty. Furthermore, is ‘Total Visitors’ infact a fairly useless statistic which fails to differentiate repeat visitors from new visitors showing that whilst more people are coming to the site, we don’t know if they are staying or its just a one-off visit and what they are actually searching for UK or Overseas Property. The increase in number of properties is to be expected given their presence within the marketplace but could also largely attributable to the fact that Rightmove was originally founded by three of the UK’s largest estate agency chains giving it a great headstart.

How can we explain these increases?
Well it’s fair to say they have deep pockets and as such can afford expensive TV and offline media advertising campaigns, which will drive lots of traffic to the site. 2007 has seen a big drive at Rightmove.co.uk to increase their presence in the Overseas Property marketplace. Their latest overseas property listings count is 45,000 in 87 countries, so also accounts for some of the increasing visitor numbers.

So with all this dominance, will anyone be able to challenge their spot as the UK’s number one property website?

Deep pockets and an endless marketing budget along with a semi good idea can sadly yield good results. So can the Web 2.0 property community come up with something that will deliver?

Many of the companies entering into the UK property search space despite being David to the comparatively goliath Rightmove.co.uk, but already several are starting to assert their presence in the space and eat into Rightmove’s market share.

Let’s start with Nestoria from yesterday’s podcast

Ed kindly forwarded over some interesting stats provided by comscore.com as an accurate independent web statistics provider:

Nestoria.co.uk Website Statistics For July 2006
(Starting just covering the London housing marketplace)
Not enough traffic for Comscore to register
No of properties (buy and rent)  80,000

Nestoria.co.uk Website Statistics For July 2007
(UK wide)
Unique UK users 219,000
No of properties  450,000 and 500,000 (buy and let)

As an overall comparison with the UK property search marketplace, Comscore reported the following number of UNIQUE user as at July 2007:
Rightmove:           3,419,000
Findaproperty:    1,581,000
Propertyfinder:   1,441,000
Primelocation:     1,160,000

Nestoria may only have 6.4% of the traffic that Rightmove receives, but if all the following companies as demonstrated by this Alexa ranking graph shows, are also gaining market share then Rightmove looks set to have a slow but sure fight on their hands.

A friend mentioned that on the back of a recommodation from a friend at work, she recently swapped in her current search for her first home to ononemap.com , so it does appear that word is spreading and with the advent of online social networking, social bookmarking and the ease with which we can share our search findings with our peers, will word of mouth of a better property search be the silent medium which projects some of the UK’s rising search stars into orbit leaving Rightmove at groundzero.

So people, vote with your feet and decide whether your time is better spent on a property site that delivers results to you fast and saves you time or you want to be a brand slave.

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