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We are into the 2nd month of testing and the results are becoming somewhat predictable, which is one of the biggest surprises so far.  We have pitted our Forced Website against our Unforced Website to determine which generates more leads.  We have tracked conversion rates, lead registration types, traffic, and trends.

This week marked the first time that the websites showed the same results for non-IDX leads.  It was also a new low for conversion rate for the Unforced site and a very predictable result for the Forced site.

To follow along with our test, please visit our blog at: www.barkerhedges.com/blog/real-estate-technology/.  To read the latest results, analysis and commentary, read our Week 5 post.

We welcome your comments and… Read Full Post

We are 4-weeks into our Forced vs. Unforced Registration Test and the results have been predictable, unpredictable, shocking and just plain interesting.  If you are not familiar with what we are doing, Read More about our project.

When this all began, we were cautiously optimistic about having a Forced Registration website and not sure what to do with our other 2 LEC's that Real Estate Webmasters built for us.  Without hard data to convince us, we embarked on this journey and so far it looks like Forced Registration is the way to go.

After the 1st week of reporting data, the jury was still out.  We saw 30% more non-IDX leads register on the Unforced Website, but subsequent week's have trended differently.  Week 2 data showed conversion rates more than…

To Force or Not to Force? Registration, that is. It's a hotly debated topic and one with good arguments on both sides. We've been dabbling in the online Real Estate game for several years and finally decided to get serious this year. By serious, I mean, we hired Real Estate Webmasters to fix our broken sites and we just completed the launch of our 3rd LEC last month. With all this shinny new technology came a fundamental decision about whether to make these websites Forced or Unforced Registration sites.

We've read the forum boards and participated on blogs, but we've never actually seen hard data from 2 side-by-side websites to back up the opinions. So, we are putting our websites to the test. We have one local website, www.barkerhedges.com, that…