Which New Zealand Home Loan providers are maximising their market share online?
Find out which home loan providers are taking the lead in organic search and how they’re doing it.
FIRST has investigated the organic search engine rankings for NZ consumer searches focused on home loans, utilising FIRST’s Ranking Based Reach (RBR) analysis framework. In addition, a consumer survey was carried out to discover what is most important for Kiwis wishing to apply for a home loan.
In this report we discovered:
New Zealand house prices rose by 8.02% during 2013, after a rise of 8.54% in 2012. House prices are still rising and also home loan rates continue to increase. Therefore, getting the best fit is even more crucial for consumers.
Due to their low RBRs, search results are broadly dispersed among a wide range of competitors, even more in mobile. In this competitive home loan and mortgage market, retailers are missing out optimising on the most cost effective marketing channel: Search.
29% of all New Zealand smart phone users use their device for making online researches for “buying a house” and it is likely that these numbers will increase.
A considered digital strategy that integrates both organic and paid search should be a key customer acquisition and revenue driver for home loan providers.
Popular search phrases are missing from most sites and in most cases very little is being done with organic search.
FIRST uses its bespoke metric called RBR (Ranking Based Reach) to estimate how well each company is ranking in search engines. RBR provides a simple way to compare a website’s search engine rankings with its competitors. RBR is an estimate of the percentage of available search traffic a website will receive for a set of phrases – this gives the sites share of search or reach. It is weighted based on the popularity of each search phrase and the relative click through rate (CTR) of each ranking position.
14. • New Zealand house prices rose by 8.02% during 2013, after a
rise of 8.54% in 2012.(1) House prices are still rising and also
home loan rates continue to increase. Therefore, getting the
best fit is even more crucial for consumers.
• Due to their low RBRs, search results are broadly dispersed
among a wide range of competitors, even more in mobile. In
this competitive home loan and mortgage market, retailers are
missing out optimising on the most cost effective marketing
channel: Search.
• 29% of all New Zealand smart phone users use their device for
making online researches for “buying a house” and it is likely
that these numbers will increase.(2)
• A considered digital strategy that integrates both organic
and paid search should be a key customer acquisition and
revenue driver for home loan providers.
Summary &
Observations
(1) Source: Q4 2013: World's housing markets in headlong boom, led by
U.S. and Asia Pacific, globalpropertyguide.com, April 2014
(2) Source: NZ will have 90% smartphone and 78% tablet ownership by
2018, scoop.co.nz, April 2014
Home loans and mortgages