A long-standing industry debate which is always sure to get both sides of the fence going is the benefits of online estate agents vs. those of using the traditional high street estate agency business model. However, until now, much of the debate has been based on opinion, sentiment and biased statistics.
Now, thanks to a digital customer service firm, we may have a little more to go on. Although it is clearly not the definitive answer, a report created by The Chat Shop has delved a little deeper into the differences between online and traditional - focusing particularly on the digital presence and service offered by the two business models.
The research concentrated on five online agents: eMoov, House Network, House Simple, Purplebricks and Tepilo alongside five traditional high street agents: Foxtons, haart, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward (KFH), Knight Frank and Your Move to see if there was a noticeable difference in the digital service offered by the different business types.
The results produced some unexpected and interesting findings. We have taken a look at some of the so-called myths that are thrown into doubt by the report.
'Traditional agents don't embrace the internet'
Firstly, the idea that traditional agents don't embrace online' channels doesn't appear to hold up to scrutiny. The report shows that traditional agents have powerful websites that attract much larger volumes of traffic than their online counterparts.
London agent Foxtons knocks the competition out of the water when it comes to traffic, with 970,000 visits per month. Only Your Move gets anywhere near, with 440,000 visits, while Foxtons' traffic levels are 300% higher than all five online agents put together.
Foxtons has 51 branches in the capital, compared to haart and Your Move which are both situated in excess of over 150 locations across the UK yet register considerably lower website traffic.
The website traffic results would suggest, as expected, that brand awareness is still much higher for the traditional agencies. Online agencies have plenty of catching up to do in this respect but, on the other hand, they have been around for a lot less time and are arguably more reliant on the portals for traffic' than their own websites.
'Digitally unaware traditional agents vs. tech-savvy online agents'
Despite what many online agents have claimed in the past, the report would suggest that it's not true that traditional agents are digital novices while online agents are highly tech-savvy. In fact, far from being digitally incompetent, the traditional agencies are leading the way when it comes to social media, with high-end, high-profile estate agency Knight Frank the most prominent user on Facebook and Twitter.
Focusing on Facebook likes, the highest figures were recorded by two of the traditional agents (Knight Frank with 5,427 and KFH with 3,542). Online agents are more prolific tweeters, but traditional agents have more followers - again pointing to greater brand awareness for the high street agents and an indication that the online agents need to work harder to gain popularity on social media.
'Lower levels of service from online agents'
The research also found that the received wisdom regarding online agents - that because of the lower costs involved the level of service and customer satisfaction is drastically reduced - would not appear to be true in some circumstances.
All the featured online agents scored well when it came to customer response. However, The Chat Shop compiled all its customer satisfaction figures from AllAgents, so a more reflective picture could have been gleaned from a range of other sites and sources.
The Chat Shop considered the presence of phone numbers, email/contact forms, valuations, branch info and live chat to determine which agents were most digitally accessible. House Network achieved the highest score but Foxtons again scored highly. KFH, Knight Frank and Your Move were all given relatively low scores - with a lack of a live chat feature a problem for the traditional agents. The rest of the online businesses made up the middle of the group contributing to the online model's higher average score for accessibility.
'Traditional agency not putting in the hours'
It has sometimes been levelled at high street agents that due to their conventional set up they are unable to offer the same around the clock service as their online counterparts. The Chat Shop's findings make for interesting reading, however, as haart and Foxtons came in second and third overall with respective weekly opening hours of 98 and 84.
Top spot was claimed by Purplebricks, which runs a 24/7 call centre. Knight Frank and Your Move offer the lowest number of weekly hours and Sarah Beeny's online venture Tepilo offers only 3.5 hours more than the two traditional agents - a figure which you might expect to be a lot higher.
The most obvious conclusion to the findings is, as The Chat Shop report states, that no-one is digitally immune'. Those who don't embrace digital channels and fail to adapt to new technology tend to fall behind their peers and competitors.
Certainly, the clearest advantage traditional agents have over online agents is much greater brand awareness, solidified over many years. It is evident that despite online agents' protests, the traditional high street agents are embracing the online revolution -with greater focus on new media and developing a digital presence.
With a market share estimated at less than 5%, the online agents are still in the early stages of growth, which arguably suggests that some of the figures achieved in the report are really quite impressive.
Though this is only a very small sample and clearly not indicative of the whole market, it is refreshing to have some solid statistics and data to review when comparing the two business models. The Chat Shop has said it is looking to make this report an annual event. We look forward to it with interest.
To have a look for yourself, you can request a copy of the full report here.
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