We’ve been experimenting with messages in various locations across Redfin.com. Recently, we placed an announcement in a message box at the top of our map page. Once the box is closed, it disappears until we run a new message.
When we released the latest version of Redfin.com, we ran our first message this space announcing our new neighborhood pages. The text was: “New! Pricing trends for every neighborhood. And more.” With “neighborhood,” we linked to a respective city page for each market. With “more,” we linked to the Redfin blog post about the features of the latest release.
We were worried that placing an announcement across the top of the map would annoy people searching for homes. We ran the message for a week and tracked how often people dismissed the box and clicked-through to the links.
Click-Through Rate
The total click-through rate (CTR) for the message box was high (1.95%), higher than any other message location on Redfin.com. For the “neighborhood” anchor text, Seattle (2.93%) had the highest CTR and Southern California (1.35%) the lowest. The anchor text linking to the blog post had a CTR of 0.15%, which is not surprising given that it was the second link in the message.
Dismissal Rate
The dismissal rate for the message box was 1.50%. DC had the highest rate (1.86%) and Boston had the lowest (1.08%). The dismissal rate was lower than we expected. The low rate is likely due to the fact that users: 1) weren’t seeing the box; 2) were unable to find the X to close the box; or 3) didn’t mind having the box on the screen.
We’re thinking about trying out a few different treatments for the box- different colors and different length messages to test how the dismissal and click-through rates change.
What about you? Did you notice the message? Did you leave it open or click it away?