Zillow Inc (Z) Zeros In on Mobile

The Motley Fool recently a visit to online home and real estate marketplace Zillow Inc (NASDAQ:Z). We chated with Chief Revenue Officer Greg Schwartz about Zillow’s revenue streams, monetization strategies, and what lies ahead.

Greg explains why mobile is such a great match for Zillow Inc (NASDAQ:Z), and how the company expects to improve conversion rates on the leads it sends to its Premier Agents.

To view the full interview, click here.

Brendan Byrnes: Can you talk about monetization, desktop versus mobile, how that impacts your top line?

Greg Schwartz: Yeah. We think of Zillow Inc (NASDAQ:Z) as a mobile company now. Again, the key stats were on the weekend at least 65% of our visitors are on the 25 apps, so the consumer’s already moved there.

They tend to be lowest funnel opportunities, or individuals, so they’re walking around in their neighborhood, standing in front of a home on a Saturday or a Sunday and they’re flipping through photos in the interior of the home, and then we provide a selection of wonderful and rated real estate agents for them to connect with right then and there.

What’s interesting is, a lot of the dialogue is happening on text. The immediacy of text — getting it out of the email box — particularly on the weekends is really, really important, so those connection points are happening at even greater velocity. We’re really excited about the mobile conversion.

Byrnes: For Zillow Inc (NASDAQ:Z) investors out there, what kind of metrics do you think they should be looking at, as far as how to evaluate the business?

Schwartz: We spend a lot of time talking to investors about the TAM, the total addressable market. In our approach to understanding TAM, we’re at a relatively low point right now — or a youthful point — in our impact on total transactions.

The thing we look at is, how many leads do we generate? We have upwards of 30,000 Premier Agents. We send them about 15 leads each month. We think about 3% of those, currently, convert to a transaction so we’re somewhere between 4 and 5% of the transaction side in the United States today.

There’s a ton of leverage, a ton of leverage, if we can use our investment in software and tools and training for our agents to increase that conversion rate from 3% to 4% to 5%. We’ll impact more transactions, our agents will be more profitable, they’ll spend more on advertising with us, and there’s this wonderful self-reinforcing cycle that occurs.

The article Zillow Zeros In on Mobile originally appeared on Fool.com.

Brendan Byrnes has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Zillow.

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