In April of 2005, I conducted a survey of more than 250 real estate marketing websites. These were not corporate websites -- they were the personal marketing websites of individual agents.

What shocked me was that the majority of these websites (nearly 65%) had no way to capture the email addresses of visitors. I'm assuming the owners of these sites expected visitors to contact them immediately upon visiting.

But that's too heavy a burden to put on a website. It's rare that you can shorten the sales cycle to nothing more than a web visit and expect any results.

On a commerce website, most first-time visitors will leave without purchasing anything. Likewise, on a real estate marketing website, most visitors will leave without contacting the agent who owns the site.

If people leave your website without "dropping off" their contact information, there's a strong chance you'll never hear from them again. That's the nature of the Internet, and it reinforces the importance of having a lead-capturing system on your website.

What happens when people visit your site:
Generally speaking, first-time visitors to your website will do one of three things:

1. They will respond immediately (with a phone call or email).

2. They will sign up for something and then leave the site.

3. They will leave the site without doing anything.

Obviously, you want visitors to take the first or second action. But we know from statistical surveys that most visitors will take action #2 or #3. That makes action #2 (sign up and leave) the overlap between what you want visitors to do and what they're most likely to do.

So make sure you have something for people to sign up for on your website. This is called an "opt in" mechanism -- visitors will opt in (or subscribe) to receive future communications from you.

Listings help, but they