Analysts at German-owned bank Berenberg have done an analysis of visitor numbers for OnTheMarket and Zoopla in January.
In a report titled “OTM a long way from being number one (or number two)” the analysts dismisses OnTheMarket’s publicly-stated ambitions last spring that it was “confident in becoming the number two portal by January 2016.”
The bank says: “On all important metrics, the company has fallen short of these ambitions. In terms of website traffic, according to Hitwise data, OTM’s record traffic is 10% of Zoopla group’s and 5% of Rightmove’s. There has not even been a single week where OTM has seen higher site traffic than Zoopla’s niche site Primelocation.”
It says that while OTM has achieved the support of 6,500 estate and letting agent offices, of which over 10 per cent are on a non-binding letter of intent, Zoopla has 12,702 with what it calls a “continued flow of agents returning to Zoopla.”
In an interesting insight into the hitherto-shrouded world of OTM traffic volumes, the bank says that over its first anniversary period “weekly site visits [to OTM] increase from a lacklustre 329,000 at the end of 2015 up to a peak of 1.04m in mid-January.”
It then says: “January is the busiest month of the year for property search and during the same period, the number of visitors to Zoopla’s sites increased from 5.1m to 8.4m. Since its peak, OTM traffic has fallen back to 725,000, with Zoopla’s actually increasing during this period to 8.7m. We remain of the view that organic traffic to OTM is weak, and that agents who persist with OTM will not benefit from the most attractive value proposition.”
You can see the full report here, including the pay-off which suggests the challenger portal in “a blip in the growth trajectory” of Zoopla and Rightmove.
Last week we broke the news on Rightmove’s record traffic and leads volumes in January.
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15 % looks like CMA have a solid case, for Dividing Up and Sharing Markets
Not that any of my esteemed colleagues will care , "it's about regaining control" ...... When your business is overtaken , what do you control then ?
control of what ? change then and stop been so bloody lazy
you can't control change of time
so man / woman up and live with what the public want
let the public decide i don't control anything the public do the customer
How did PropertyLive look at its peak?
"OTM traffic is 10% of Zoopla's and 5% of Rightmove's..." I stopped reading there... Same old story, yawn yawn, this portal is like david v goliath. Yes we know, nothing new here.
otm is dead as dead a dodo or is that £ 12m turkey either way finished for good
OTM was never David ,having large corporate publicly listed estate agents, monopolizing London with independents led up the garden path .
Funds, squandered by a handful who have lived off monies, raised from subscription fees .
A CEO who has added to his pension pot , a two bit trade magazine getting a juicy sponsorship and paid traffic along with same old ,same old, bigoted contributors
And if you don't agree ,tough there's plenty who do and some.
MAY I add data snooping has also be found and passed onto the the relevant authorities , that's the real meaning of dirty tricks ....
what do you mean about data snooping?
The biggest platform in the world is FACEBOOK, 36 million users in the UK & estate agents are not even close to using its potential & it puts the estate agent in full control... there was never any need for OTM just more help and advice on how to better market themselves on social media
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