Zoopla benefits from post-pandemic property boom

House prices are at a 17-year high, renters are returning to cities, and Zoopla is benefiting. Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that, between January 1, 2020 and January 1, 2022, the property search portal registered an increase in Consideration scores (which measure whether consumers would consider a brand when they are next in the market for its services) from 27.5 to 31.8 (+4.3).

Purchase Intent (which measures whether consumers would be likely or unlikely to use the site when looking to buy or rent a house) jumped by 5.2 points – rising from 7.7 to 12.9 over this period.

But is Zoopla the beneficiary of a surging property market – or has it performed well on its own merits? The brand’s performance across other metrics suggest that some of its efforts to win over house-hunters have paid off.

For example, the property site’s marketing efforts ramped up considerably in 2021 – to the point where it launched its “biggest-ever marketing campaign” in May 2021. Ad Awareness scores, which measure whether consumers have seen an ad for a brand in the past two weeks, more than doubled between January 1 2020 and May 22 2021, going from 8.1 to 19.3 before falling back down to 10.1 by January 1 2022.

We can also see that Satisfaction scores, which track whether Britons are happy or unhappy users of a particular website, rose from 11.6 to 15.1 between January 1 2020 and January 1 2022 (+3.5). Value scores also saw an uptick, rising from 10.6 to 13.3 (+2.7).

So while Zoopla has likely done well out of pandemic conditions – which have included a (now-concluded) stamp duty holiday, and a period where people have re-evaluated their relationship to work and home spaces - Zoopla has seized the opportunity in the crisis, generating real gains in user happiness.

This article originally appeared in City AM