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Thanks for the joke!

I appreciate your comments. I like the idea of option number two, because it still gets to the end goal--a sale. It'd be a bigger project than I want to take on, though.

Option number three gauges interest in a scientific manner, but assumes that interest is a valid proxy for the end goal of a sale. I'm not sure how true that assumption is.

I've window shopped homes that I had no intention (nor capability) of buying. My employer one had a record day because one of the homes on the site was a football player's and had gotten mentioned in an ESPN blog. In both cases, interest was only vaguely related to purchase capability.

Testing all the way to the end of the funnel (home sale) is key, and difficult.

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> It'd be a bigger project than I want to take on, though.

In that case, use the above outline as a litmus test for those who claim real evidence for a particular strategy -- just ask, "Have you done any A/B testing?" It has the advantage of putting the conversation on a quasi-scientific footing, and it impresses people too. :)

> Option number three gauges interest in a scientific manner, but assumes that interest is a valid proxy for the end goal of a sale. I'm not sure how true that assumption is.

Yes, fair enough. But remember that online advertising pays by the click, so someone, somewhere believes it's a valid measure of future sales, even if the click is all there is.

Maybe 500 people click, and only one buys. The outcome is still related to the click-through rate, and the pay-per-click scheme still works. If there was any serious doubt about the value of paying for clicks, people would refuse to pay -- they would try some other approach to online advertising and metrics.

> Testing all the way to the end of the funnel (home sale) is key, and difficult.

Absolutely. You would have to interrogate the buyers, and I venture to guess no one will want to push that idea.