Leading online real estate database Zillow.com has a thriving mobile strategy: People use its apps 6.5 million times each month “with more than 23 million visits to home detail pages; that’s 32,000 home views every hour or nearly 9 home views every single second,” says CEO Spencer Rascoff.

To hit these impressive numbers, Zillow has worked hard to re-imagine its business model for a mobile audience, for both consumers and advertisers.

Spencer will give a keynote (Redefining Zillow in a Mobile Era: When a dot com is No Longer a .com) this March at Web 2.0 Expo in which he’ll discuss how his company transformed.

We recently interviewed Spencer about Zillow’s success and how companies can develop their own location-based mobile technology strategies. Read on for the full interview:

Kaitlin: Your talk focuses in part on the impact of location-based mobile technologies has had on your company. Can you give me an overview of what changed and why you felt this was necessary?

Spencer: We live in a mobile society.  People expect tools that can interact with their digital lives and that respond in fundamentally new ways.

We see real estate as a perfect location-based application for mobile – people want this information as they are walking and driving around neighborhoods.  We saw this immediately in our mobile usage the first day we launched our first mobile app on iPhone two years ago.

Kaitlin: What process did Zillow go through in order to refine its original business model?

Spencer: Our goal is to help people become smarter about homes, real estate and mortgages.

Our approach has always been to provide the best data, tools and resources for people at all stages of homeownership – buyers, sellers, renters and borrowers – that supports their needs and enables them to be more competitive in today’s marketplace.

This has not changed; what has changed is the way people are accessing and demanding information – on the go.

Kaitlin: What have the results been?

Spencer: Zillow operates the most-downloaded real estate apps across iPhone, iPad and Android.

Kaitlin: How much of your traffic comes from mobile usage now? Based on the trend you’ve seen, how much of your traffic will be mobile end of year or in five years (if you can project that far)?

Spencer: People are using Zillow mobile apps more than 6.5 million times each month, with more than 23 million visits to home detail pages; that’s 32,000 home views every hour or nearly 9 home views every single second.

On weekends, 30 percent of Zillow traffic now comes from mobile, as buyers tour neighborhoods and visit homes.

Kaitlin: How have your advertisers reacted to this change?

Spencer: Reaction has been positive as we believe mobile is adding great value for Zillow advertisers, offering real estate agents the ability to reach active leads right where they want them – in front of a home for sale or browsing a neighborhood.

Kaitlin: Recently Zillow and Yahoo! Real estate launched an exclusive partnership to create – as your blog said – “the largest real estate network on the web”. Why did you decide to partner with Yahoo?

Spencer: We partnered with Yahoo! to give our advertisers broader exposure across the Web for their real estate listings and their brand. Thanks to this partnership with Yahoo! Real Estate, Zillow is now running the largest online real estate ad network in the country.  Zillow sells real estate advertising across both sites, and Zillow now supplies all for-sale listings on Yahoo! Real Estate.

Kaitlin: Including strategic partnerships, can you tell me what’s next for Zillow? Maybe you can tell us when to expect your IPO?

Spencer: We make it a practice not to talk about our future strategic plans, but our entire team is focused on execution and growing Zillow on the Web and on mobile. We’re already there on a number of fronts.

We’re continuing to grow our user base and traffic, which we recently announced has hit 16 million monthly unique visitors. Our recently-announced ad network with Yahoo! is also a very strategic partnership.

Kaitlin: What types of expectations do customers now have of Web-based businesses?

Spencer: We live in a mobile society.  People expect tools that can interact with their digital lives and that respond in fundamentally new ways.

Kaitlin: What impact are location-based technologies having on the advertising community and how have their expectations evolved?

Spencer: Mobile technology is empowering consumers and agents to be more aggressive in today’s market place.

Our current mobile platforms are providing a great opportunity for delivering value to our advertisers with our location-based advertising options.

Kaitlin: Along with real estate, what other industries do you see being disrupted by location based mobile technologies?

Spencer: Anytime being mobile enhances the service, we will see disruption by the addition of location.

Nearly one third of the apps in the Android market and Apple app store access a user’s location, that’s according to the recent APP Genome report just out this month (Feb).

You can see the benefit of using location in businesses that pivot around locale, from Yelp to Groupon to Foursquare.  But, it also enhances other industries as well; everything from entertainment, Fandango or Flixster, to travel, Kayak or Hotel Tonight.

Kaitlin: What three best practices can you share with readers who are in the process of refining their web-based business models to include location-based mobile technologies?

Spencer: Think about how to‘re-do’ and redesign your business for mobile. How can mobile be a tool for your needs and better serve your audience, not just how to port your business onto mobile.

Understand the importance of location.  At Zillow, pivoting the search experience around location, not around search as manual entry has been one of the key element to our mobile success.

Remember that Tablets aren’t phones. When we built Zillow on iPad, we started from scratch. We didn’t just enlarge our iPhone experience. The result was a photo-driven shopping experience that’s now feeding back to our PC website.

Think about your revenue model, not just think about your user experience.  For example, agent contacts on mobile require unbelieveable immediacy. Oftentimes, people are standing or parked right in front of a home for sale that they want to tour, right now. Training our agent advertisers about responsiveness and how to manage their leads in a mobile world is critical.

Kaitlin: Can you share any other bits of advice with our readers on running a successful Web-based business in 2011?

Spencer: For us, core to our mission is opening up information for consumers, making it free and easy to access.

Be nimble and be innovative.  People expect tools that can interact with their digital lives and that respond in fundamentally new ways.  You can’t forget this if you want to be in front of your customers.

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Kaitlin Pike is the Web 2.0 Expo community manager. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike. To see Spencer speak, register for Web 2.0 Expo SF now with  discount code websf11bl20 to save 20%.

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