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Selecting the Right Website Technology for Home Builders

Home builder websites are different. 

Driven by complex data structures that connect locations with communities, floor plans, and available inventory, your website needs builder-optimized content management tools and multiple data integration points, while also allowing for customization to represent your unique brand, selling proposition, and process.  Whether your goal is lead generation, lot reservations, or a full online sales process, successfully meeting these requirements requires the selection of the right technology foundation.

The choice of a technology platform is not one to be taken lightly.

This decision lays the foundation for your website’s functionality, usability, and adaptability – all of which significantly impact your online visibility and sales generation, as well as your ease of management and your overall investment required.

Selecting the Right Website Technology for Home Builders

Home Builder Website Development Options

There are three primary options at your disposal:

  1. Off-the-shelf tools such as WordPress
  2. Fully custom-built websites
  3. Home builder-specific Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms

Each of these options offers a unique blend of advantages and potential challenges. WordPress brings ready-made convenience and a rich ecosystem of plugins. Custom-built websites offer unmatched flexibility, enabling you to tailor every aspect of your website to your precise needs. Meanwhile, home builder-specific SaaS platforms strive to deliver the best of both worlds, offering pre-built functionality tailored to the home building industry and customization possibilities.

WordPress logo
WordPressOff-the-shelf platform
Custom BuiltFully custom-built website
SaaS PlatformHome builder-specific platform

WordPress

Amongst readily available solutions for website creation, WordPress stands as a standard of versatility and convenience, with its popularity driven by several compelling advantages.

Benefits

  • WordPress is open-source and free to use, a characteristic that presents a significant benefit for home builders, particularly those with budget constraints. The cost-effectiveness of WordPress, coupled with its rich array of features, makes it an attractive choice for businesses of all sizes.
  • WordPress boasts a large and dedicated community of developers who continually expand its capabilities through a multitude of plugins and add-ons. These extensions enhance WordPress’s core functionality, covering a wide spectrum of needs from SEO optimization and social media integration to e-commerce capabilities and more. This variety of plugins can save builders considerable time and resources, as they can utilize existing tools rather than developing these from scratch.
  • It has and expansive array of design themes. These ready-made, customizable designs offer a variety of aesthetic and structural options for your website. Whether you desire a sleek, modern design or a more traditional layout, WordPress themes offer a breadth of choice that can accommodate diverse stylistic preferences and branding requirements.

Challenges

  • For all its benefits, WordPress isn’t without its drawbacks. Its structure is page-oriented and while this works well for many types of websites, it may not cater efficiently to the intricate relational data structures inherent in home-building operations. Relationships between locations, communities, model homes, and inventory homes can become complex, which often poses a challenge to manage efficiently using WordPress’s default structure.
  • Even though the vast array of plugins adds to WordPress’s versatility, not all plugins might be fully optimized or suitable for the specific needs of the home building industry. Moreover, as plugins come from many different developers and sources, the code quality and security can vary. WordPress, given its popularity, is a common target for hackers. Security vulnerabilities in the platform or its plugins can pose risks if not managed properly, requiring ongoing attention to updates and security practices to keep your site secure.
  • While it appears at first glance to be more cost-effective due to lower software costs, that is not always the case.  Depending on the goals and requirements for your site, using WordPress in the development of a homebuilder website does not always result in significant savings.

In essence, while WordPress offers an accessible, feature-rich, and customizable platform for creating a website, home builders should weigh these benefits against the potential challenges. Specifically, the general nature of WordPress, coupled with the need for diligent security management, could limit its effectiveness in serving the specialized needs of the home building industry.

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Custom-Built Website

computer-screen-with-wireframe
For businesses that require unique functionality or have specific needs not met by available CMS platforms like WordPress, developing a custom-built website from scratch may be the answer.

This approach involves working directly with web developers and designers to create a CMS and website tailored specifically to your requirements.

Benefits

  • Building a custom website allows you a level of flexibility and control unparalleled by pre-existing platforms. You can define all of your requirements upfront, from site structure and functionality to user interface and experience. This ensures that your website works exactly the way you want it to and caters specifically to your audience.
  • Additionally, a custom-built website allows for more efficient handling of home building industry-specific data structures. You can design a data management system that is specifically built to handle the relationships between various home-building data points (i.e. your communities, floor plans, inventory homes, etc.), ensuring that your data management is as smooth and efficient as possible.

 

Challenges

  • Building a custom website can be significantly more expensive and time-consuming, as everything needs to be developed from the ground up.  You will also need to have a clear vision of what you want your website to accomplish, as the website will only include what you specifically request. This can limit the potential for additional features unless you anticipate the need for them upfront.

Home Builder SaaS Platform

computer-screen-with-home-builder-website

If you’re looking for a balance between the ready-to-use functionality of WordPress and the customization potential of a custom-built website, a home builder software-as-a-service (SaaS) website platform may be the perfect solution.

SaaS platforms offer a comprehensive solution that combines the benefits of both pre-built and custom websites. They come with pre-built CMS capabilities, which can be further customized to suit your specific needs. This can save significant time and resources, as you don’t have to build everything from scratch. You also benefit from home building industry best practices that the website developer has already learned through experience that will provide access to features and functions that you may not have even considered.

Benefits

  • The main advantage of using a home builder SaaS platform is its focus on the specific needs of the home building industry. Such platforms often include specialized data structures designed to handle the intricacies of home-building data, such as the relationships between locations, communities, model homes, and inventory homes. This can significantly simplify your data management processes.
  • Home builder SaaS platforms often come with pre-built connectors for popular tools used in the industry. These can range from customer relationship management (CRM) tools to data export functionalities tailored for home-building data feeds. This integration capability can enhance your operational efficiency and ensure seamless data flow across different systems.

Challenges

  • Using a SaaS platform does come with some considerations. First, there’s typically a monthly or annual licensing fee associated with using the platform. This recurring cost needs to be factored into your budget.
  • Second, you won’t own the core source code for your website. While this is usually not an issue for most home builders, it does mean that if you ever decide to switch platforms in the future, you cannot take your website as it is and transfer it to the new platform. You would need to rebuild it on the new platform, which could entail additional costs and time.

Content Delivery Network

Regardless of which technology platform you select for your home builder website, to elevate your website’s performance, your site should integrate with a Content Delivery Network, commonly referred to as a CDN. This valuable tool serves a vital function in the efficient delivery of your website content.

In essence, a CDN is a globally distributed network of servers that hold copies of your website content. When a visitor accesses your site, the CDN delivers the content from the server closest to them, resulting in a markedly faster loading time.

A key benefit of a CDN is its support for image handling. High-quality images, essential for an appealing site and creating an emotional connection with prospective home buyers, can be sizeable and slow to load. A CDN mitigates this challenge by not only ensuring rapid download of these images but also by automatically resizing them to suit different screen sizes and formats. Whether a visitor is using a desktop, a tablet, or a phone, your images will be optimally displayed, enhancing the overall user experience, and also boosting your SEO efforts.

The outcome of implementing a CDN is a boost in your website’s performance. The accelerated load times for images lead to a smoother, more engaging user experience. Consequently, as you evaluate website platform options, the inclusion of a CDN should be a significant consideration.

CDN image

Selecting the Right Home Builder Website Technology

Selecting the right platform for your home builder website is a crucial decision that can significantly impact your online presence and business operations. While WordPress provides a low-cost, ready-to-use solution, its general nature does not cater efficiently to the specific needs of the home building industry. On the other hand, while a custom-built website offers unmatched flexibility and control, it comes with higher costs and longer development times.

A home builder SaaS platform bridges the gap between these two, providing industry-focused tools and structures while also offering customization possibilities. Regardless of the option you choose, it’s essential to carefully weigh the pros and cons of each, keeping in mind your specific needs, budget, and technical capabilities. By doing so, you can ensure that you select the best platform to build a robust, efficient, and effective website for your homebuilding business.

 

To learn more about how Blue Tangerine can help you create a sales-generating website that will sell more homes, contact us today!

Greg Bray
GREG BRAY, PRESIDENTGreg Bray is the President of Blue Tangerine, and believes every home builder deserves a sales-generating website.  Greg began developing homebuilder websites in 2000 and has been hooked ever since. The tools have matured since then, but one thing hasn’t changed: the goal to grow sales!

Greg has presented at the International Builders’ Show (IBS), the Southeast Building Conference, the Best Home Building Practices Summit, the New Home Sales and Management Retreat, and numerous other webinars and events.  He is proud to be the founder and co-host of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast and the Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit.

Greg has also been recognized as part of LinkedIn’s Top Voices program for his thoughtful contributions. Follow Greg on LinkedIn.