Your website is today’s model home and should be a top lead-generation source driving new home sales. To do so, your site needs to be modernized with an engaging, mobile-optimized design, contain a solid foundation of visual and interactive content, and be easy to update and manage. Once a buyer finds the home they are interested in, an effective website will not only help them visualize it with high-quality photography and renderings, interactive floor plans, and other virtual tour technologies, but it will also help create trust with you as their future builder, while also facilitating an emotional connection to the homes you offer, allowing them to envision living there, ultimately facilitating the sale.
Establishing Trust
Building trust with prospective home buyers is crucial, and a well-designed website can play a significant role in this process. Here’s a list of elements a home builder can include on their website to help establish trust with a prospective buyer:
- Accurate Data: Maintain up-to-date and error-free information to build and maintain trust. If they find an error, it raises questions about what else is not accurate.
- FAQ Section: A thorough Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section to answer common queries about the home-building process, financing options, construction quality, etc.
- Detailed Floor Plans and Renderings: Make sure to include high-quality images and detailed plans to offer a comprehensive view of the homes.
- Project Timelines: Showcase realistic project timelines to set proper expectations.
- Clear and Transparent Pricing: Don’t make the buyer guess what your homes will cost. If they see one thing online and then get a wildly different number when they speak with you, it breaks trust.
- Client Testimonials: Display video or text testimonials from satisfied home buyers, preferably with their photos for added credibility.
- Portfolio: Provide high-quality photographs and descriptions of completed projects, especially when you are building unique custom homes. Past performance is the best indicator of future possibilities.
- Awards and Certifications: Any industry awards or certifications can provide further assurance of your quality and expertise.
- Contact Information: Be sure there are clear and multiple ways for the prospective buyer to get in touch – phone number, email, and chat support.
- Educational Content: Create regular articles educating buyers on the home-buying process, home maintenance, and other relevant topics. When you educate the buyer, it builds trust.
- Third-party Reviews: Embed or link to reviews on third-party sites like Google Business, Facebook, Houzz, or Avid Ratings.
Creating an Emotional Connection
Buying a new home is one of the largest and most emotional purchases that someone will ever make. Finding ways to help buyers connect on an emotional level to your homes is also key to moving them from browsing to buying. Here are ways the website can facilitate that emotional connection.
- High-Quality Photography: Use detailed, high-quality photos or photo-realistic renderings to visualize the property.
- Interactive Floor Plans: Enable prospective buyers to interact with different structural options and personalize the living spaces.
- Virtual Tours: Provide virtual tours like Matterport to allow users to feel the flow from room to room.
- Search and Filtering Tools: Equip your site with tools that allow buyers to easily narrow down their preferred choices among your offerings. If they can’t find what they are looking for, they are never going to be able to move forward.
By utilizing tools like these, you increase the odds of not only retaining the prospective buyer’s interest but also building a level of trust and emotional connection essential for converting them into an actual buyer.
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Guide Them on Their Journey
Helping your prospective buyer know what do to next is one of the secrets to successful sales-generating websites. Having compelling Calls-to-Action (CTAs) on your website is vital for guiding potential buyers through the complex maze of home-buying decisions. While the “Contact Us” or “Buy Now” button may be the ultimate end goal, the path to that click is usually paved with a series of smaller, yet critical, actions. From choosing a location to exploring floor plans, your website serves as a digital concierge, directing the customer journey from start to finish. Every page of the website needs to guide the visitor to the next step that you want them to take.
Examples of Common CTA Buttons for Home Builder Websites:
The end goal is to make contact with the buyer. When they finally are ready to reach out, you must work to provide prompt, and even real-time, support for your site visitors, via online chat and fast responses to email and text inquiries. Today’s customers won’t happily wait until the next business day or even 30 minutes when they are in the middle of the transaction right now. A high-performing online sales team that is well-trained and adequately staffed is essential for responding promptly. Don’t let your website’s hard work go to waste by not having the response systems in place to connect with those new leads when they arrive.
Data and Content Management
While the intricacies of data management might seem mundane compared to more eye-catching visual elements of a website, it forms the foundation of your online operations. This data foundation can be developed over time, but its importance in the creation of a high-functioning website should not be underestimated.
The core of a quality home builder website is information about the builder’s communities, model homes and floor plans, and the available inventory homes that are ready for a quick move-in. Typical websites are structured with a page-based content model, where the information and content being presented belong to a specific page on the site. However, home builder content elements have data relationships that often don’t fit well in this page-based site model. For example, your available floor plans may be available in multiple communities with different prices for each community, potentially leading to repetitive content across separate pages. As you work to create your new site, pay attention to how you will be managing this data and content in the future. Your website needs content management tools that reflect and support these homebuilder-specific needs and requirements.
In today’s digital world, your website should be your top lead generator. A lot of details go into creating an effective website, but if you start with a focus on building trust, facilitating an emotional connection with your homes for your buyers, and consciously guiding your site visitors along their buying journey, you will be well ahead of most builders. Add to that website the tools to effectively manage your content and data, and you will have an online foundation that will generate sales today and for a long time to come.
If you are ready to have a sales-generating website that helps you sell more homes, contact Blue Tangerine today!
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.