The days of home builder websites functioning as simple lead-generation tool are over. Today’s home buyers expect something much different than a landing page with a phone number or model home address. They want details and plenty of visuals to form an opinion.
Because shoppers research extensively before even heading to a sales center or model home, the industry’s websites are becoming more of a digital buying experience and less of a digital brochure.
To learn what makes today’s home builder websites successful, BUILDER tapped K. Hovnanian Homes’ CMO Ron Nelson, M/I Homes’ CMO Will Duderstadt, Taylor Morrison’s CMO Stephanie McCarty, and Fischer Homes’ director of marketing Hannah Worth and marketing automation specialist Ally Price.
Here are their top six tips:
Embrace radical transparency. All five professionals agreed that buyers want to know the details down to price and payment. Duderstadt asks, “How can I be more transparent in everything about the home that I’m selling. We need to tell our consumers more. They’re craving more.”
McCarty agrees that buyers need access to pricing, options, specifications, and ownership-cost information before they are ready to engage with a sales team. She says, “A consumer can’t make an educated decision on their future without all of that.”
“We want customers to understand exactly what they’re buying and what it costs before they sign a contract,” Nelson echoes. Transparency is no longer a competitive advantage, but an expectation.
Design around the buyer’s journey. The most impactful websites are built around how consumers shop rather than around internal product structures, company terminology, or community hierarchies.
Hannah Worth and Ally Price believe every design decision should start with a simple principle: “Design around the buyer’s questions.”
Navigation, filters, searches, and content organization should help buyers quickly answer basic questions: Where do you build? What homes are available? What do they cost? Which options fit my needs?
McCarty also stresses the importance of flexibility saying that “No two customers are going to go through the journey the same way.”
Similarly, Duderstadt notes that different buyers care about different details. One customer may be focused on construction quality and insulation performance, while another is evaluating curb appeal, finishes, or interior design options. The challenge for marketers is delivering the right information to the right shopper at the right time.
Remove friction everywhere. Because home builders’ websites serve as a convenience factor, the experience should be fast and barrier-free. McCarty says, “The digital experience is about low friction and low effort.”
Reducing complexity and helping buyers accomplish tasks quickly make for a more successful site. Price agrees that the site should “make the next step easy.”
Fast load times, intuitive navigation, accessible design, and straightforward forms all contribute to a smoother experience. Every additional click, tricky menu, or unnecessary form field creates an opportunity for a potential buyer to leave.
Invest in visuals. As industry pros continue evaluating their sites, they are finding that visuals are one of the most important website assets. Nelson says, “Video consistently outperforms static imagery in terms of clicks and leads.”
His team has expanded its use of videos, drone footage, renderings, photography, and home visualizers to help shoppers better understand both quick move-in and to-be-built homes.
Duderstadt points to similar tools including interactive floor plans. He adds, “You need to have rendered versions of products that you haven’t built yet.”
Combining inspiration and practicality, Fischer’s Worth and Price say that compelling photography, floor plans, and local information can create a stronger website with the objective being to move buyers seamlessly from “I love this” to “Could this work for me?”
Personalize the experience. With added visuals and content, the next challenge for home builder websites is helping buyers find what is most important to them.
For M/I’s Duderstadt, personalization represents one of the industry’s biggest opportunities. “Figuring out how you deliver the right content to the right person as content overall increases, that’s where magic starts to happen for a marketer,” he says.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to play a heavy role in that effort as both Nelson and McCarty mention it can help buyers identify homes and communities more quickly while also collecting meaningful data.
Price sees similar potential, noting that AI can help shoppers narrow choices and find relevant answers faster when supported by strong content and accurate data.
Test, measure, and optimize. Ringing clearly throughout every conversation was the simple lesson that great websites are never finished. Nelson’s advice is straightforward. He says, “Test everything.”
In addition to A/B testing, visitor behavior analysis, conversion tracking, and ongoing optimization to improve performance, builders need to revisit and revisit often to fit not only today’s buyer but the future’s.
Both Worth and Price say that marketers should focus on understanding what visitors accomplish and where they encounter obstacles. Price adds, “We also review performance by source, device, market, and page type to identify opportunities for improvement.
“Context matters: a longer session can reflect strong interest, but it can also indicate that a visitor is having difficulty finding information. The goal is to understand what visitors accomplish and where they encounter friction.”
The formula for a successful home building site is consistent across each expert’s advice. Add more info, more transparency, high-quality visuals, and remove friction. As McCarty puts it, successful websites should focus on removing barriers buyers do not care about to help them make confident decisions about their purchase, which is the top mark of success.
