How to Create a Better Home Builder Website

A home builder website is one of the most valuable assets within a builder’s marketing strategy toolbelt. It’s the first point of contact for potential customers, and research indicates that 75% of users judge a business's credibility based on its website design – meaning home builders must impress visitors with their online presence.

Having an innovative home builder website design is crucial for generating new leads and engaging with the intended target audience. While a website serves as an avenue for home builders to share information with current clients, it’s also the best way to entice new leads and effectively introduce the business.

Below, we share tips and key suggestions to consider when developing a design for your home builder website to satisfy visitor needs, engage the target audience and continuously attract new leads.

Provide Necessary, Relevant Information

Before nailing down a design for the website, it’s vital to consider the functions and purposes the website must serve. Home builder websites are meant to interest new leads and provide necessary information for clients, so their design and function should cater to those priorities.

It’s essential to possess a strong understanding of who makes up the ideal target audience. Who are you building homes for? How would you describe the overarching demographic? Utilize the characteristics of these individuals to form a website that meets their needs and desires. To ensure success, the website should be centered around delivering content most likely to satisfy these ideal customers to generate greater user satisfaction and, ultimately, higher sales revenue.

Are there several questions asked regularly by new clients? If so, the website should include an FAQ page to easily provide prospective buyers with straightforward access to the answers they need. Ideally, this page could be updated when or if any new common questions arise as the business adapts and grows to accommodate more customers. Are there common concerns that arise during the lead conversion or homebuilding process? Address this on the website to preemptively indicate awareness of homebuyer expectations and needs. By including these elements within the website design, it’s likely to fulfill your visitors’ need for information more effectively and create higher conversions of potential leads.

Implement Simplistic Design

Getting started, the overall visual design of the website should be a top priority to offer strong credibility to visitors and ease in navigation as well. Research shows that high numbers of online users make snap judgments about businesses based on visual design-related first impressions. Less is more, especially when it comes to website design. Many businesses are finding success by simplifying their website’s look by utilizing greater white space and oversized type. This provides the page with a sleeker look that offers visitors an appealing aesthetic, as well as more direct messaging that is often more memorable.

Not only does this provide the website with greater visual appeal, but it also streamlines the navigation for visitors, which should always be a top priority when determining the website’s layout. Visitors accessing the site from both computers and mobile phones will also experience a smoother exploration process, as this type of website design is easier to optimize for different types of devices.

Showcase High-Quality Images and Video

When visitors arrive on a home builder website, high-quality photos and videos of newly finished homes and community amenities are one of the first things they’ll seek out. Images are an easy way to capture audience attention and gain more clicks and views from engaged users. Research shows that online content containing relevant images receive 94% more views than those without. The more engaged the website’s visitors are, the longer they’ll stay on the site which both improves traffic rates and produces higher lead conversions.

As well as improving website traffic rates, including strong visual elements on a home builder website is a way to fully showcase the builder’s offerings. Home builders aren’t just providing buyers with new homes, they’re extending a desirable lifestyle that accompanies it. Alluring imagery presents a vital way to highlight and reflect the lifestyle opportunity the builder’s homes and master-planned communities offer to homebuyers.

Including engaging videos showcasing the exterior and interior of new homes also offers an exceptional way to boot website traffic. As visitors stay on the website to watch the videos, this increases the website’s overall time on site. When search engines discover the website is receiving higher onsite traffic times it assumes the website is providing engaging and relevant information to visitors. The more relevant the website appears, the better search ranking it will receive.

Focus on Faster Page Load Time

In today’s digital landscape, optimizing webpage load times is absolutely vital for success. While quick load times may seem like a trivial preference, research shows this holds significant weight when it comes to accumulating strong website traffic. Cutting off mere seconds of the website’s load time produces a remarkable difference in online visitor behavior. A Google study showed that as a page’s load time goes from one second to 10 seconds, a mobile site visitor’s probability of bouncing increases by 123%. When the website’s load time is improved, it’s likely to have positive impacts on both user experience and conversion rates.

Along with improving the website’s bounce rate, cutting page load time also affects the site’s SEO optimization. As shown by several studies, slow page load times often deter visitors and lead to higher chances of bounces. The more bounces that occur signals to Google that the page does not hold relevant information for users as the page is often abandoned. When the search engine makes this distinction, the website’s ranking will begin to drop, and the overall organic traffic may start to dwindle.

Offer Insight on Your Building Process

Deciding to build a new home is an important decision for any buyer, whether they’re first-timers or otherwise. It’s critical for a home builder website to provide as much information as possible on their home building process. No matter the buyer, they’re likely to want to know what they can expect from the builder they choose to create their new home.

A home builder website is a vital avenue for forming valuable first impressions with buyers. Do you want them to feel intimidated and unsure about building their home with you or confident and excited knowing you’re the best builder for the job? That’s why the website should include all information that could be necessary to form a homebuyer’s decision. By providing straightforward insight into the homebuilding steps and overall process, visitors will feel more informed and comfortable, which only increases the likelihood that they’ll reach out to do business. This is also a great opportunity for video content on the home building process with your company.

Add Social Media Integration

Social media platforms are the main outlet for forming connections with today’s consumers. Make it easier for new visitors to find the business on various platforms by implementing social media integration on the home builder website. This can increase engagement by simplifying the social media navigation process to find the business on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more.

Present Enticing Calls to Action

Once the home builder website successfully attracts new visitors, it should ideally nurture them to conversion by offering ways they can take next steps to engage with the business. Also known as Calls to Action (CTAs), this element provides motivation for new leads to act and helps home builders engage with potential customers by encouraging visitors to act first. These CTAs can encourage visitors to sign up for the newsletter, join an interest list or contact the business, along with a variety of other actions.

When designing these elements, it’s important to consider both the color of the button, as well as the text that is displayed to visitors to drive action. Including specific colors has been found to convey a variety of messages to users so it’s crucial to select colors that are most likely to positively influence visitors. The words selected for CTAs should be bold and action-oriented to drive visitors to perform desired behaviors. Effective CTA buttons include strong messaging with active, inviting words such as “Join,” “Start,” Connect,” “Learn” or “Discover.”

Another way to bolster the online customer experience and nurture leads is by instituting an Online Sales Consultant (OSC) to actively engage with new prospects visiting the home builder website. Home builders can draw attention to this asset on their website by including a CTA that highlights the OSC as a helpful guide ready to assist and answer any questions during the visitor’s online journey.

Update with Fresh Content

Even after the website is created, it’s important to know that this project is never truly finished – or at least it shouldn’t be! What comes next is updating the site whenever necessary whether it’s to revise the available information on your services, add new photos or videos, share new testimonials, include a new virtual home tour or something else to offer new content. This indicates that the business has an active online presence which will increase visitor interest and engagement with the website.

This continuous process is also beneficial for consistently enhancing the website’s SEO. Every time the website is updated with new content, this indicates to search engines that the page is being actively maintained to consistently provide relevant information to visitors. If the website is perceived as a helpful source, this boosts its search ranking and attracts more visitors to the website. Thus, by updating the website, home builders can capture the attention of new visitors with fresh content while also enhancing the website’s performance to meet their traffic goals.

Take a look at our previous blog on home builder websites to discover the website design best practices that every home builder should be using!

Partner with Experts to Develop an Elevated Home Builder Website Design

Forming a strong home builder website is the key to maintaining a successful online presence and boosting lead conversion rates. Ideally, your website should offer new leads an exceptional first impression, provide clients with relevant information and present alluring ways to engage with the business

At Milesbrand, we work with everything in our repertoire to bring your brand to life, including a strong online representation. Our experts are prepared to create an effective website design and engaging content to attract the right audience for your business. Reach out to our team to learn more about getting started creating an effective home builder website.