9 ways to improve your project home website
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| Just a photo taken at a display home in Sydney |
In this day and age of UX and UI I would have hoped that you'd cotton on. When people are spending $300k+ on your product, make it easy for them to MMI (mentally move in) and compare what they can be getting.
My biggest bug bear is floor plans. Floor plans are important. Probably the first thing I know I look for especially since the hero shot being a facade can be readily change and therefore is not indicative of what I may be looking for. Let me flip them so they are mirrored. Show me what options are possible! Upgrade me now so I'm mentally prepared for what you may bring on.
And the sites I'm complaining about are probably the better ones because I bounced away from those who don't even have the right pictures for me to look at.
So rather than ranting more here are my top 9 ways to improve your website:
1. Where do you build?
List this upfront! No need to get people to come to the site and get all excited if you won't even build on their block. Don't say you build in "Sydney" if there are areas you don't. Tell your customers where you do build and also where you don't build. Maybe you don't build on slopes of more than 1m. Tell me that! Maybe you don't build on lot sizes smaller than 10 metres or you don't build on battle-axe blocks. All this is important and will save your sales people's time and keep your brand intact.There were a few builders who got me fairly excited and then come back with a short email saying "sorry we don't build in your council area" after they say they are the biggest or best or something builder in the state.
So tell us where you build.
2. Search
Let me search your designs by the main criteria. Yes I want to search by bedrooms, bathrooms, car spaces and lot width. And number of storeys. But let me search and keep the search sticky. But things like collections? The only person who understand the collections thing are your marketers! It often takes me too long to work out which are the basic plans which only have one living space and are first home buyer type homes. Just add another search criteria to say 1 or 2 living areas! or features such as Home theatres and rumpuses (rumpii?) And what about square meterage? Most people take a while to understand squares? A Square is 10 ft x 10 ft. What a stupid measurement! I think someone should update the wikipedia page about squares as indeedy Australia does still use it... a lot! (yes I know I can do it but I just don't want to).It would also be good to search by price but since the price is so misleading it's probably a good thing you don't have them on the site.
3. Prices
But give us some idea of what the price is! Give me a running (completed) average of a 1 storey house and a 2 storey house. In this day and age of the internet people know how much it's likely to cost so it won't scare people away. And if it does? Chances are they weren't able to afford it anyway.If you do put a price on it put some disclaimer on it. There is no point indicating a house's base price is $150,000. Tell us about site costs. Tell us about added costs such as landscaping, driveways etc. Or tell us about the house and land packages you already have.
4. Testimonials
Give us testimonials or example pictures of houses you have recently built. People want to know what your finished product looks like, not just in the souped up format but also a 'standard' house which someone has built. And what do people say about your services? I know most proud home owners want to talk about their newly built home. You have one of the most engaging products out there and yet you're not exploiting the buzz. Of course a great testament to your product are the display homes...5. Display Homes
Tell us where your display homes are! Sometimes this is so hidden it's not funny. Let us search and filter the ones which are on display. Indicate on the house plans if it's available on display. Then show us photos of the ones on display. If we're keen we'll come out anyway. Give us an address AND the dates/times you are open. That should be easy enough, right?6. Colours, inclusions, exclusions
Colours and selections are an important part. And yes we can be suckered into liking something based on the furnishings and fittings. But one of the big pieces of advice from people on Homeone is to find out if you like the selections provided as standard on deciding on a builder. So yes it's important to people that they can choose things like flat tiles or special bricks or get Caesarstone kitchens! These are homes which are probably the biggest investment they have made to date.7. Process and timeframe
Tell us clearly what your process is. How do we get started in getting an estimate. Do you provide free tenders? Maybe you send a home consultant out. Tell us the first step but also tell us what the next few steps are. Tell us how long it will take to build. Tell us how long it takes to get through councils to get approvals. Tell us about ground works and site costs. It's all new to most of us! Even once the build starts... what are the steps? Maybe this is something you tell us for 'existing' customers. No one seems to do this digitally and it's reliant on site supervisors and customer services people. Which is great... but it'd also be good to have some resources available for customers/clients too.8. Save and Compare
Let us save and compare houses. Yes amongst your own plans and designs. It'd be great if I could compare different company's ones as well but we can do that ourselves.And absolutely let us save a plan for later. Put the save count up on the site. Much better than the number of "Facebook likes". If someone saves it they like it. But maybe not enough to tell their friends.
9. Floorplans
And floorplans... floorplans this is so important! Make this easy for me to find and view. Don't bury it inside a PDF or hide it in a tab. I should be able to just go to the design and the floorplan layout should be there. Let me quickly browse through these. I don't really understand why the facade is shown first. Let me see which floorplans will work for me and then I'll drill in and look at facades etc. The facade is only useful as a visual indication if it's too wide or one or two storeys. And let me 'flick' through them. In a book I'll often just go through it quickly as mentally I know which rooms should be where on my block. So I can easily devour hundreds of plans quickly. Let me save the ones I want to get back to (see point 8 above) but let me scroll to the next plan. It's such a waste of good money as I'll go get a book and flick through it at home and decide none of the plans suit. Let me have the functionality to do this at home.And what about some technology to mirror the floor plan. Not everyone can mentally 'flip' the plan for their block. Metricon has this functionality but I haven't seen any others do this.
Bonus ideas
What about:a. "people who saved this plan also saved these plans"
b. a forum / community of people who are in the process of building your homes
c. options -- why don't you show us what optional upgrades we can have. It's an opportunity for us to accessorise our home and a chance for you to upsell some more features.
d. technology to allow us to customise our plans with our furniture. It's all doable now...
So they are my 9 ways I'd recommend companies like Sekisui House (we're thinking of building with them), Masterton, Metricon, Macdonald Jones, Kurmond Homes, Clarendon, Alkira, Huxley Homes, Rawson, Ichijo, Eagle Homes and all the project home builders as well as kit home builders can improve their websites (I may rant about kit homes one day too!).
My day job is an entrepreneur and consulting technology and product manager. I love the digital space and I'm passionate about usability. So whilst you wouldn't normally expect this on a 'home building' blog I thought it was appropriate for me to blog about it here rather than one of my other blogs.
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