Buying a new home is one of the largest decisions most people make, and the research starts on a phone. By the time someone walks into a show home, they have usually compared several builders’ websites and formed an opinion about each one.
Your website doesn’t need to be elaborate. It needs to answer a buyer’s questions quickly and make your homes look as good as they are.
What buyers are trying to find out
Most visitors to a builder’s website want to know the same things:
- Is the quality there? Do the homes look well built and well finished?
- Where do you build? Which communities, neighbourhoods or towns?
- What could I get? Floor plans, sizes, features, homes available now.
- How does it work? What happens from first meeting to possession, and roughly how long it takes.
- Will you look after me afterwards? Warranty coverage and how service requests are handled.
- How do I get in touch? A phone number, show home hours, a simple form.
A good builder website answers all six within a minute or two of browsing.
The essentials
Real photography of your homes
Nothing builds confidence like your own work, photographed well. Invest in professional photos of finished homes, inside and out, and of the details buyers care about: kitchens, finishes, storage, exteriors. Avoid stock photos. Buyers can tell, and it undermines everything else.
A page for each community or area
Give each community or area you build in its own page, with what is available there, what is nearby and how to visit. These pages also help you appear when people search for new homes in a specific place.
Plans and available homes, with real details
Show floor plans with square footage, bedroom and bathroom counts and key features. If you have homes available now, show them clearly with their status. A floor plan that only exists as a large PDF download is easy to miss, so put the key details on the page itself.
Show homes with hours and directions
If you have show homes, list each one with its address, opening hours and a map link. Keep the hours current, especially around holidays.
Your building process, step by step
A simple page that walks through your process, from first meeting to selections, construction, walkthrough and possession, removes a lot of uncertainty. Explain what the buyer does at each stage and what you do.
Warranty and after-sales care
Buyers want to know you will be there after possession. Explain how warranty coverage works for your homes, including any provincial warranty program that applies (in Manitoba, the New Home Warranty Act), and exactly how homeowners request service. If you give homeowners a digital record of their home, such as manuals, warranty dates and service requests in one place, say so. It is a real differentiator. (We built Bindr Home, a platform for exactly this.)
Easy contact on a phone
Make the phone number tappable, keep the enquiry form short, and say how quickly you reply. Buyers often browse from a lot or a car, so test every page on a phone.
Fast, findable and accurate
A builder’s site is often heavy with photos. Make sure images are optimized so pages load quickly on mobile data. Set up your Google Business Profile and keep your name, phone number and areas identical across your website and listings.
Reviews from real homeowners
Short, genuine quotes from homeowners, used with their permission, carry more weight than any claim you can make yourself. Link to your Google reviews too.
What you can skip
- Autoplaying video and large slideshows at the top of the page. They slow the site down and push the information buyers want out of view.
- “Contact us for details” in place of information. Buyers who can’t find basic details often move on to a builder who shows them.
- Long blocks of generic text about quality and craftsmanship. Show it with photos and specifics instead.
- Features nobody uses, such as complicated plan filters on a site with six plans.
Measure what matters
Track the enquiries your website produces: form submissions, calls from the site and show home visits booked. Even a simple monthly count tells you whether changes to your website are working, and which pages bring buyers in.
If you are planning a new website, or want to know how your current one compares, our web design and development service works with builders and home-industry businesses, and every free consultation includes a review of your current site.