Today, a housebuilder's website is not just their digital front door. It functions as a member of their team.
In a digital-first world, websites have evolved beyond product brochures and lead forms. Now, websites greet site visitors, help navigate them to the right pages, and even nurture buyers into customers.
And websites are only one part of it. By 2025, it’s predicted that most homebuyer interactions will occur across digital channels. Some housebuilders already report that their lead quality from offline channels has declined, while others say fewer buyers want in-person meetings as their first interaction.
Faced with this shift, many housebuilders are now trying to find their footing with their digital marketing and sales experiences. But, amidst all the noise, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly your website needs.
That’s why we chatted with marketing directors at the UK’s biggest housebuilders on what housebuilder marketers should do to turn their websites into reliable and efficient digital partners. Here’s what you need to know 👇
What Are Today’s Housebuilder Websites Missing?
When we talk about digital experiences, it’s important to remember that homebuyers are also customers of other B2C brands. And B2C companies like Amazon have set the bar high for what a modern website experience should be like.
Today’s customers are no longer willing to spend their time digging through your web pages for the information they need. Instead, they expect companies to provide an immediate, always-on experience that is tailored to them — regardless of what they are buying.
According to industry insights, housebuilders who provide an outstanding digital experience are more than 2x as likely to be chosen by homebuyers over those who provide a poor experience. So, the right website experience will give you an edge over the competition — which is why housebuilder websites need these three key things:
Personalisation
Generic experiences don’t generate as many high-quality leads. A huge 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. This means that personalisation should no longer be reserved for those already in the sales funnel — it’s something that needs to be implemented for prospects and customers at scale.
With website personalisation, the goal is to deliver a seamless and relevant experience to your site visitors, i.e. getting them what they want, when they want it. Some examples include showcasing the right developments upfront, using tools like SmartChat to engage 24/7/365, and customising your follow-up interactions to match the visitor’s specific needs and preferences.
A Cohesive Customer Journey
No one tries to sell beach hats in the winter. In the same way, you don’t want to be selling to a customer who has already bought one of your homes recently. Nor do you want to leave a prospective homebuyer confused about whether your developments are the right choice for them.
A cohesive customer journey ensures your site experience matches where your visitor is in the buying process. For example, a first-time visitor might want materials that help them understand a specific development, whereas an existing customer might want to report a repair under their warranty. Your website should act like an online concierge that not only meets your site visitors’ needs but also guides them to the next stage through relevant and timely recommendations.
Quality Data
To power a personalised and cohesive website experience, you need to have a good grasp of who your site visitors are and what they want. That’s why reliable data matters.
With Google planning to phase out third-party cookies in 2024, housebuilder marketers need to get serious about first-party data. Not only does first-party data provide an alternative to third-party cookies, but because it’s information that visitors share with you willingly, it’s also a more credible source of data. By using this data to power your website engagement analytics, your teams can get a clear picture of what’s driving sales and take action to iterate on those strategies.
Why Website Data Matters To Your Entire Marketing Strategy
So far, we’ve talked about how a personalised website experience generates more leads and sales opportunities. But, it can also gather first-party insights to inform your marketing strategy.
In reality, many housebuilders do not have full visibility into their buyer universe. A report by PathFactory found over 80% of first-party buying signals are anonymous. Data from 6sense also shows that, at any time, only 10% of your total addressable market is in-market to buy — and 78% of those accounts are not recorded in your database.
All this goes to show how easy it is to miss out on potential sales opportunities.
By collecting first-party data through your website, you gain a better understanding of buyer and customer intent through their on-site behaviour. For example, you can pinpoint prospects that are ready to buy based on the number and sequence of pages they visit while on your website, or you might identify an upsell opportunity from the web pages that a customer visits.
Using all the information that your website has to offer, you can ensure you’re targeting the right prospects, as well as make more strategic decisions that maximise your marketing efficiency and make your campaigns more optimised.
4 Ways To Grow Pipeline Efficiently With Your Website
Currently, only a fraction of housebuilders report that their digital experience is ahead of customer expectations.
So, while many housebuilders aren’t yet delivering the outstanding experience that homebuyers crave, this means that brands who invest in building that experience are sure to stand out from the crowd.
But, with the complexity of personalisation and the noise surrounding innovations like ChatGPT, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve laid out three ways to efficiently transform your website from a digital brochure to a pipeline engine 👇
- Maximise what you are already doing. Pause and take stock of your current digital experience. Are you making the most of the tools and strategies that you already have? Take website forms, for example. Simplify your forms by asking fewer questions and focusing only on the necessary questions. Or, better yet, give visitors the chance to skip the form queue entirely and have a live conversation with you using a tool like SmartChat.
- Engage high-intent website browsers. Instead of going after every single visitor that hits your website, start by prioritising visitors who show strong signs of buying intent but aren’t converting. Here, you’ll want to leverage your first-party website data to narrow down your opportunities from the total number of visitors on your website — then, you can engage them with relevant messaging and prompts.
- Convert faster with automation. Marketing automation brings efficiency to your conversion efforts. What you automate will largely vary depending on your team and tech stack, but by automating the processes that are already working, you will easily be able to scale your marketing initiatives. For example, CommVersion can automatically convert high-intent homebuyers into inbound sales calls to your regional teams to shorten the time it takes to move buyers along the sales journey.
- Give your website a conversational tool. If you’re looking to provide your site visitors with what they need quickly, then the best way to do that is with a smart chat solution designed for housebuilders. CommVersion helps scale your conversations with high-intent website visitors so that you can automatically pinpoint their intent and serve up the right message to engage them in a conversation and nurture them into a conversion. Check out our housebuilder-specific solution and discover how brands like Cala Homes and Crest Nicholson have boosted their on-site conversion rates with SmartChat by CommVersion.
Final Thoughts
Often, when we think of digital, our minds jump to experiences that are stiff and robotic. But just because something is online doesn’t mean it can’t still feel human.
It’s true that your website may never be as customer-centric as Amazon’s website. But it’s also true that, if you neglect your digital experience, you’ll fail to meet customer expectations, which means losing out on leads, customers, and market share.
So, don’t wait. Take this opportunity to optimise your website experience today.
