Search engines rank your site…

But users must be able to find what they’ve come for… Does one trump the other? In short, the answer is a resounding NO!

Sadly, most builders’ websites do neither well.

I’m going to borrow an example from the current advertising world to try and make an analogy:

Best Buy has a new product line. And the company spent big bucks promoting it during the Winter Olympics. The product line: their Blue Label laptops. If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically Best Buy’s attempt (and it could really prove a winner) to respond directly to customer feedback. Based on customer surveys that asked computer users what features they’d most like to see in a laptop, Best Buy gathered all those wish lists and bundled the most popular features among them into this new line of laptops.

It may be a tall order, but Best Buy is betting that these user-designed laptops can’t lose in their market.

Back to my analogy…essentially this new line of “blue label” laptops is designed to be Best Buy’s most user-friendly machines. But underneath all this user-friendliness a machine also has to perform, and herein lies the relationship between search engine friendliness and usability.

Your website needs to be fine-tuned for search engines (site architecture, sophisticated but clean html, optimized graphics, meta tags, title tags, appropriate keyword density) but you have untold opportunity to work magic with users — as if this were a big blank canvas.

Maybe that’s too hard to believe?

Remember, one aspect of user-friendliness is ensuring that a site visitor finds what he or she expects to find after landing on your site. Do we know what that is?

It’s a good bet that a potential home buyer is looking for all or some of the following information:

• checking out your credentials
• wants to see your models
• want to learn about the surrounding community where your are homes are located

In addition to these bullet points, I have news for you: “what they’ve come for” may not be as easy to pin down as you might imagine.

From the moment one site visitor types a search query into Google, Bing or Yahoo! to the moment he or she clicks through to your site—they have expectations. They have expectations when they start shopping for a new home, in fact! They’ve already seen visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. For many people the idea of a “home” is intoxicating and can take our emotions and even our senses to very powerful places.

I suggest you consider these intangibles as much as you consider laying out all the technical specs of a house.

Listen to what BMW has to say:

“What you make people feel is just as important as what you make. At BMW we don’t just make cars, we make joy.”

If you can pull this off with your website while having it rank well in the search engines, then you will be among a very small percentage of builders.

Lisa Pool
Builders spend on average $10,000 per plan to have it developed and put in place within the organization. Marketing of these plans is included in that expense. Putting a valuable asset on the web where anyone including the competition can take it, develop their own version of it and then build it without spending the money frightens many builders, especially smaller ones. It is a valid fear. We have had it done to us even within the last two months.

However, the truth is this: if someone wants your plans, they are going to get them. Anyone can walk a home under construction with a tape measure. Anyone can shop you at a model. Anyone can request a floor plan be faxed to them and anyone can go into your model with a video camera.

The other truth is this: after a while all homes look the same. Three bedroom homes have three bedrooms and two baths, occasionally a powder. Front load, rearload, side load etc. Kitchen with cabinets oooooooh this one has an island and granite. The reason buyers take notes when out with a realtor is because they can’t remember one home from another. So what makes one home stand out from the others? What makes a buyer make that final selection? That is what you have to key in on.

The buying cycle of a new home purchaser has extended, correct? People are shopping online for convenience reasons: time of day, work schedule, personal weekend schedule, kids soccer games on Saturday, church on Sunday, family chores. People shop online for the same reason people walk into the model and say they are just looking for decorating ideas. Sometimes they are, sometimes they just don’t want to be pressured to purchase something they aren’t ready for but are beginning to consider.

Websites are virtual models. You want everything easy to find and see, but ultimately you would like them to ask a question, to engage in the process somehow. You want them to come back if they are just starting to look. You do NOT want to be ruled out because of self imposed barriers.

So where is the balance? How does a builder protect his investments and still keep a prospect engaged?

How about the option to set up a portfolio of designs with their own personal customizations like paint colors, brick, furniture, or merely this optional bay window and side loaded garage? To set up this portfolio you ask them to set up a profile. This profile then allows the builder to gain much more usable insight as to who is interacting with their website. The marketing department can then send accurate segmented marketing materials that match the buyer profile such as blog material or how-to emails with track-able links bringing them back to the site. This will allow the marketing department to drip campaigns with sticky track-able marketing to further segment the market so that when the buyer reaches out for further information the sales team can “see” who this person is before they actually meet in person.

This type of buyer information is much more valuable in the long term than a mere email address that can be faked leading the marketing dept to waste time and resources on bad data. Opt-in and verified opt-in is much more usable. I’ve used the “how did you find us” method at contract and when they first come in the model but the truth is, they rarely give the correct answer. Even on the Internet I get bad answers. I asked one person and she insisted she got it from a source we don’t even have. I knew she came in via Newhomesource.com. She said she came to us from a site called “The Bluffs”. That is sort of true, but not quite.
Emails sent with pictures and links have given me more insights into this same buyer. I know what she is interested in based on her responses. Things like cooking, gardening, financing options, decorating and schools.

I would also tell a builder like the one you shared about that I score my leads and not with the traditional ABCDF methods. Certain actions and interactions on the internet detail a buying cycle that I can watch. As they reach certain milestones I can test the score by moving the buyer into the next profile. Their reactions to this new material will tell me how strong they really are and if I need to decrease the score again.

Selling to Internet buyers is like fishing. You have to bait the line and tie it on tight. When the fish bites you set the hook. Then you reel them in slowly or fast depending on their reactions, sometimes loosening the line, sometimes reeling it in as fast as you can. The ones that give you a real phone number and address, don’t even bother to score. They are ready, willing and able. Send them to the sales dept IMMEDIATELY and stay on top of them. They may as well be in your model already with a pen in hand. It’s just a few details they need to work out.

I love the profile idea. Great input from a seasoned professional.
Thanks Lisa!

When I started in this business I quickly realized that the building industry is a unique bunch. For the most part integrity is way up on their priority list both for their customers and for their business partners. Those that typically crossed the line of honesty didn’t stay in business very long or it wasn’t very long before they had a black name within the building community which in turn eventually cost them their business.

Sounds ordinary right? I mean if a business has fraudulent practices and weak business ethics it only seems right they don’t survive……right?
But what about those businesses that seek to deceive under the radar and get away with it? Would I be naive in assuming that every successful business is pure as the driven snow when it comes to ethics? Maybe naive isn’t the word because I’m certain mistakes are made all the time while trying to run an honest business, but I’m not talking about innocent mistakes here. I’m talking about companies in our midst that reap a profit from the industry that we love so much and doing it with fraudulent methods or at the very least, with questionable practices.

How would you react if you discovered that a marketing company you were paying to perform a service was deceiving you as to how they executed that service? Dumb question right? Maybe a better question would be, would you know if a business partner was cheating you? Do you have measures in place to catch it?

My intentions for writing this blog is to make an attempt to briefly discuss the most prevalent method of marketing fraud in our industry and perhaps cause your radar to sound off the next time you’re prompted to jump in the water with a future business partner.

The increase in marketing fraud.
There’s no question that online fraud is on the increase. Maybe because of the economy, maybe because it’s easy. At times I outsource work for my company to people that don’t work directly within my circle of accountability. How easy would it be for one of them to claim hours worked that were not? Easy. Too easy. A risk I need to take? Perhaps, but how do I reconcile those questions with the check I’m writing? For me it’s a simple matter of making a mental note as to how much time I think this job should take and all the while having expectations of certain benchmarks of completion along the way. If I question the performance against the hours worked I simply raise my concerns with the contractor.”Gee that sounds too simple” you say. Well, yes that part is but where it gets sticky is the reaction and or response of the contractor in question. Generally speaking a humble, inquisitive response says a lot about their honesty. Now I’m no CSI detective but I know what a defensive accusatory reaction says too. It tells me that I’m most likely right in my assumptions and I make my future decisions armed with that feeling in my gut. It can be as easy and remembering two words when faced with this dilemma. Reaction or response.

What about pay per click fraud? You pay a venue to advertise your product and pay them “per click” to perform that duty. Having worked in the pay per click environment I know the questions all too well. “How do I know if my competitors are just clicking away on my links?” or “How do I know if the vendor is just clicking away on my links?” Does this happen? Unfortunately it does. “You mean to tell me that it’s not just my competitors but the vendor itself that’s clicking my links?!” You betcha, and if you don’t have measures in place to catch it, you’ll just pay the bill. Money out the door. Now, on a personal level, thievery just rubs me raw but when it happens from someone you think you can trust because of their reputation, well then it’s just downright unscrupulous. But it happens. It’s the world we live in. How do you catch it? The good thing is that Google is getting better and better at catching these fraudulent clicks and reimbursing for the cost of those clicks. You can also do something.

Pay attention.

If you want a system that you can just set and forget well…..forget it. That approach will end up costing you. If your vendor is telling you that you received thousands of clicks and your phone didn’t ring once and not a soul requested info on your website then you may have a problem. I realize that this is extreme but honestly paying attention to your traffic reports will pay off. Google Analytics is also a great tool for combating fraud. It has a cool geographic locator that tells you what regions your clicks are coming from. Are they all coming from the same region? Red Alert! You can also go commando and pay for a service like whosclickingwho.com. They track all of your clicks and provide you with data on repeat clickers. You can use this 3rd party data to approach your PPC company about refunds. If they aren’t open or willing to accept proof of fraudulent activity and offer a refund, chances are pretty good you should look for another vendor. I would actually recommend that you always check to see if they even have refund policy in place.

Perhaps it sounds like I side too much with the builder in this issue. Maybe, but one thing is for certain. The home building industry supports a huge part of our economy and many businesses owe their existence to builders. My company included. We can’t afford fraud especially coming from our business partners. It’s already too hard to make a buck in the current economic climate and the idea of someone stealing that buck is just disgusting.
Be prepared, be alert and pay attention and if a scammer happens to be reading this……shame shame shame. How do you sleep at night?

Leave a comment, say amen or tell me to take a hike.

Allow me to tax your memory a bit. Tom Cruise in a little movie called Top Gun, remember that? Of course you do.

One of my favorite scenes is when Maverick gets his butt chewed out for his fly by of the tower. They called it “buzzing the tower”. One of the hi ranking officers spilled coffee all over the front of his shirt when Mav buzzed by after telling him “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern is full.” In other words, don’t do it because the airport is too busy.
Historically this maneuver is done as some kind of victory stunt. It’s a military “woot!” or “look at me!” Take a look at the video.

Now a question for you.
Are you a social media Ghost Rider? Do you just buzz the towers of Facebook and Twitter every  now and then just to promote your latest victory or “woot” your latest blog? You see I spend a lot of
time in the social media hive spots…..uhh, probably too much time and from time to time I see the fly by’s. Someone that doesn’t engage in any way other than by just posting his latest achievement or worse, his latest product to sell. I’m so tempted to say “hey Maverick! The pattern is full!”

The question you need to ask yourself is “am I really plugged into social media, really?” In other words, are you really grasping the spirit of what the social media revolution is all about?
What is it all about? Good question.

Relationships, trust and discovery.

Really, at the heart of social media is this issue of relationships. Since beginning my own social media participation I can’t tell you how many people I have started relationships with that I have never even met face to face. People I speak to daily about a
multitude of topics and many of the topics have nothing to do with my industry. I’ve even hired someone for  my company based on what I learned about her from her Facebook presence. The bottom line is, in this new world people want to know who they’re doing business with on a personal level. This is only accomplished by engaging your followers and friends. Flying by just to shout out  your latest cool thing is just social media spam and we all know how we feel about spam.

There is a handy little button on Facebook when you hover over someone’s post that says “Hide” and when you  click on that your posts go away, all of them and you know what else? You’ll never know you’ve been hidden which means that even though you think you have an audience for your self promotion, it’s falling on deaf ears.

Trust is something we all want from our friends. When it comes to eCommerce, trust is paramount and social media provides an avenue for you to build trust with your consumers. How do you accomplish this? It’s simple, be yourself. Talk about the little things in your life that highlights your humanity. In other words, don’t be afraid to talk about your weaknesses, what you’re reading, what weird thing happened to you today etc. Just be you. If you try to be someone you’re not, it will come out eventually.
And that’s not good. Talk about losing followers!

Lastly, discovery. It’s so cool to discover the unique personality behind a brand, behind a cold static online presence. One my all time favorite bands is on Facebook and I connected with them and now we actually chat from time to time. How awesome is that? That same feeling of discovery happens when a consumer connects to your company and discovers the actual living breathing person behind the company entity.
By the time they actually knock on your door to do any business they’ll feel like they already know you. Instant trust. If you can conquer the trust factor, well you can do anything.

Don’t be a social media fly by. Nobody loves a Maverick in the airspace. Stop a while, engage and show the world who you are.

About oh….ten years ago I remember landing on a website and all of a sudden there was music playing

How cool I thought that was. I remember thinking “man, this Internet is really awesome!” Well that was 10 years ago when music on a website was the new thing and being surprised or I should say annoyed by music today on a website is so…….well, 10 years ago.

You see here’s the thing. If I wanted music I would’ve gone to my iTunes or went to a site that specializes in delivering music that I like to listen to and therein lies the real problem with having music play on your website. The odds that many people will not like the type of music you play are pretty high. Some say “well it’s just elevator music and it’s easy listening“. Hmmm, and how many people would say that they love elevator music? I mean, how many times is that phrase “elevator music” used in our jokes?
It doesn’t really matter what the genre, it’s going to alienate somebody and in today’s eCommerce environment you can’t afford to alienate anyone.

I recently ran a poll on Facebook to more than 400 industry professionals and asked the question “How do you respond when you land on a website and automatically hear music?” Every single vote was “I scramble to find the off button!” The ironic thing is that most of the time that button is not easily found and you’re getting angry or frustrated just seeking for it. When you finally find it hidden in the bottom corner of the website in tiny little letters you click it and hope the surprise sound didn’t wake up the baby because the night before you were watching YouTube and had the volume turned all the way up.

Ok, so you move on to the next page on the website and Wham!
The music starts again! That’s it! Goodbye!

Are you starting to get the picture?

The Internet is an “On Demand” environment and music that I did not ask for is unwelcome and bothersome. This goes for any other weird sounds too. I was on a site the other day and all I could hear was the sounds of a forest with birds and everything. I had my headphones on listening to my iTunes while searching for something and I thought I was hearing things. I was pretty certain I didn’t download anything like that to my iTunes library. Then I realized it was coming from the dang site I was on. Arghhh!

The last thing about music on your website and I think the most important thing is what I began with. It gives your consumers the wrong impression about you. It conveys that you are out of date and out of touch with the ever evolving technology that’s not only available but has become what Internet consumers expect from their online experience. They expect the new not the old. They expect the revolutionary not the nostalgic. They expect to get what they ask for and not be surprised by what they didn’t ask for.

Let’s leave the music to iTunes. Impress your consumers with the power of your content and the value of your product.
Elevator music belongs in……well, the elevators.

I remember my first new home buying experience. It was an all day event in the car with my Realtor. We drove around from one new community to the next walking through one model after another and as you know, each community can easily have anywhere between 3 and 10 models depending on the size of the community. It was exhausting. Not to mention the fact that by the end of the day, I had seen so many models that I had forgotten which one I liked the best.

If you’re a home builder then you know that those days are gone. It’s safe to say that less than 20% of buyers still practice this home buying model. The rest of them are busy looking at their future new home on the Internet. In fact, they’re assessing the quality of your entire company by what they see in your “online model” or showroom.
Long before they actually take the time to get in the car and drive out to any community, they’ve spent hours (sometimes days,weeks & months) on builder websites like yours and have already made most, if not all of their conclusions. So, how much emphasis and or importance do you place on your website? As a website designer I spend a great deal of time during my workday on builder sites and I have made some observations. Some good, some….well, bad.

I’d like to offer some suggestions based on some of the best consumer friendly sites that I’ve seen.
Here’s goes! The absolutes in no specific order.

~ User Friendly
Nothing is more distracting than arriving at a builder website and getting lost or not even knowing where to even start.

~ Easily Navigated
Your website is not just a sales tool but a map that leads your potential buyers to your front door. Where do you want them to go?
Are your links leading them there? How far does the buyer need to go before finding your homes?

~ Not busy or confusing.
The more “stuff” you have on your site, the greater the chances you have of losing people. Banner ads are helpful to the pocketbook and Realtors are an integral part of your business but you are not selling either. Your content should be relevant and always directing traffic to what you are selling, homes. Busy and convoluted is not easy on the eye.
A great example of simplicity in design and navigation is Quadrant Homes in Seattle.
* It’s simple and very clear as to what they want the buyer to do and where they want the buyer to go. They even have their site available in other languages. Great move!

~ Rich in information
When I’m researching a product online as a consumer, what I’m looking for is information. The Internet is a real time environment and I want my information in real time. Traversing through pages and pages of content before I finally find what I’m looking for is not how I like to spend my time shopping.

~ Relevant Information
Contrary to the old method of marketing, leaving something to the imagination WILL NOT get people in their cars to come see you. The more information you can offer them the better your chances of selling them. The absolute basics include:
~ Floor plans that include the square footage.
~ Hi resolution images of your available models. People love pictures, don’t leave them out!
~ A community address or directions to the community! Believe it or not, many sites do not have this basic information. It’s hard enough sometimes to be found online let alone finding you without an address or a map.
~ Bedrooms, bathrooms….how many?
~ Pricing. I realize that for some builders (especially custom to semi-custom), pricing can change and requires some discussion based on needs but using the old “call for pricing” in an attempt to gain personal contact can be frustrating. Always include some basic pricing like “from the high, low or mid $$’s”

Contact us!
This should be the most prevalent and recognizable link on your website. You would be surprised to see how hard it is to find this link on some websites. If it’s not easy to contact you from your website then all your website is is a fancy brochure. Take a look at Landon Homes. Right from the get go they have access for personal interaction in 2 different locations. They are a call to action and you can’t afford to not have it.
Information on your website is just the beginning. The ultimate goal is for the buyer to want to contact you. If your content inspires them, you must provide an easy avenue for them to contact you.

~ Online Registration Card
There are two frames of thought in our industry on this topic. Some feel that it’s too intrusive and only provide a phone number. Others would rather not provide a phone number and only have a form to fill out that gets sent to the builder sales team.

I say it’s vital to have both. Vital because there are also two types of consumers, some who prefer to call and some who prefer not to call. You must capture both!

I also believe that it’s important to have a registration card on your site because people are very non-committal online for fear of spam and unwanted contact. The form can act as a filter. If a buyer takes the time to offer their personal information, they are most likely not just a browser. The odds are higher that they’re truly interested.

~ How did you hear about us?
Other than the buyers name and contact information, this is probably the most valuable information that you can gather on your contact form. In today’s marketing environment, there are a vast number of options and you need to be able to determine which is serving your interests in the greatest way.

This question should require a mandatory response and you should list in that drop down every venue in which you spend your marketing dollars and a few in which you don’t. By and large, you will most likely discover that the majority of your leads will come from the Internet.
So that is my 2 cents regarding builder websites.
I would love your feedback!