We hope you, your employees, and your families are staying safe during this trying time. From the myHouseby team, we are wishing you the very best.
With the current and foreseeable COVID-19 impact, businesses and even our school systems are transitioning to an online environment to keep business and education progressing. Today’s unprecedented time, coupled with already shifting shopping behaviors, has many builders reevaluating, like never before, their readiness to do business online.
Your website is your storefront and now needs to be where the home buying transaction begins. Your website is now even more important than your model home.
This was true last month, yet it holds even more weight as we navigate the current situation. Your model homes and sales offices still serve an important purpose. But that purpose is very different than it was even a year ago. Your model homes and sales staff should now be positioned to finalize the transaction – not begin it. Your buyers want to complete as much of the transaction process as possible on your website. Builders who are organizing to meet this demand will win, those who do not risk survival.
2 Online tactics deployable today:
- Share with your buyers all of the information on your communities, home plans, pricing, and competitive advantages on your website. Gone are the days in which we insist buyers come to our communities for these details.
- Create opportunities for buyers to chat directly with online sales counselors via your website.
2 Key strategic moves for success today and for the long term:
- Evaluate technology partners that bring modern customer experiences to your website. The technology exists today to allow buyers to not only discover their home online but also design it online with exterior and interior options, including real-time pricing.
- Embrace digital tools and begin the shift towards deploying a digital strategy. Builders who are embracing technology and who are creating robust digital buying experiences today are developing new competitive advantages beyond the homes they build. The threats and benefits now and in the future are too significant to ignore.
If you want help assessing whether your website is “transaction-ready” and meets the current demands of the marketplace, let myHouseby’s team of consumer e-commerce experts help you by conducting an e-Commerce Audit on your website. It’s a free assessment of your current readiness level. We will also provide specific recommendations for how you can move forward to optimize your marketing and sales efforts, leveraging your website, to increase sales and margins.