Builder Success

Hear it straight from the builder’s themselves – who’s having success and why.

By Builders Digital Experience

The internet has become the first place to stop when starting research for a new purchase, especially when shopping for a new home.  As you may know, 9 out of 10 home buyers will begin the search for their next home online; making a builder’s website as important as their model home.  You wouldn’t want to miss out on a potential lead or client just because they didn’t think your site was engaging enough, right?  With the home building market looking up, the competition is tough and you must stand out in the crowd.  Here are four categories you should consider to ensure your website is attractive to buyers:

Design – Is your site attention grabbing?  Your website is often the first impression a buyer will have with your company, so make sure it properly reflects your brand.  The site should be well organized, free of clutter, appealing to prospective customers and easy to understand.

Layout – Think about how you want your information organized and compare that to how it is currently set up.  Easy navigation is key to a good site.  You don’t want customers getting frustrated because they can’t find your floor plans or photo galleries.  Your company information, products and/or services should be visible and easy to understand.  Be sure to have links on each page to navigate from your home page to other important pages you want visitors to see.

Content – This is one of the most important categories as you should be constantly updating information to make sure it is current and accurate.  Posting new images and information on your homes and communities keeps potential buyers engaged and continues to drive traffic to your site.  Renderings and photos of the home, community and amenities allow buyers to imagine what it would be like to live there.

Website Speed – We live in a fast paced environment where people have little patience for delays and they expect the same for websites.  A potential buyer is not going to wait around for your content to load; more than likely they will get bored and move on to your competitor that may better meet their needs.  More and more people shop and browse the internet from their smartphones; not having a mobile presence could have a negative impact your business.  Consider our  website platform for tablet and mobile devices.

A good website is important to attract, engage and sell homes.  Differentiate yourself from the competition by using video, interactive floor plans and photography to bring your homes to life and create a welcoming visual sense of place for home buyers.  Our experienced team is ready to work with you to showcase your homes and communities.   For more information on the variety of products we offer, visit the BDX website.

To learn more about creating a visual sense of place for home buyers, register for BDX’s free webinar on April 10.

By Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager, BDX

Last month the BDX network served over 2.8 million clicks. However, not all of those clicks were sent to an advertiser’s website. Many of those clicks were identified as Bots and filtered out of our reporting. The Bot Filter is just one of the services BDX provides to help optimize performance for our builder advertisers. 

Bots are a piece of software that scan websites and follow web links to create an index for major search engines. They’re not something a consumer would notice in their regular online activity but can have a profound affect for a webmaster looking at traffic and click trends.

In our BDX Ad reporting we typically see Bot Traffic as spikes in click thru activity for a builder.  For example, a builder may average a .20 Click-Thru Rate (CTR) but occasionally performance will spike to five percent over a short period of time.  By cross referencing the domain and IP we can typically identify and block the bot. However, other Bot Traffic is not as obvious and may appear as regular click activity.  This is especially true if an advertiser is running GIF/JPEG files that will record all click activity (the Javascript in a SWF File or Ad Tag will typically filter the bot click).

In our review of Bot Traffic BDX has identified a series of browsers and IPs that represent three percent of all traffic but as much as twenty percent of the clicks for our builder advertisers. These clicks are recorded in our ad server but may not appear in a builder’s Google Analytics (After all, Google runs several bots of their own and automatically filters that traffic).  The result is a natural discrepancy between publishers’ reports and what a builder sees in their analytics. Meaning publishers could report a high number of clicks & high CTR but the advertiser sees relatively little value.

By implementing the Bot Filter BDX is able to provide more accurate reporting that closely aligns to a builder’s backend reporting across all of the BDX advertising products from BeBack to Realtor.com. With more accurate reporting, we can better work with our advertisers to optimize their campaigns and improve our product offerings.

Many publishers and ad severs do have a bot filter included in their service and will only capture known bots identified by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. They don’t actively manage new bots regularly introduced into the market nor do I think most publishers apply the same level of scrutiny as BDX to identify these occasional spikes in click traffic.

If you’re working with a publisher and running online campaigns I’d recommend auditing performance to ensure numbers closely align to what’s reported.  Setting up UTM tracking codes and developing campaign goals in Google Analytics are some easy ways to help track performance across different channels and optimize your media flight. As many of our advertisers work with limited resources it’s important that they have accurate data to make the right decisions regarding their marketing efforts.  At BDX we work with several of our advertisers to help set up campaign goals allowing them to truly understand the value of their online advertising. 

If you’d like additional information on some of the unique services BDX provides to optimize builder campaigns or assistance in setting up tracking in Google Analytics please contact me at traffic@thebdx.com.

Thane Tennison is the Advertising Manager for the BDX and manages hundreds of home builder brands across a network of over a dozen real estate websites.

By: Builders Digital Experience

As housing continues to recover, it is important to make sure you are building homes with features potential buyers actually want.  The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently surveyed 3,682 home buyers to see “What Home Buyers Really Want” when purchasing a home.  The results were quite interesting, as people’s preferences and priorities have changed quite a bit over the past couple of years. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the size of new homes has steadily increased over the past three years to 2,524 sq. ft. in 2012.  Additionally, the number of homes with three or more baths and three car garages has gone up.  And as you might expect, the average sales price of homes has increased for the last three years since bottoming out in 2009; the average price in 2012 was $279,000.

It is no secret that resale homes are still outselling new.  In order to capture this share of the market, a new home must have the functionality and features that a used home cannot offer.  The survey suggests removing rooms people don’t use from your floor plans and add that space into places where they spend the most time, such as a separate media room or into a larger master suite.  A kitchen continues to be one of the most important rooms in a person’s house.  Make your kitchens more interactive – 85 percent of respondents want a table space for eating and 76 percent still want a central island. 

We live in a fast-paced society that is always on the go, so why not add features that are convenient and meet the needs of today’s lifestyles?  Seventy-four percent of respondents said they like an open floor plan where the kitchen flows into the living room.  With more people being environmentally conscious, green features have become very important.  Ninety-four percent of buyers said they want Energy Star appliances in their home and 91 percent want an Energy Star rating for the entire home – an older home can have upgrades that are energy efficient, but it will never be as efficient as a new home.  Community amenities featuring resort-style pools, hike and bike trails, great schools in or near the community with easy accessibility to shopping can also have a serious influence on buyers. 

Below is the complete list of the most wanted – and least wanted – characteristics home buyers want in a new home, followed by the percentage:

The Most Wanted List

  • Energy Star-rated appliances — 94 percent
  • Laundry room — 93 percent
  • Energy Star-rating for the whole home — 91 percent
  • Exhaust fan in bathroom — 90 percent
  • Exterior Lighting — 90 percent
  • Bathroom Linen Closet — 90 percent
  • Energy Star-rated windows — 89 percent
  • Ceiling fans — 88 percent
  • Garage Storage — 86 percent
  • Table space for eating in kitchen — 85 percent
  • Walk-in kitchen pantry — 85 percent

The Unwanted List

  • Elevator — 70 percent
  • Golf course community — 66 percent
  • High-density community — 56 percent
  • Only a shower stall in master bath — 51 percent
  • Gated community — 48 percent
  • Mixed-use community — 44 percent
  • Two-story family room — 43 percent
  • Wine cooler — 42 percent
  • Wet bar — 41 percent
  • Laminate countertop — 40 percent
  • Two-story entry foyer — 38 percent
  • Laundry chute — 32 percent
  • Outdoor kitchen — 31 percent
  • Game room — 31 percent
  • His & Her baths — 31 percent
  • Glass front cabinets — 31 percent
  • Countertop — 30 percent

We all know that a new home provides a care-free lifestyle so that homeowners can enjoy their home, not work on it.  Let us help you sell that message to today’s buyers by showcasing your homes with area photos, videos and renderings.  To learn more about our packages, please click here.

By: Builders Digital Experience, creators of NewHomeSource.com

As you know the widespread adoption of technology and the internet are dramatically changing every aspect of people’s lives including how they shop for new homes.  Research shows that over 90% of all consumers will use or plan to use the Internet to shop for a home in the next two years. This is why it is important to have your homes listed on NewHomeSource.com and across our network of over 300 real estate sites.

But did you know that you can start to build interest in your communities even before they are built? Let us help you list your communities as “Coming Soon.”  This is a great way to build interest in new communities before they are complete and gives buyers a sneak peak of what is coming to their area.  Start building a database of prospects right away rather than waiting until further in the process.  Imagine having all the homes in the community sold even before it is complete!

Additionally, videos, area photos and renderings can bring your communities to life, engage your website visitors and differentiate yourself from the competition.  Our experienced team is ready to work with you to showcase your communities.  To inquire about our special “Coming Soon” listings packages, please click here.

By: Jamie Lintner, BDX Advertising Accounts Manager

We have all read the analysis about the low click-thru rates for Facebook advertising.  Webtrends in particular has documented a downward shift from an already low click thru rate (CTR) over a span of three years, from a .063% in 2009 to a .041% average in 2011. This is half of the comScore recognized click thru average for all online display advertising — .10%. But what would the data look like if we were to measure the CTR of display ads against a previously engaged individual who already has some level of trust with a brand?

  In Q4 of 2012, Facebook launched a new Ad exchange that allows for advertisers to bid for placement in a real-time fashion. In order to avoid the historically low performance that Facebook has shown, we at the BDX have taken the exchange one step further and are now offering builders the opportunity to retarget visitors to their website and run banners with specific messages for those visitors. Similar to our BeBack program, we will cookie a builder’s site but will then retarget them only against the Facebook platform. These resulting ads fall within the same positions as a direct buy, with the same dimensions and specs and at the same cost, but they produce click thru and conversion rates that trump those of a non-retargeting campaign.  For example, in January, we ran our own internal campaigns and discovered that the CTR is roughly nine times the average of Facebook’s overall average with an incredible lift in backend conversions.

Not only that, but the results are just as strong when compared to traditional retargeting efforts. Here at the BDX we manage our own internal retargeting campaigns across 50 unique markets as well as unique BeBack retargeting campaigns for around 100 home builders. Without fail, a retargeted user is 10-15 times more likely to convert on the backend than one with no knowledge of the brand. Facebook ramps that up to another level. A user who has been on a particular site and has actively engaged with it is roughly 30% more likely to convert through the Facebook exchange than a typical retargeted user. While we were previously content with our cost/lead for retargeting, Facebook has provided a robust channel where we receive incremental traffic at a higher conversion rate. These numbers are hard to ignore.

Moving forward, as an added perk for BeBack advertisers we are now offering an additional campaign across only the Facebook exchange in order to improve backend lead conversion and drive clicks across a previously un-utilized platform. For additional information on how to set this up, please contact info@thebdx.com for additional details.