THE FUTURE OF ONLINE HOME SALES

Yes, this would turn it into a self-driven experience. Online configurators target buyers and act as a tool to educate and personalize without the pressure to buy. They create a connection with buyers that act like mental product and marketing investments that have great potential to increase brand/product loyalty, eventually leading to a sale.

Right – so you have that experience I just spoke of plus being able to take care of that initial transaction, which is reserving a lot and up to when you actually buy a house online. That’s where this started materializing, with moving from a sales presentation where the sales person closes the deal to a fully self-serve tool for buyers.

In addition to what I previously mentioned – timing and purpose. The pandemic did what we already know, kept people at home. Builders started looking for better ways to reach those buyers at home. This resulted in more online sales of “pre-configured” homes and the increased need for virtual and digital experiences. I also know the world was on a path (although a slow one in comparison) to become more digital and require less in-person shopping. 

Buyers are demanding better products along with increased education and understanding of the products they are in the market for. What better way to give them this than offering them an actual online configurator that fills in all those gaps within the homebuying experience long before a potential buyer ever speaks to builders. 

The smart/digital marketing and real data that can organically come from users being able to build and save full home configurations online is another tremendous benefit. Of course, we can’t forget the push to buy a “home” online. This is the final and ultimate goal, but I believe there are so many other intrinsic benefits for both the potential buyers and builders alike long before we actually reach that final destination. Also, this stands out because it has been developed with builder feedback and was designed to be seamless between being fully desktop and mobile-friendly.

Porsche was awesome from an experience standpoint. It’s mainly a large screen experience and I just really like the usability factor. What I mean by that is from easily switching from desktop to mobile and being able to work on many screens. I go back to it all the time. Another one I really took a lot of inspiration from is Can-Am and looked closely at everything they did. They have multiple categories and it’s really well put together. The images are about as good as they can get while still providing you probably 90% of your options. They use a 3D model so they have very few options you don’t see and you can spin it while working on it. Also, when moving from mobile to desktop, nothing really changed. It got a bit more compact, but you never lost functionality.

I think we can all say that we’ve seen the trend of buyers doing their homework and relying less on salespeople. So, online sales. To me it’s a no-brainer. Look how we’ve become more and more accustomed to buying on our own. I know that homes are a tactile thing like a car, but over time, the more we educate ourselves we get as close as possible in our brains to what we were buying before. And that’s what a configurator is going to do for buyers. I mean, number one – educate them on the homebuying process and the availability of options and lots that they might have never noticed. 

I agree. And there’s more we can offer. I think in many ways it could be even much more immersive because we offer more VR and AR types of experiences walking through a house. You know, getting that real feeling of what you’re buying. They’ve been doing this in cars for a while – why not homes?