custom home builder website

We've recently completed a custom home builder website for American Heritage Homes, one of the premiere home builders in Central Ohio.

This is the second website we've built for them, so they were happy enough with our work to have us do it again 6-7 years after their previous website was launched.

It also happens that one of our favorite people is the marketing director of American Heritage Homes: one Ms. Bethany Warner. She is professional, personable, vivacious, and has a wonderful sense of humor. All qualities that make working wth someone an absolute pleasure. And humble, too. So even when Bethany is asking for us to do something a little out of the ordinary, we're happy to do it. 

What to look for in a custom home builder website

The first thing, is to look for a web design company that has experience building a custom home builder website or two. Here at Sevell+Sevell, we've designed and built several, which you can see in the home building website section of our site here.

One thing an experienced web developer knows, is what to put on your homepage. How do you know what that is? The simple answer is: whatever your prospects find most interesting. And how do you know what that is? Simple: you look at your Google Analytics to see which are the most visited pages. And those are the links you want to be part of your homepage.

Making things simple for your audience should be one of the things you focus on. Just by helping your visitors find the pages most folks prefer to see, is one of the steps of good design. What are the other steps? Things like simple design, intuitive navigation, and quick download time. Quick download time is important because prospects will not wait for a website, especially a mobile website, to load more than a few seconds.

Download speed is a Google ranking factor

Download speed is a ranking factor for Google, and an annoyance for your audience. We know how to build fast-loading homepages. So of your visitor is in a coffee shop, or their car, and not using their über fast home connection, having your website load quickly is critical. After building the American Heritage Homes website, we tested their download speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights tool.

Anyone can test their own website using that tool. Just go to the link above and put in your domain name to see how Google sees how wel your website was built. For American Heritage Homes, we were able to get their score to 52 for mobile, and 87 for desktop, as you can see from the screenshot below. When the average score for a mobile site is 31, 52 is an admirable score.

google pagespeed score for custom home builder website.jpgAnd when you compare American Heritage Homes' scores to a couple of their competitors' sites, you'll see we've built in a real advantage (from Google's perspective).

google pagespeed score for compass homesgoogle pagespeed score for wayne homes websitegoogle pagespeed rating for trinty homes websiteSo if you're looking for a Columbus web design company that knows how to build your website so it plays well with Google, contact us.