Taking the Web to new heights

Richmond American is posting big numbers on its web site, while proving buyers are using the web to help make major purchase decisions.

People will buy books and CDs on the internet, but will they use it to buy big-ticket items?

Absolutely, says David Mandarich, president of Richmond American Homes, the state's No. 1 home builder.

That's the value of the purchases that web-shopping home buyers in Richmond American's national market areas made from the builder during 2000, according to company sales and tracking statistics.

That figure only accounts for leads generated via the Internet, yet also tracks for the larger number of home buyers who use the Internet as a resource and do not contact Richmond American via their web site.

Richmond American first launched a national web site for its new-home communities in 1998, and by the following year was posting around 150 home sales attributed specifically to that marketing. Last year, according to Corbin West, the company's national internet marketing manager, those numbers doubled.

"Our salespeople are saying that a growing number of buyers are arriving at the sales office who are already well-educated about our product, have a favorite floor plan in hand and have already taken virtual tours of the standing models," West added.

To take advantage of that growing familiarity, Richmond American marketing execs made the decision last year to overhaul richmondamerican.com, adding the iPIX virtual tours of the floor plans, along with clickable maps, faster page load times, improved "look and feel" to match offline marketing materials, more information on vendors, and more opportunities to "Contact Us." The new and improved site came online last month, and is already tracking around 3,000 visitors per day.

All of this is working particularly well for Richmond American, West noted, because its national presence tends to be in locales where buyers have a better than average chance of being Internet savvy — California, Arizona, the Washington Beltway and here, of course. "In all of our markets," said West, "buyers are using the Internet to assist them in making hard buying

But Richmond American is known as a builder that gets maximum value from its marketing programs whether high-tech or low-tech. So it's no surprise that the web design is taking advantage of some practical features that make it particularly user-friendly.

...Including no slow-loading graphics on the home page. Although "Flash-5" minicommercials are the latest thing on a lot of builder web sites, Richmond American has eschewed them. "Our take has been that most people don't want to see it...they'd rather get right to the information," said West. The home page itself is simple and attractive, and comes up quickly even with the less sophisticated browsers and the slower modem speeds that many families use at home.

...Also, more reliable information on pricing and plans. While most builders rely on outside services to maintain their web sites and perform updates, Corbin has pioneered "in-house updating" — web software that allows Richmond American's marketing staff in individual markets around the country to upload their own listings to richmondamerican.com, greatly improving accuracy and reliability. "We now have 99.9% control over what's appearing on the site," West noted.

...And a 1-800 number, prominently displayed throughout the site, for people who find they need additional one-to-one customer service.

Meanwhile, richmondamerican.com still has the features that buyers liked about the old site, including a mortgage calculator to figure rough principal and interest payments, plenty of community information, and detailed listings of inventory homes — including some hot buttons for some special availabilities.

You can preview all 60 of Richmond American's Front Range communities at richmondamerican.com.

Mark Samuelson is executive vice president of S. Robert August and Co., a residential marketing firm. You can e-mail him at mark@srobertaugust.com.

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