It’s no secret the impact that Facebook is having on consumer behavior. In fact, in recent months, Facebook has risen into the top 5 referring sources of traffic for some of our clients’ websites.
Despite this impact, many builders are still somewhat skeptical of Facebook’s role in the buying process, and I can sort of see why. The product of the home building industry couldn’t get any more tangible, and the relationships that are fostered on Facebook are anything but tangible.
Believing fully that Facebook has long term value for our clients, but also understanding how our clients wanted to see something practical inside Facebook, we (“we” meaning ONeil Interactive) decided to test custom Facebook apps for our home builder clients. These apps take the builders’ community description and add them as a tab on the top of their Facebook page, where visitors could browse their current communities, watch a video, share the community with friends, and click-through to the builders’ website for more. The initial tests were fantastic. We saw an immediate jump in website traffic from Facebook, and the impact continues to increase. It currently increases referring traffic from Facebook by about 30% in our tests.
Based on our successes, we created Builder Web Apps – a simple web application that allows any builder to sign up online and list their communities on Facebook with a custom tab in minutes. We put together a short homemade video describing the app below.
No secrets here – Builder Web Apps is a product of my company, ONeil Interactive. We’ve implemented these for most of our clients and they’ve all reaped traffic benefits. The application allows you to add up to four communities for free – no strings attached.
