Consolidating Branded Websites (TOUSA)

Situation

With six brands and 14 divisions, Technical Olympic, USA (NYSE: TOA)  the nation’s 12th largest homebuilder (according to Builder Magazine) was searching for a way to bring all of its businesses onto a single Web platform. TOUSA’s goal was not only to consolidate all of the Web hosting services and marketing data onto a single location for cost savings, but more importantly, to enable its back-end housing and community data to automatically populate the websites. This would ensure that information is updated in a timely manner, and that associates wouldn’t have to spend hours copying this information into each website.

Services Provided

When MLC New Home Marketing (MLC) was hired to develop TOUSA’s Internet systems, TOUSA already had branded designs for each of its brands. While there were certainly components in common, each division had its own marketing requirements, and each division displayed its information differently.

MLC helped TOUSA define what data needed to be displayed by all divisions and what the best design interface to display that information would be. This included floor plans, specs, up-to-date pricing with options, community descriptions with amenities, driving directions and photographs. The firm helped TOUSA architect how information would transfer from its back-end accounting and CRM systems to automatically update the websites with the freshest data.

Then MLC helped the company determine what other functions were critical for all divisions. This included the ability for users to save their searches of homes and communities and compare prices, and for homebuyers to monitor information about their particular home, including the lot, construction schedule, specs, warranty policies and photographs.

Finally, MLC helped write the functional requirements, select a vendor and develop an application that would meet the above requirements, plus one other key component. The system also needed to be flexible enough to allow each division the ability to create their own market specific pages in an easy-to-use interface.

The end result was a robust, comprehensive, easy-to-use and attractive website that both meets the different needs of numerous marketing departments while also directly interacting with TOUSA’s back-end systems to refresh with the most accurate information. Divisions can turn on and off data as needed. Also, because the data is dynamically driven, information is displayed when it is available, but is not missing from the site when its not available.

Outcome

The TOUSA websites are highly informative and uniquely marketed in each division, and homebuyers are approaching the company better prepared than ever before. Moreover, the amount of time people spend on the sites has increased, even while the number of lost click streams (people who stopped in the middle) has decreased.