Most project microsites are built as brochures. They should be built as filters.
A developer’s website has one commercially useful job: turn an interested stranger into somebody worth a sales call, and turn everybody else away politely before they consume an hour of calling time.
That second half is the part nobody designs for, and it is where most of the value is.
What has to be on the page?
Four things that brochures usually avoid.
The price bracket. Not the full price list, but enough that someone outside the range rules themselves out. Leaving it off does not create curiosity. It creates a hundred calls to people who were never in range, and every one of those costs you sales time that could have gone to someone who was.
The location, specifically. Not the marketing name of the micro market. The actual road, and the distances to the things that decide a purchase. Schools, the highway, the airport, the hospital. In minutes, honestly stated.
The stage. Under construction, nearing possession, ready to move. Buyers sort by this before almost anything else, and most sites bury it three scrolls down or leave it out entirely.
What happens after the form. “Someone will call you from this number within the hour.” One sentence. It measurably lifts form completion, because the thing stopping people is not knowing what they are signing up for.
What should come off the page?
The things that are there because a brochure had them.
The chairman’s message. The long paragraph about a philosophy of living. The amenity list as the first section. The gallery of eleven renders that all show the same building from slightly different angles.
None of that answers a question the visitor arrived with. It is not offensive, it just occupies the space above the things that would have worked.
Should the price really be public?
This is the argument I have most often, and I understand the objection.
The case against is that price is a conversation, that a number without context loses people who would have been persuaded, and that competitors will see it.
Competitors already know. They have called your sales office, the same way you have called theirs.
The case for is arithmetic. A page without a price generates more enquiries and fewer site visits. Every enquiry from somebody in the wrong bracket costs you a call, and the call is where your genuinely scarce resource sits. A bracket, not a price list, removes most of that waste and keeps the conversation available for the people it was meant for.
If you genuinely cannot publish a bracket, put the qualifying question on the form instead. Something has to do the filtering, and if the page does not, the sales team does, one phone call at a time.
How many pages does a project site need?
Fewer than you think. One good page beats six average ones.
A single page carrying the location, the stage, the price position, the plans, the developer record and one form will outperform a multi-page site with a navigation menu, because a visitor arriving from an ad does not want to explore. They want to decide.
Add pages only when there is a genuinely separate question, and the usual candidates are floor plans in detail, and the developer’s completed projects.
What about the form itself?
Short, with exactly one qualifying question.
Name, phone, and one thing that tells sales how to prioritise. Budget band, or timeline, or whether they are buying to live in or invest. One, not five.
Every extra field costs you completions. One well chosen field costs you the completions you did not want and keeps the rest. Five fields cost you both.
And the phone number should be the field you fight for. An email in this market is often a dead end.
Does the site need to be fast?
More than in almost any other category.
A large share of your traffic will arrive from a paid ad on a phone, on mobile data, possibly outdoors. Renders are heavy. Project sites are routinely built with a dozen full width images and a background video, and they take eight seconds to become usable.
You paid for that click. You are paying again for every visitor who leaves before the page renders.
If you change one technical thing, compress the images properly. It is usually the difference between a site that works on the road outside and one that does not.
What does good look like in one sentence?
A page that generates fewer enquiries and more site visits.
Every developer says that is what they want. Then the lead count drops in week two and there is a meeting about it.
Hold for a month and look at the visits.
We build project sites as filters, which means fewer leads and better ones, and we will say so before we start. Tell us what you are working on.
