Texas Custom Home Builder Case Study

Bayless Custom Homes Overview

Gary Bayless has been building custom homes in Tyler, Texas for more than 30 years. His son Clint is following in his footsteps, building custom homes in the San Antonio area.

Father and son both attribute the home building company’s lasting success to their clients’ satisfaction. They take on a limited number of projects every year so they can provide quality construction on the luxury homes they build.

Both family members pride themselves on the level of communication and collaboration they provide clients from start to finish. There are a lot of general contractors in East Texas, Dallas and San Antonio. They stand out because they don’t just build homes, they build relationships.

Bayless Custom Homes also provides home renovations, plan development and design and outdoor living space construction. They were even selected to help turn an East Texas family’s dream home into a reality on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Producers pick builders with strong community ties and a track record of giving back. “They actually told me they were looking for a good builder with a good heart,” Gary Bayless told the press.”I am very honored.

Their Old Website Was Costing Leads

After three decades of building homes in the community and the local and national publicity from Extreme Makeover, you’d think leads would come pouring in through the company website. When people are talking about a business, they typically look them up online, but Bayless Custom Homes wasn’t seeing traffic from their website.

Gary and Clint both described their site as old and outdated. “It wasn’t good,” Gary said. “The site was just done by somebody here in Tyler who did it in their spare time. It had old information, I couldn’t ever get them to update pictures.”

There was no search engine optimization. If people searched for terms like “custom home builder” or “luxury custom homes” in their area, their competitors came up on the first search engine results page, but they were nowhere to be found.

In fact, their pages didn’t even show up on the second search engine results page for related keywords. Often visitors had to scroll all the way through results on the third page before they found one connected to Bayless Custom Homes.

Search Engine Journal published statistics that said the average traffic share generated by being on the first Google search results page is 91.5 percent. Forbes says the first five results get 67.6 percent of clicks. In other words, when people searched for a builder, they weren’t finding Bayless Custom Homes. They were choosing results on page one.

Their web design wasn’t mobile responsive, so if prospective clients searched on their cell phones and did find their page, it was hard to view and even harder to navigate. Gary and Clint knew they needed to improve their digital footprint to increase online visibility.

Choosing the Best Web Design Company

Clint was in charge of finding a web design company that could make their site a reflection of who they are and what they do. Bayless Custom Homes has a reputation in Tyler and San Antonio for superior craftsmanship, custom design and excellent customer service.

Every detail of the homes they build is designed to delight. Their homes are both innovative and timeless, a true reflection of the tastes and preferences of each homeowner.

When Bayless Custom Homes takes on a project, the very first step is a discussion on what the client’s dream house looks like. Every step after that works toward turning that dream into a reality.

Bayless Custom Homes are unique, with a high level of attention to detail. Gary and Clint take a responsive, hands-on management approach and prioritize giving each client the attention they deserve. That’s also what they expected when they started to evaluate web designers.

Clint says he looked at several web design companies in the Tyler and San Antonio area. The sites some firms built all looked the same.

“Matthew seemed to be a better choice,” he concluded. “He had a different perspective and different ideas than the competition, and I liked the websites they had done previously. Every Spade Design site had a different design built around that company. They look young and innovative rather than just the same boring stuff.”

Redesign Objectives

Clint and Gary Bayless and Spade Design developed the following objectives for the Bayless Custom Homes website redesign:

• Improve awareness by appearing on page one of search engine results pages.
• Increase total organic traffic with improvement in overall site visits and unique site visits.
• Generate more qualified leads.
• Establish trust with reviews from some of their many thrilled customers.
• Increase the number of site visitors who become prospects, measuring conversion rates as a percentage.
• Create a website that looks as good on mobile devices as it does on desktop.
• Showcase previous and ongoing projects with updated, high-quality images

One of Gary’s top concerns had to do with the photos on the Bayless Custom Homes websites. Professional imagery is important for every business, but it’s essential for custom home builders. The brain processes visuals faster than text and at a more intuitive level.

Bayless Custom Homes had an extensive collection of photos that are essential evidence of the level of craftsmanship they provide. Their work speaks for itself. When prospects looked at one stunning photo after another, they understood what the Bayless name stands for. Both Gary and Clint wanted a site that displayed their work and a web designer that would keep images updated.

They also wanted a more user-friendly visitor experience. “It’s of paramount importance for me to have a website that’s easy to navigate and easy to use to get in touch,” Gary said. Once they identified objectives, Spade Design got to work.

The Changes

The Spade Design team worked with Clint and Gary Bayless to create a bespoke website in much the same way Bayless Custom Homes approaches home design. The new fully responsive site delights visitors with a gallery of high-quality photos that show the caliber of homes Bayless builds.

It started with on-page optimization. Spade Design conducted keyword research to find out what Tyler and San Antonio audiences were looking for. They used best practices like short, descriptive URLs, clean title tags, engaging meta descriptions and relevant content so every page was accessible to search engine bots and prospective home buyers.

Spade Design also used off-page optimization techniques like link building to increase website position on search engine results pages. Almost immediately users started seeing the Bayless Custom Homes site, and when they visited they found exactly what they were looking for.

Gary and Clint started hearing positive conversations about their business because of the new site. People especially liked their page on the design process. It contains a series of pull-down menus that walk visitors through home design and construction one step at a time. The page is interactive and informative. It breaks down a complex process into extremely useful chunks.

See the redesigned Bayless Custom Homes Tyler site here. Be sure to check out the Bayless Custom Homes San Antonio site as well.

New Site Results

As soon as the new site went live, both locations started getting more phone calls and more leads.

• Annual leads from their site before redesign: 0
• Leads so far this year: 65
• Increased site traffic: 40 percent
• Conversions went from 0.2 percent to 6.9 percent
• Bayless Custom Homes ranking went from Google page 3 to high on the first page

Clint says one way he measures improvement is through phone calls. “More phone calls means more homes built. Building a home is such a huge step in someone’s life financially. The number of phone calls is up probably 75 percent. I’ve already had two calls today.”

Grow Your Website, Grow Your Business

The Spade Design approach has been tested and proven to work. If your website isn’t drawing traffic and generating leads, you’re losing money. We’ve mastered the skills necessary to build custom solutions for the industries we serve. Get in touch to find out how we can help grow your business.