McKee Homes is a premier custom home builder that requires an in-depth, easy to use, highly customized website experience. We achieved this with a headless website, using GastbyJS front-end, and a customized WordPress back-end Content Management System (CMS). Creating a custom online experience for McKee Customers was essential in our shared goals. 

What does a serverless, headless website mean? 

It means that building a website this way will give them the ability to grow and pivot as a company expanding their plans and offerings while simultaneously managing high rates of website traffic so that it never slows down due to server load, and page load times are always instantaneous. If your website slows down over time or even from-the get-go because of the technology used to build the site, customers and clients will be deterred from continuing to browse and search for the home of their dreams. This is especially important when you are browsing for the largest purchase and investment of your life. 

We presented detailed information on the experience of building with McKee Homes – the history, the team and the many community elements that make up this family run business for the past 35 years.

Custom Filters

Creating custom filters for searching including home type, style, location, size and home features was accounted for at every step. This custom filter addition was needed to help McKee as a company continue to grow with this website – adding new home plans, show homes, quick possessions ensuring clients will find the features essential to them in their new dream home. 

Design and SEO Considerations

Built into every website we create are the requirements that the design needs to closely align with branding elements used in every other aspect of that business. When it comes to a Home Builder that is also selling design and style – the website needs to reflect that. Custom graphics, design elements and gifs were created to add to the feel of the brand without over doing it or taking away from their personality. 

SEO (search engine optimization) includes dozens, even hundreds of elements that combine to create a solid website that is easily found organically and rates as high as possible. The content of a website is the most important element of an effective search engine optimization strategy. We worked with McKee to craft their content with our amazing copywriters  ensuring the brand story was told in detail. Keywords are terms users type into search engines such as Google to find a website – we include as many of these researched favourites as possible. Meta title and meta descriptions are completely utilized and done thoroughly. Social media is connected, backlinks are used and speed and load tests are maximized for top marks wherever possible. 

My Favourites App Experience

Along with the custom filters functionality we created a customized inter-connected app like experience for customers to LIKE, SAVE and make notes on their favourite homes.  

There are dozens of home plans therefore we created a way for them to login and refer, update and change their favourites over and over again. It also offers McKee a way to connect directly with customers providing offers and promotions to people with favourite accounts. 

Website Updates

Integrated with their new website is an easy to update backend that uses the familiarity and power of WordPress CMS with the modern ‘headless’ front-end that is incredibly fast, modern and without the worry of a website breaking or not being able to keep up with your growth. 

User friendly in every way each component has instructions and easy to add and edit your site without any help or code needed. In addition to all of that we have built in image optimization to keep the speed and user experience top of mind. We have addressed this with Gatsby as it’s built in with every website we build. 

Custom Contact Forms

Another component that was built into this website were each of the custom contact forms. Having quick easy ways for customers to reach out to and make contact – in the moment, is a critical step in a great lead generation system. Each community has a sales team and unique contact form that goes to a specific team depending on the community. This gives the McKee Homes team the instant ability to send contacts to them right away and reply quickly with the information requested without delay. This created a better user experience and keeps the conversation and sales process moving forward. 

Overall, this website has a lot of elements that brought together what we do best and what the client required for an effective solution for all.