Buyers do not come to find a home. They come to build one.
The homepage says “Find your new home.” But nobody finds a new construction home. They build it.
Design & Price is what makes khov.com different. It is the product. It should be the first invitation, not a buried feature.
Tell the buyer on the first screen: come build your home with us. We will guide you.
Today the tool is buried.
To reach Design & Price, a buyer opens the hamburger menu, picks New Construction, picks a location, picks a community, then scrolls halfway down a long page to find the button.
The hamburger even has a Looks link that celebrates home design, and it does not lead to the tool. Every step loses buyers. The most exciting action on the site should not be the hardest to find.
Inside the tool, the friction continues.
I walked the flow as a buyer last week. The buyer finally arrives, and the tool slows them down again:
- The home site step asks twice. Pick a lot, scroll, confirm, then press Next. One tap should be enough. It should not ask twice for something this simple.
- The layout screen shows a layout you cannot change. The only control adds a fifth bedroom through a modal with a single option. Closing it gives no feedback. Toggling it changes nothing you can see. As a buyer, you wonder if anything was saved at all.
- Looks and palettes live on separate screens. They belong together. Buyers want to mix style and color side by side: farmhouse to contemporary, in blue, black, or green.
- Choices do not appear in the picture. Add a freestanding tub in the bath and the image never changes. If a choice does not change the picture, the buyer cannot feel it.
- Everything loads slowly. Buttons spin. Screens wait. The tool does not feel reactive, and a slow tool kills the momentum.
Make the site a road to the appointment.
If the website were only a tool for speed to appointment, here is what we would build:
- Put “Design your home” on the homepage hero, above everything else. Make it the first and biggest action on the site. The buyer starts building within seconds of arrival.
- One flow, no double confirms. Every tap gets an instant, visible response.
- Style and color on one screen, side by side. Mix and match looks and palettes together. Every choice changes the picture instantly, or it does not ship.
- Rooms follow the same rule. If you add it, you see it. The kitchen, the bath, the living room: what you pick is what you get, immediately.
- End with the home in their hands. “This is yours. Make it yours forever.” A PDF of their design. A booked meeting with a sales expert. Nothing standing between the excitement and the appointment.
Speed builds attachment.
A buyer who spends ten minutes designing a kitchen has invested in that kitchen. Investment creates attachment. Attachment books the meeting.
The site should build that feeling on purpose, as early as possible. Every minute before the buyer starts building is a minute they might leave. Put a PDF of their home in their hands, get a meeting on the calendar, and they commit.
My answers.
Assumptions are labeled. The data I want is in the open question.
The problem
The problem I picked is at the start of the funnel. Almost the entire marketing site is reading, and the Design & Price tool the team built so well is buried. We are a home builder. The landing page should push every new buyer toward building their home and make the tool easy to find, putting it in buyers' hands sooner. That is the leak: buyers never get to invest in building before we ask for their information.
We found other problems too, and they should be fixed. Saving needs an account, the share options are buried, and Request Information drops the design context. But the assignment asks for the one problem with the highest impact on sales, so we are focusing on the start of the funnel. The ending we want is the buyer making the home theirs: meeting with someone, walking through it, making it permanent. That only works if the beginning pulls them in.
The proposal
Four weeks, two engineers, one part-time designer. Week one: the homepage hero becomes the Design & Price entry, and we instrument the funnel. Week two: one-tap flow, looks and palettes combined, every choice instantly visible. Week three: “Email me my design,” the full configuration attached to the lead for sales, and an ending that makes it theirs: a PDF of the design and a booked meeting. Week four: polish, QA, and measurement.
The measure
We measure four steps: how many homepage visitors start a design, how many finish one, how many leave an email, and how many book a meeting. We instrument the funnel in week one and check the numbers every week after launch.
It worked if a bigger share of finished designs turn into booked meetings than before, within six weeks. If neither email captures nor bookings move by then, we stop.
The cuts
No new 3D viewer. Renders and the 2D plan carry the visuals. No account system rebuild. Email is the identity. No homesite map rebuild. Lot selection can wait until after the design or stay simple. No marketing pages touched.
Each cut protects the four-week scope. The bet is speed to appointment.
The open question
What share of Design & Price starters reaches the summary today, and exactly where do the rest drop? I have no analytics access. That funnel is the first data I would ask for before anyone writes code.
The hypothesis, clickable.
I rebuilt the flow the way this page describes. It is fast, visual, and it ends with the home in your hands. Picture this greeting every khov.com visitor: every visit starts building, and every build ends in a conversation.
Open the prototypeDesign a home in minutes. Then make it yours forever.