Stamford Homes Case Study
National house-building business builds location finder for customers using Virtual Earth
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READING, UK — 10 May 2007 — "Our sales staff were particularly impressed by the flexibility and speed of navigation offered by Virtual Earth. Crucially all recently constructed roads were present in the location finder allowing us to get the right customer to the right property,” Peter Bond, regional sales and marketing director for Stamford Homes.
Galliford Try, one of the UK's leading specialists in the construction and house-building industries recently deployed Virtual Earth across four of its regional property websites, including Peterborough-based Stamford Homes. Stamford Homes’ product mix is broad, from two-bedroom coach houses through to five-bedroom town houses, upside down living and individual architect-designed homes.
Business Needs
According to Stamford Homes' regional sales and marketing director, Peter Bond, at least 20 per cent of the company's sales leads come from the website. When Bond told his sales team Stamford Homes would be carrying out a radical overhaul of its website with the deployment of Virtual Earth and the implementation of location finder, the message was received with some trepidation.
Any property professional knows the three key factors behind most property sales are “location, location, location”. With many of the company's new homes located on new roads a chief concern from the sales staff was whether Virtual Earth's online mapping technology would be sufficiently up to date to accommodate brand new road systems.
Solution
Galliford Try took the bold decision to deploy a location finder using Virtual Earth across all its regional websites in September 2006, including Peterborough-based Stamford Homes. The implementation was co-managed by Microsoft certified partner, Active Web Solutions (AWS), and the websites went live at the beginning of March 2007.
Benefits
However when presented to the sales staff as part of pre-launch preparations, it was Virtual Earth's mapping capabilities that were the most enthusiastically received, according to Bond. Though too early to give quantifiable statistics, Bond says the site is now bringing in nearly 200 quality sales leads per month across the region. In some cases property hunters are using the website to actually reserve properties.
Customer Profile
Customer: Stamford Homes
Website: www.stamford-homes.co.uk
Country or Region: UK
Industry: Property
Stamford Homes forms a part of the Galliford Try Plc Group of Companies. Founded in the late 1950s Stamford Homes has grown into one of the UK’s leading regional house-builders, operating throughout the East & North East regions of the UK.
