Platinum Homes. Laying the foundations for a better customer journey
Experiencing a period of protracted growth, Platinum Homes needed digital tools they could rely upon to raise awareness, channel enquiry and help their team manage client relations throughout the building process. As a result, they partnered with Imagic to implement a complete digital overhaul and brand refresh under the constraint of a tight timeframe.
The challenge - react fast, support growth
After nearly twenty years of building kiwi homes, Platinum Homes had a new CEO with a fresh vision for navigating the company through significant growth. The head office team was expanding and attracting experienced talent, resulting in a maturing organisation. The digital toolset had to match this maturation.
“Ours is a fast paced business, and there was a tight frame for this project. So, we needed to partner with a company who had the level of knowledge and leadership to pick this project up and drive it, and execute it to the level required.” - Rachel, Marketing Manger, Platinum Homes
At the heart of this project was the development of a new website to build credibility and act as a primary sales tool for a national network of franchisees. The aim was to weave a personal journey into the user experience. To make the website customer-centric with simple and intuitive user-group-focused pathways, delivered through an interface designed to promote a premium experience and deliver a high-end-product.
“It was in the initial discovery and planning sessions that we realised there was a strong brand position to be developed here, one that we could defend. One that would give us unique strategic planning opportunities. Identifying this position was 100% a collaborative effort.” Paul, Account Director, Imagic
The solution - build user-group focused customer journeys
Platinum Homes’ new brand is built around the foundational idea that their homes are built around their clients. Their home designs are flexible enough to create spaces in their homes that reflect customers’ lifestyles, and so that became the focus of the website’s user journey; developing pathways built around what each user group cared about most with regard to their new home experience.
"Website user journeys flow across multiple content areas, delivering the information and ensuring customers are able to navigate key tasks, like filtering house plans, creating wish lists, and locating their local Platinum Homes team, with minimal fuss.” Ian, Creative Lead, Imagic
After crafting a strategy document, the information architecture was rethought and structured around content living in three core areas. This strategy enabled easy access to a large amount of information through a simplified navigation system. It also allowed a diverse group of users with different motivations and questions to cut through a lot of information in a way that felt engaging and simple.
The implementation - tight timeframe, tighter communication
“There were over 300 pages of content to be created for launch, and we also have 14 regional franchisees, so there was a lot of individual team-focused content needed to launch in the first phase. I needed a partner who was going to be on top of the communication aspect from the get go.” — Rachel, Marketing Manger, Platinum Homes
Early on, there was an ambitious call to avoid patching and polishing the current website, opting to go for a total reimagining of the platform.
Huge improvements were made to the functionality of the website. This included an upgraded local team search function, a wish list function to reduce time spent doing return searches for plans, and updates to how customers explored plans and inspiration areas.
"Some exciting things are actually happening in the backend. We have built an integration which allows franchisees to manage their TradeMe listings from the website. We are also giving the client the ability to create custom pages with unique layouts. They can create up to 560 pages with unique layouts with no dev time required!” - Marina, Developer, Imagic
Another fundamental change was delivering an impressive ‘look and feel’ that matched the build quality achieved by working with Platinum Homes. Again, this was a critical need to protect brand equity, as the company continues to grow in a very competitive market.
The outcomes - rave reviews, easy to use
“From the outset we’ve felt nothing but synergy with this partnership. Imagic has been at the table for high level decision-making and we’ve built a strong bridge of trust between both teams during this time.” Brigitte, General Manager, Imagic
This was a complete website rebuild needing buy-in from a broad stakeholder group and delivered in a very short timeframe. This is a website that customers and franchisees frequently comment on as being easy to use and having a high-end look and feel.
