Case Study: Gary McDonald Homes

About Gary McDonald Homes

Gary McDonald Homes is a premium home builder specializing in building choice properties in unparalleled residential communities. They are known for building some of the most prestigious and highly prized real estate in all of Fresno and Clovis.

The Problem

Gary McDonald Homes and communities convey excellence in craftsmanship, luxury, and enduring investment value. The problem was that their website did not convey any of these facets of the company. It suffered from a very outdated content management system, disorganized content, confusing navigation, and inconsistent design themes. It also had outdated technology like Adobe Flash elements and a non-mobile-friendly theme making it difficult to view on mobile devices.

The Solution

A complete design overhaul and foundation restructuring was necessary with this project. Xobee met with Gary McDonald Homes’ President Steve Hertel and his partners to discuss the new look and feel of the website. It needed to convey the quality and class that their homes do, so naturally we used large format photographs of their beautiful homes as centerpieces of the website design. We also evaluated how the communities, plans, and other website content were previously displayed in order to identify key pain points for the user experience. We then established a new navigation and page structure guideline that all pages would follow.

The old content management system was scrapped and we built the new theme on the WordPress Content Management System. Using WordPress’ built-in blog functionality, we created a feature allowing staff to upload ready-to-sell homes in the Current Listings section. We also converted PDF documents that were used for potential homebuyers and created easy-to-use web interfaces of these forms, simplifying the home buying process for their clients.

When your customers are often traveling to your welcome centers to tour your homes and communities, it’s important that your website is accessible on a mobile device. We developed the new theme to support a mobile responsive design, resulting in the website adapting to mobile devices on a phone and tablet friendly format.

Technology and services provided

WordPress CMS

The industry-leading WordPress Content Management System (CMS), featuring powerful and easy-to-use tools to maintain your website. WordPress is free and open source!

Responsive Mobile Design

A web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience — easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling — across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).

Website Hosting

Xobee website hosting service using hardware in a local managed datacenter featuring 24-hour surveillance, battery backup, fire suppression, nightly backups and on-site tech support.

Client Testimonial

Visit Gary McDonald Homes at garymcdonaldhomes.com

Call Us Today!