Powering a fast-growing homebuilder with headless
Davidson Homes
Headless, Sanity
6 months
Overview
Davidson Homes is an established homebuilder in the southeastern USA, constructing high-quality homes with unparalleled levels of customization since 2009. Even as their communities now span 5 states, they remain committed to delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Deliverables
Headless
Sanity CMS
Community search
Floor plan search
Property feed integration
Interactive community plans
Recognition
Impact
+0%
Average dwell time
+0%
Average session duration
-0%
Average load time
Project background
We first helped Davidson relaunch their website with a look and feel that better reflected their scale and ambitions. As their business expanded across multiple states, their needs evolved significantly, and together we recognized that a new approach and a more powerful backend were necessary to manage growing data demands. We determined that this required not only a new platform but also a headless architecture – decoupling the CMS from the frontend to maximize performance and efficiently handle the large volume of data they needed to process.
Sanity: optimized data management
The backend infrastructure had to be robust enough to integrate seamlessly with multiple listing services (MLS) and handle all the data flowing in and out. We chose a Sanity CMS backend because it excels at managing complex relationships. Using Sanity allowed us to create a custom data structure, enabling the site to process data more quickly. Building this in a headless environment also helped to enhance performance.
Features
MLS integration
The property data on the website is powered by a variety of custom APIs from different MLSs across the five states where Davidson operates.
Interactive community maps
Interactive community maps enable buyers to explore specific lots, linked to detailed overviews of the available floor plans.
Mortgage calculators
A user-friendly mortgage calculator was added to every available home and community, allowing users to get an estimate of their monthly payments.
Enhanced performance
The headless architecture combined with the Sanity CMS has led to significant improvements in the site’s speed and performance. The previous site was constantly running property imports, which due to the setup was impacting the frontend. Decoupling this from the frontend has enabled us to greatly improve the speed and efficiency of the site. In addition, all states, regions and communities are now split into different post types, allowing for a much faster and easier content editing experience.
Robust search functionality
The site features advanced search functionality that allows users to search by address, city, state or specific community, with the option to filter by multiple criteria. The React.js frontend prefetches data from the backend and serves it via API, providing the user with a smooth and seamless search experience.
Scalable development
The project was completed over a series of agile product sprints, working directly with the client to plan each sprint backlog and prioritize feature development across multiple releases, including alpha, beta, and live versions. This approach allowed for scalability in the platform to accommodate the ongoing growth of the business.
“The final product and the results that we’ve seen… we would never have been able to achieve that without you guys.”
Let’s build something amazing together!
