Launch week. The ads are live, the enquiry notifications keep coming and the sales suite is buzzing. Two days later, when someone finally works through the list, many of the numbers ring out and the people who do pick up have already booked a viewing somewhere else. That's rarely an advertising problem. It's everything that happens after the ad: a page that can't explain the home, a slow reply, a sales team that doesn't know who wanted what.
This guide is for developers selling new homes and for estate agents handling resales. It covers development microsites, plot and floor plan pages, virtual tours and CGIs, portals such as Rightmove, Zoopla, Property Finder and Bayut, lead response and CRM, the special rules for housing ads on Google and Meta, and marketing to buyers overseas.
The development microsite: not a brochure with a URL
Plenty of development sites are the printed brochure moved online: a full-screen CGI, a couple of slogans and a form. Buyers don't decide there. They look for answers. Where exactly is it, how far is the station, when will it complete, which house types are left, how does reserving work? If the site can't answer, they either leave the form half-filled or open a competitor's site in the next tab.
A development site that sells usually has:
- An overview: location down to the street, number of homes, house types, shared spaces and the developer's completed schemes.
- Location and area: a map, realistic walking and driving times to stations, schools, GPs and shops. ‘Minutes from the city’ tells nobody anything.
- House types and floor plans, each with its own page (more on that below).
- Build progress and timeline: monthly photo or video updates and an honest estimated completion window.
- How buying works: reservation, exchange, completion, mortgage options and any schemes you take part in.
- An FAQ on service charges, parking, management company, warranty and the snagging process.
- Contact routes: phone, WhatsApp, sales suite address and opening hours, and a viewing request form.
Separate domain or a section of the main site? For most developers, the second. A folder such as /developments/scheme-name on the company site keeps the search authority you've built and stops the page losing its value the day the last plot sells. If you want a short, memorable domain for the launch, point it at that folder.
Speed matters more than designers like to admit. CGIs and drone footage make pages heavy, and a development site that crawls on a phone wastes part of every click you pay for. Compress images in modern formats, load video only when someone presses play, and check Core Web Vitals before launch rather than after.
Plot and floor plan pages buyers actually use
People buy a home, not a development. Every house type, and ideally every plot, deserves its own page. A single page with twelve floor plans as PDFs tells neither Google nor the buyer very much.
| Field | Why it matters | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Size in sq ft and m² | Buyers compare on it | Say how it's measured and keep it consistent across the site and brochure |
| Rooms and layout | Decides between two and three bedrooms | Give room dimensions as text, not only inside an image |
| Tenure and charges | Freehold or leasehold changes the whole decision | Show lease length, ground rent and service charge clearly where they apply |
| Floor, aspect and view | Separates otherwise identical homes | Say so if a view photo wasn't taken from that floor |
| Availability | Available, reserved or sold | Connect it to your sales system and never show a sold plot as available |
| Images | The emotional decision happens here | Label CGIs, show home photos and virtually staged rooms |
| Energy rating | Running costs and lender interest | Show the EPC or predicted rating where available |
Labelling images is not a formality. The ASA treats images in property ads as claims, and a CGI of a landscaped courtyard that never gets built, or a virtually furnished living room presented as a photo, can mislead. A short caption such as ‘computer-generated image, for illustration’ or ‘virtually staged’ costs nothing in conversion and protects you later.
Don't offer floor plans only as PDFs. Put the room list, dimensions and a short description on the page as text, with the PDF as a download. Search engines can read it, and buyers don't have to pinch and zoom on a train.
Virtual tours, CGIs and video
Off-plan, images are all the buyer has. CGIs, 3D walkthroughs and a 360-degree tour of the show home fill a real gap. Once building starts, the emphasis shifts: monthly site videos and drone footage show the scheme is moving, which is the question off-plan buyers ask most.
- A virtual tour doesn't replace basic facts. Put size, floor and availability next to it as plain text.
- Load 360-degree tours on click, not on page load, or the page will freeze on older phones.
- Subtitle your videos. People watching with the sound off, and buyers who don't speak English, both need them.
- Fly drones within the CAA's rules and respect neighbours' privacy; footage over gardens next door tends to come back as a complaint.
- Only show landscaping, amenities and views that will actually exist. Drawing a pool that never arrives is a dispute waiting to happen.
Portals and the material information rules
Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket in the UK, Property Finder and Bayut in the UAE: portals are where buyers compare. They bring volume, but they also reduce you to a row in a list and often to a price. Treat the portal as the shop window and your own site as the place where the sale is discussed. Use the listing to get attention and the description to send people to the scheme and plot pages.
In the UK, National Trading Standards' Estate and Letting Agency Team has spelled out what ‘material information’ property listings must include. Its guidance came in stages: Part A in 2022, Parts B and C from late 2023. It rests on consumer protection law, which since April 2025 sits in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
| Part | What it covers | Where it should appear |
|---|---|---|
| Part A | Core facts such as price or rent, tenure and council tax band | On the listing itself, prominently |
| Part B | Facts every property has: type, construction, rooms, utilities, heating, broadband, mobile signal, parking | In the listing, clear and easy to find |
| Part C | Issues that only affect some properties: building safety, restrictions and rights, flood or erosion risk, planning, accessibility, coalfield or mining areas | In the listing where the property is affected |
Two more UK basics: estate agents must belong to an approved redress scheme, and portals expect you to keep listings current. Leaving a sold plot live as bait is the kind of thing that turns into a complaint.
In Dubai, property ads need an advertising permit through the Dubai Land Department's Trakheesi system, and since April 2023 the permit's QR code has had to appear on ads so buyers can check the listing. Portals such as Bayut display it on the listing once you add the permit number.
Speed to lead and the CRM
This is where property marketing loses the most money. Someone who has just filled in a form is interested now; by tomorrow they've enquired about two other schemes. The gap between an adviser who calls within the hour and one who calls the next day often matters more than the gap between two ad budgets.
- Bring every source into one place: website forms, Meta lead ads, portal enquiries, WhatsApp and call tracking numbers. Every enquiry should land in the CRM automatically, not in someone's inbox.
- Route by rule: language, development, house type or region decides which adviser gets it. Out-of-hours cover should be agreed, not improvised.
- Set a first-response target and measure it. A target in minutes during opening hours is realistic; a target nobody measures is a wish.
- Capture the fields that matter: source, development and house type, budget range, how they're funding it, timescale, chain position, preferred language and channel.
- Record outcomes: no answer, information sent, viewing booked, reserved, exchanged.
That last point drives ad performance. Google Ads offline conversion imports and Meta's Conversions API can send ‘viewing booked’ or ‘reserved’ back from the CRM, so the platforms learn to find people who look like buyers rather than people who like filling in forms.
Data protection sits inside the same process. Your forms need a clear privacy notice. Under PECR, marketing emails and texts generally need consent; the soft opt-in can cover people who enquired about buying, but only for similar offers and only if you gave them a simple way to opt out at the time and in every message since. If your CRM is hosted outside the UK, check that the transfer mechanism is in place.
Housing ads on Google and Meta
Both platforms treat housing as a special category in some countries. Google bans targeting housing ads by age, gender, parental status or marital status in the US and Canada, and doesn't allow postcode targeting there. Meta requires advertisers targeting the US, Canada or certain parts of Europe to declare housing ads as a Special Ad Category, which restricts age and gender targeting and rules out postcode targeting and lookalike audiences.
If you're marketing a London scheme to buyers in Europe or North America, check which of your target countries Meta currently includes; ads that need the declaration and don't have it can be rejected. And even where no special category applies, the ad has to be honest. ‘From’ prices need a reasonable number of homes genuinely available at that price, and ‘last few remaining’ had better be true.
Developers registered with the New Homes Quality Board have a further layer. The New Homes Quality Code prohibits high-pressure selling and requires reservation agreements to include a cooling-off period of at least fourteen days, with the reservation fee refunded in full if the buyer cancels within it. Countdown timers and ‘reserve today or lose it’ messaging sit awkwardly with that, and the Code expects sales staff and agents to understand the rules.
Marketing to buyers overseas
Selling a UK development to buyers in Hong Kong, Singapore or the Gulf, or a Dubai off-plan scheme to buyers in Europe, doesn't start with running the English site through a translation tool. Buyers expect copy that reads naturally in their language, an adviser who replies in their time zone and answers to the questions they'd ask at home.
- Give each language its own URL and hreflang tags. Switch language by address, not by cookie, so search engines can index each version.
- Have native speakers write the copy, or at least read every line. Cultural differences usually matter more than vocabulary.
- Explain the buying process for foreign buyers plainly: legal representation, deposits, completion, taxes and ongoing costs.
- Pick channels the market uses. Some buyers will only answer on WhatsApp, others prefer email and a video call; let your campaign data tell you which.
- Be careful with investment language. Don't promise rental yields or capital growth you can't substantiate, and keep any figures sourced and dated.
Then check the rules where the buyer sees the ad. A campaign aimed at UK buyers for a Dubai scheme still has to meet UK advertising standards, and a campaign aimed at Germany may fall under Meta's special category rules. A short check per market is always less trouble than pulling a campaign after launch.
Where to start
- Open your development site as a buyer would and count the clicks it takes to find location, completion, house types, how to reserve and how to contact you.
- Build a text-based page for every house type and connect availability to your sales system.
- Caption every CGI, show home image and virtually staged room, and remove anything that won't be built.
- Check portal listing templates against the material information guidance, or the permit rules in Dubai.
- Connect every enquiry source to the CRM and write down routing rules and out-of-hours cover.
- Start measuring first-response time and review it with the sales team every week.
- Send viewings and reservations back to Google Ads and Meta as offline conversions.
- Tidy up privacy notices, consent records and opt-outs.
- If you sell abroad, set up language versions properly and check each target market's ad rules.
- Have your legal adviser read the campaign copy and the pre-reservation information one last time.
At AYTE Digital we build development sites, plot pages, CRM integrations and ad measurement for property clients. If you'd like a second opinion on your set-up before the next launch, get in touch.
