What does a development website need to sell? A checklist for property developers

Buyers of new-build apartments often find a development through a property portal or a search engine, but they decide whether to call the sales office on the development's own website. That is where they compare units, check prices, the neighbourhood and the finish standard. If something is missing, or the site is slow on a phone, they go back to the results and look at the competition.

Below are eight things a development website needs if it is meant to sell, not just exist. At the end we collect them into a short checklist you can run against your own site in fifteen minutes.

1. An apartment search that shows what is available, right away

The list of units is usually the most important part of a development website. Buyers want to see within seconds which apartments are available, on which floor and at what price.

A good apartment search combines up to three views:

• the building: click a floor or a unit and see its status at once,
• floor and unit plans: a 2D plan is the minimum; interactive 3D helps buyers understand the layout,
• a table with filters: size, number of rooms, floor, price, status and, with several buildings, the building.

Not every development needs all three. For a single tenement house with a few dozen units, a clear table with filters is often enough. For an estate of several buildings, an interactive building view saves buyers a lot of scrolling.

What matters most, though, is up-to-date statuses. An apartment shown as available that was reserved a week ago costs you the buyer's trust and your adviser's time. Prices and statuses should be changed by the sales team, in an admin panel, without a developer. Ideally in one place that also feeds portal listings and the CRM, so a single change reaches everywhere.

2. A unit page with the price and its history

Every unit needs its own page: the floor plan, total area with a room-by-room breakdown, floor, orientation, balcony, terrace or garden, price per square metre and in total, the price of a parking space or storage room, a downloadable PDF plan and a button to enquire about that specific unit.

In Poland, showing the price is no longer just a sales decision. An amendment to the Polish developer act of 21 May 2025 (Journal of Laws 2025, item 758) added Article 19a, which requires a developer to publish on its own website, among other things, the price per square metre and the price of each unit on offer, the prices of ancillary spaces such as parking and storage, and any other payments the buyer must make. When a price changes, the website must show the new price with the date of the change and keep the earlier ones. We cover the details in a separate article: Housing price transparency: what a developer's website must show.

For the website itself, the takeaway is simple: the price history should be recorded automatically every time a price is changed in the admin panel, not depend on someone remembering to add a row by hand.

Two examples from our work. In the unit table on the Skałeczna 1/3/5/7 website, the promotional price sits next to the regular one. On the Agnieszki 9 website, every unit shows its price per square metre, its status and an "ask for details" button.

3. A location described from a resident's point of view

A map with a pin is not enough. Buyers want to know how far it is to the tram, the school, the shop and the park, and what the area is like day to day. Specific distances or walking times, a map with marked places and real photos of the neighbourhood, not only renderings, all help.

The location is a sales argument, not just an address. On the Skałeczna website, separate Location and Potential sections present Kazimierz and its closeness to the Old Town and Wawel Castle. On the Agnieszki 9 website, photos and a short description show Stradom and the view of Wawel.

4. Visualisations and the finish standard

Until the building is finished, visualisations are the only way to show what an apartment will look like. Plan for several kinds: the building from outside, interiors, views from the upper floors and the layout of specific units.

Interactive 3D made from a floor plan lets buyers "walk into" an apartment and see where a dining table or a bed will fit. It is especially useful for units that are still under renovation or have not yet been divided. We make this kind of visualisation as part of our 3D visualisation service.

Describe the finish standard separately: what is included in the price, which materials are used, whether there are finishing packages. On the Skałeczna website, the finish standard goes together with a client area, where the developer keeps buyers informed about documents and formalities.

5. An enquiry form and fast contact

Keep the form short: name, phone or email, the unit in question (filled in automatically when the buyer comes from a unit page), a preferred time to call and the required consents. Every extra field is a reason to close the page.

Next to the form, show a phone number that can be tapped on a phone, and the sales office address. The enquiry must reach the right person immediately: in the CRM or in an adviser's inbox with a notification. Spam protection should not get in people's way, so hidden checks work better than an annoying captcha.

6. Speed on phones

Check in your analytics how many visits come from phones. For many developments it is most of the traffic, often over mobile data. A site that runs smoothly on an office computer can take many seconds to load on a phone on the tram.

Google measures this with its Core Web Vitals. Among other things, it considers it good when the largest element of the page appears within 2.5 seconds (LCP) and the page responds to a tap within 200 milliseconds (INP). In practice, what helps is images in modern formats and sized for the screen, a 3D model and a map that load only when the buyer scrolls to them, and no heavy video autoplaying on arrival. You can check your score for free in PageSpeed Insights.

7. SEO basics

Buyers search for developments by name, district and type of apartment. Every page needs its own title and description, one main heading and content that answers buyers' questions. The development's name, the city and the district belong in the home page title.

Add a sitemap, Google Search Console, readable page addresses and redirects from old addresses when the site is relaunched. If you also sell to buyers from abroad, an English version with correctly marked language versions pays off. An example of a site whose copy we wrote with search in mind from the start is ICON Development.

8. Analytics with consent

Without measurement you do not know what works. Track first of all the actions that lead to a sale: submitted forms, taps on the phone number, downloaded plans and unit page views. Record where each enquiry came from, too, so you can compare portals, search and direct visits.

Analytics must respect privacy. The consent banner should offer a real choice, and analytics scripts should load only after consent. Never put personal data in analytics events: no names, phone numbers or email addresses from the form.

The checklist

What it looks like in practice

These points are not theory: we built the Skałeczna 1/3/5/7 and Agnieszki 9 development websites and the ICON Development company site around them. If you are wondering whether your next development should get its own website, read One website per development or one for the whole company?

Planning a website for a new development, or want a second opinion on your current one? See what our website service covers, or get in touch and we will reply with a few questions about your project.