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We are always proud and excited when one of our clients wins an award. When it happens to be an award that involves our work on their website, we might be forgiven for wanting to brag a little more. This year, at the annual Northeast Florida Builders Association (NEFBA) awards program, Glenn Layton Homes (GLH), long-standing members of the association, won one of the coveted 2020 Laurel Awards for best local builder website, recognizing the quality of the site over the past year.

Each year NEFBA hosts an awards program called The Laurels. Typically, the event is a formal dinner banquet, but despite the virus, the show must go on, and a virtual awards ceremony was held.

The Laurels are the highest accolade given by the Northeast Florida Builders Association Sales & Marketing Council, The Custom Builders & Remodelers Council, as well as the Professional Women in Building Council. The awards celebrate achievements in the home building industry, as well as recognize those who excel in sales, merchandising, and marketing in the Northeast Florida building and real estate community.

Glenn Layton Homes has been with us for a number of years now and this is the fourth website we’ve built for them. We love working on their websites, as their quality work gives us plenty of inspiration for design and lots of stunning homes to show off. Along with creating an easily navigable site that provides a wealth of information, the final result was a Laurel Award in Category #40 for Best Website for a Local Builder.

Glenn Layton Homes has been “Building your Coastal Lifestyle” for more than 30 years throughout Jacksonville and Northeast Florida. As well as being the top custom home builder in Jacksonville Beach, they are well known as the builder of the 2013 HGTV Smart Home in Paradise Key South Beach, Jacksonville, Florida. This amazing project not only turned more people on to Glenn Layton Homes but also paved the way for smart home technology to become a greater part of any home. GLH has become a leader in the use of smart home technology and includes a number of features as standard now.

Not surprisingly a company that understands the importance of technology in homes is sure to want a website that makes browsing as seamless and appealing as the homes they build. To achieve this, we’ve worked to create a site that shows off their inspirational homes, while still making it easy to navigate throughout the site.

On the homepage, we help visitors learn more about GLH Build On Your Lot and their new Home Renovations services, while also telling the brand story of GLH through a series of full-screen panels and storyboards. Each panel on the GLH homepage completely fills the screen, both horizontally and vertically for a clean visual impact. Some of these design features are different from what we use with other clients. We always work to find the best design for each company’s needs.

Additionally, on the homepage, you’ll find video hero images, rather than the more traditional static images. This gives an additional WOW factor to the page, drawing visitors into the real feel of these homes.

For navigation, we use a combination of the traditional navigation menu along with a hamburger menu, which allows the header area of the website to remain clean and uncluttered, perfect for the light, airy, coastal feel we want to invoke.

As with all of our websites, our senior website designer and developer custom designs each version of the site. We utilize a Worpress site that includes our own custom Homebuilder Content Management System called Catalyst™. This system is designed to make the website accessible to our clients, ensuring an easy-to-use, flexible, yet robust website back-end management system that is a leader in the home building industry. Our clients are able to completely manage their own website in-house, rather than relying on a webmaster to make simple changes. This significantly streamlines the process.

Finally, we also provide SEO services and blogging services for GLH, covering a range of topics from home design descriptions to coastal decoration inspiration, even for the holidays, but always keeping it relevant to the client.

Glenn Layton Homes remains committed to creating a true coastal lifestyle in every home, complementing the surrounding nature and also giving a nod to the architectural history of the area, while also providing efficient planning to help you live more with less. They want your home to be your dream destination.

They build in Amelia Island, Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, Ponte Vedra, St. Augustine, and are a builder of choice in desirable First Coast communities. They will also build on a client’s lot and have recently added renovation to their list of offerings.

Between their attention to detail in all of their work and their close rapport with each and every client, it’s no surprise that they want the same sense of focus and inspiration in their website, and we’re happy to help them achieve that.

The Laurel Award for Best Website for a Local Builder is an exciting acknowledgment of the work that everyone involved does. In addition, we’d also like to say a big THANK YOU to Maria Chrisovergiss and the team at MC Public Relations and Marketing for their partnership on the project and their ongoing relationship with Glenn Layton Homes, providing social media marketing and public relations services.

Categorised in: Home Builder Marketing & Sales, Meredith Communications News, Website Design, Website Wednesdays