Houzz sought on Feb. 5 to deepen its connections with nearly 350,000 professional remodelers, service firms, architects, and designers by introducing a free website design and publishing tool that automatically pulls in all the photos and data they already have posted to the Houzz website.
What's created with the Site Designer service can be posted on Houzz.com as well as serve as the pro's official business website on its own domain. The site's output also adjusts automatically to the size of the screen it's viewed on, keeping the site attractive on smartphones and tablets as well as computers.
Users can choose a basic design from one of five templates that begins with four core pages: Home, Projects, About, and Contact. The tool then populates the new site with content from the pro's profile on Houzz, including project photos, client reviews, Best of Houzz awards, and the company's business description. Users also can choose which photos and content they want to feature out of all that they've posted to Houzz, added Liza Hausman, Houzz vice president of community and marketing, in an interview with REMODELING.
According to Houzz, the site gets 16 million unique visitors per month, 90% of them homeowners. Hausman said just under 350,000 pros have active accounts.
The Feb. 5 announcement comes just over a year after Houzz launched a service call Pro+. Its biggest feature is the right to buy a place on the first page of results whenever a homeowner clicks the “Find Local Pros” tab and then narrows the search to find pros in subgroups such as general contractors, design/build firms, architects, or kitchen designers. Houzz lists 20 pros on each results page. Under Houzz Pro+, 10 of those spots will be reserved for companies that buy the service.
