Case Study – Engaging 3D Configurator for Growing Real Estate Company

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T&CH is the most popular house constructor in Germany & Austria with over 350 franchise partners. 

Since 1997, the company has built 37,000 houses with a revenue of around 960 mln. euro in sales. The more than 40 different house types can be used thanks to the standardized Modular construction built in several hundred variants and according to the individual customer requirements.

Goals to achieve

The company’s goal was to improve the house customization process, which would lead to growing conversion, so the purposes were connected strictly to enhancing the sales process and simplifying house customization to be intuitive and engaging.

Although purchasing a house is often the most significant investment in real estate customers’ lives, T&CH clients often need clarification about the actual look of their future homes. While, in the past, rendering was used to solve this problem, even the finest renders cannot accurately represent the scale of the building, the arrangements of the rooms, or the general impression and feel of the estate, all of which have been determined to be the main factors influencing the sense of security that clients feel when buying a house. 

Hence, it has become our priority to improve B2C relations by enabling potential buyers to view real estate properties more realistically.

Our collaboration

From the beginning, it had been evident that for T&CH’s project to be executed, selecting an appropriate contractor would be crucial. This selection was dependent on two primary criteria. 

Firstly, a fitting company must have broad experience in 3D graphics, particularly in the configuration area. 

Secondly, developers would have to be able to create a user-friendly app to the highest degree due to a broad spectrum of potential clients/users. These criteria were met by our company – Prographers. Then, we created a demo of a house configurator for T&CH, which proved to be of astounding quality. Moreover, we made it in a way that allowed for introducing several innovative applications in terms of functionality and graphics optimization. 

The solution 

Based on the data relating to the availability of VR for individual clients, it is known that most potential customers will not have their own Oculus headsets during the first stage of the purchasing process. Thus, it can be assumed that such a stage, that is, the first configuration of the house, would occur with the use of equipment that all of us have – a computer or a smartphone. Following that, the client can visit a real estate agency and engage in a VR configuration experience of their dream house that they have previously configured. 

Users’ journey steps

Web App

In this step, the configuration of the dream house is performed, which consists of:

• choosing a type of house
• configuring it – facade/roof type/windows/house plan and others
• sending the whole configuration to the salesman

Augmented Reality App

Placing the configured house, thanks to AR, at a building plot is the next step of the journey. This is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in reality are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information.

Virtual Reality App

After personalization and placing the house using AR, clients can confirm the setting and other details and skip to finalizing the purchase. On every journey step, salesman assistance is provided, from joining clients’ sessions and helping with configuration to buying a property so they feel secure and cared for.

Achievements

This solution has led to many benefits and positive changes in T&CH. For instance, a drastic increase was noticed in the conversion of T&CH’s clients from online users of the company’s website into individuals actually visiting the physical office and enthusiastically using the VR configurator. Also another benefit of our app is its integration with the seller’s computer/tablet, which allows users to configure and receive help and guidance in the VR environment at all times. Finally, since clients come into the office with an already configured house, the remainder of the customer service occurs more efficiently, which, in turn, allows for the ability to attend to a more significant number of clients simultaneously. Consequently, due to the improvements mentioned above, an augmentation in the number of individuals deciding to purchase has also been observed.

Nevertheless, none of those benefits accurately depict the most quintessential matter in our work – that is, the client’s emotional engagement in our product. After the introduction of the missing element that was VR house tours, real estate agencies’ clients leave their virtual homes with a vision that they could never before have achieved via traditional media (e.g., 3D rendering). We believe that giving people the opportunity to not only see but also to walk through their dream homes and make as many changes to them as they wish before committing to spending large sums of money on an estate property is of immeasurable value. 

Results in numbers

As the T&CH company said, the conversion process on the webpage has increased from online to real-life users by 22%.

The above data shows that developing such an innovative solution to the real estate business is vital to boosting interest and increasing lead generation. Visit our projects’ page to learn more about T&CH 3D Configurator.

Note that many more sectors can also benefit from such a solution, and if you’re interested in investing in your business’s future, please contact us and discuss a personalized offer.