A Resort Community Website That Gives Buyers the Tour: The Shores of South Padre Island

Most home searches now start on a screen. The National Association of Realtors' 2022 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that the first step for 47 percent of recent buyers was to look online at properties for sale, well ahead of the 18 percent who started by contacting an agent. Buyers in the survey looked at a median of five homes, and four of those they saw only online.

A resort community depends on that first online look even more than a neighborhood in town. Someone shopping for a lot or a beach house on South Padre Island may live hours away, so the website has to show them the beach, the layout of the community, and what's for sale before they ever drive across the causeway.

The Shores of South Padre Island is a 240-acre master-planned resort community on the north end of the city of South Padre Island, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna Madre. It was developed by Franke Realty, which has served South Padre Island's real estate and vacation rental market for more than six decades. The Shores' new website launched this month, with a design that matches Franke Realty's own site so the developer and the community read as one family.

A homepage that opens on the beach

The homepage leads with a photo taken from the sand, looking up past the dunes at a row of traditional seaside homes with deep porches and white roofs. Over it sits the line "A Premiere Residential Resort Development" and one button, View Properties. A visitor sees what the community looks like before reading a word about it.

The logo sits in a white badge at the center of a navy bar, with the menu split on either side of it: Home, Available Properties, Rentals, and About to the left, and Photo Gallery, Contact, and the sales office phone number to the right. Below the hero, the pages switch to a warm cream background with headings in an italic serif, colors taken from the sand and the shoreline. The footer is set on a photo of sand scattered with shells and starfish, beside a short history of Franke Realty and its phone numbers. The site was also refreshed with new photography of the homes, the beach, and the amenities.

A painted map buyers can tour

The first section below the welcome message is a hand-painted watercolor map of The Shores, showing the bay islands, the marina, the street grid, and the beachfront along the Gulf. A heading over the painting reads "Take a Tour of The Shores," with a button to the interactive map.

The interactive map is one of our favorite features of the new site. It shows the properties available within The Shores right on the map and brings in available MLS listings, the shared listing database real estate agents use, so a visitor can see each opportunity in its place in the community. For a lot or a house in a beach community, location within the development matters as much as size. A buyer weighing a beachfront home against a lot on the bay side wants to see where each one sits, and a map answers that question faster than a list can.

Three ways into the community

Right below the map, three large photo cards split the audience. Available Properties is for buyers looking for a lot or a home. Vacation Rentals is for visitors planning a getaway, and it links to the Franke Realty rental listings for homes at The Shores. Marina Boat Slips is for owners who want a slip along the Marina Boardwalk, with easy access to the Laguna Madre for boating and fishing.

Putting the three side by side lets each visitor choose their path in one tap, and it shows how the parts of the community connect. A family who rents a house for a week this summer can see that the same community has lots for sale and slips for their boat.

The site is fully responsive, so it adapts to every screen size. On a phone, the menu folds into a button on the left of the logo, a phone icon on the right calls the sales office with one tap, and the cards stack into a single column. With the NAR survey finding that buyers did 60 percent of their online searching on a mobile device, the phone version is the one many prospective buyers will see first.

A lifestyle as well as a lot

Further down, the homepage sells the life that comes with the address. A section titled "A 240 Acre Premier Waterfront Residential Resort Development" describes the traditional seaside homes, promenades, parks, shops, cafes, marina, and equestrian center designed around the beaches, wildflowers, and dunes, and it mentions boating, horseback riding, swimming, and bike riding as ways to fill a day. Then a wide photo of the resort pool introduces the community's amenities, and a closing invitation, "Reserve your own place in this uniquely upscale resort community," leads to the contact page.

The homepage ends with a collage of aerial photos over the homes, the bay, and the pools, and each one links to the Photo Gallery, which collects the rest of the new photography. For a buyer who can't visit yet, every photo answers part of the question they're really asking, which is what it would be like to live there.

What other resort and real estate developments can take from this site

Most buyers will meet a development online long before they visit, and the website has to work as the first tour. The Shores' site does that with photography of the real place, a map that shows how the community fits together, and listings shown where they sit on that map. A developer with lots, homes, rentals, and amenities to sell has a lot to explain, and laying it out visually saves a buyer from piecing it together from a list.

It also helps to give each kind of visitor a clear way in. Buyers, vacationers, and boat owners all arrive at the same homepage, and three cards send each of them in the right direction while showing how one community serves all three. Pair that with a design that carries the developer's own look, and the website does double duty as a sales tool for the community and an introduction to the company behind it.

The Shores of South Padre Island's website is live at theshoresspi.com. Built by MPC Studios.

Working on a website for a real estate development or resort community? Let's talk.