Building HBAV a better front door
HBAV’s website had stopped working for its members. Visitors left after 31 seconds, and nearly half never got past the homepage.
A new hbav.com, built from the ground up around what members come for: finding a pro, following the issues, registering for events and giving.
Live June 30, 2026, in time for HBAV’s 70th year. Built for phones and quick to load: the homepage scores 99 out of 100 for speed on a desktop.
On June 26, in a ballroom full of Virginia home builders, Christopher Kendall put a website on the big screen. It was the new hbav.com, built for the people in that room, and four days later it was live.
Thirty-one seconds
The Home Builders Association of Virginia had already decided its site needed work, and an audit showed how much. Visitors stayed 31 seconds on average, against an industry benchmark of 52 to 90. Nearly 3,700 visits a year ended on a broken page. Close to half the people who reached the homepage left without clicking anything else. And only one visit in five came from a phone, in an industry that spends its days on job sites.
Under the hood, the site appeared to have been rebuilt on top of itself two or three times, on a page builder that was heavy to begin with. It was slow, and people got lost in it.
We knew why people came
We’re HBAV’s communications team. We write the association’s news, so we knew what members were trying to do when they landed on the site. Four trips mattered most, and we built the site around them.
Finding a pro. The old Builder and Product Catalog became the HBAV Pro Directory, with builders and remodelers in one section and trade partners and suppliers in another. Visitors can filter by type, region and category, and every member profile is set up to turn up in search.
Following the issues. The new Advocacy Hub puts HBAV’s legislative priorities, General Assembly activity, code updates and regulatory resources in one place.
Getting to the next event. A bar across the top of every page lists what’s coming up, so registering is one click away from anywhere on the site.
Giving. BuildPAC and the HBAV Education Foundation each have their own page, built to make a gift quick.
Jeff wrote the copy and ran the project. Christopher designed and built the site.
Unmistakably HBAV
The new site is built for phones first, it’s fast, and it looks like HBAV on every page, in HBAV’s navy and green.
“The HBAV website is our storefront, and it’s critical that we continue to invest in this resource,” said Mike Sandkuhler, HBAV’s 2026 President. CEO Craig Toalson called it a modern tool that removes friction for members, in the office or in the field.
Still ours to look after
Launch day was the start. We host hbav.com and keep it running, and because the same team writes HBAV’s news, the site keeps up with the association’s calendar: the Builders Summit, the day at the General Assembly and everything between.
We keep it fast, too. Images go up at the size they're actually shown, the donation tools load only on the pages that take donations, and the busiest pages come straight from the cache. On a phone, the main image on the site's busiest pages shows up in about four seconds. On a desktop, the homepage scores 99 out of 100 on Google's Lighthouse speed test.
A website is never really finished, and that's the point of keeping it with the people who built it.