The research
Over the past two weeks we ran four research tracks in parallel: a competitive scan of the home-design-software category, an SEO audit of our own site, a conversion review of the funnel from landing page to first design, and an audit of the app itself — what a stranger actually experiences the first time they open it.
Read separately, none of the four told a decisive story. Read together, they pointed at the same thing.
The insight
Every competitor we looked at gates the actual design tool behind an account, a waitlist, an email capture, or a “book a demo” call. Some let you look at renders. Some let you play with a toy configurator. None of them let a stranger open a real 3D editor, place walls, add a room, and see a floor plan take shape — before asking for anything.
We already do that. app.buildmy.house has been an ungated, fully working
3D house editor this whole time, and the homepage wasn’t saying so. It was
talking about “vision” and “collaboration” in the abstract, the same
category-generic language every competitor uses, while sitting on the one
differentiator none of them can copy without giving up their lead-capture
model.
The decision
The homepage leads with “no download, no signup” — open the editor, start designing, right now. Not as a footnote under a hero image, as the actual headline. Everything else on the page (feature list, testimonials, pricing) moves below that single claim.
The tension I’m not resolving here
Leading with “just try it” only works if trying it is good. The app audit that fed this decision also surfaced real first-run problems — an empty 3D backdrop, a properties panel with nothing in it until you’ve placed something, a “Sign Up to Save” prompt that interrupts before a visitor has had a chance to want to save anything. Shipping the new homepage copy ahead of fixing those would be false advertising against ourselves. The homepage rewrite and the app’s first-run experience have to ship together, not sequentially — I’m holding both open until they can land as one release.