Sector(s)

Team Members

sharonho, arpitk, tijanam, goska_m, lucio.p

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Organizations Involved

About the project

Project Overview

The Hill Group website is the official digital destination for one of the UK’s leading award-winning housebuilders, designed to inspire, inform, and guide prospective buyers through the journey of finding a new home.

While property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla provide broad market listings, the Hill platform focuses on the immersive "pre-reservation" phase—helping users explore high-quality developments, understand complex financial schemes like Own New, and navigate the specific lifestyle benefits of living in a Hill-built community across its primary site and flagship microsites.

What the Website Does

The platform functions as a high-conversion sales and information hub for homebuyers, investors, and local government partners.

  • Acts as the primary portal for one of the UK’s leading housebuilders, showcasing a premium portfolio of residential developments.
  • Provides dedicated, high-performance websites for five flagship developments (Lampton Parkside, Marleigh, Kew Bridge Rise, North Gate Park, and Dagenham Green) while maintaining a central brand identity.
  • Features a bidirectional sync with the UK’s largest property portals to ensure absolute accuracy in plot availability and pricing.
  • Moves users from initial discovery to digital contract signing using integrated financial tools and professional CRM workflows.

Key Numbers

  • 5 Flagship Microsites: Including Lampton Parkside, Marleigh, Kew Bridge Rise, North Gate Park, and Dagenham Green.
  • 2,500+ Homes per Year: The scale of delivery supported by the digital platform across London and the South East.
  • 3-Way Portal Sync: Real-time, automated integration with Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket.
  • 1 Unified Sales Pipeline: Fully integrated with Unlatch CRM for digital reservations and lead management.
  • Interactive Financial Tools: Real-time mortgage and Own New calculators embedded across all developments.
  • Multichannel Content: Managing Corporate, Editorial (Created for Living), and Sales content through a single administrative interface.

How It Was Built

1. Multisite Architecture & Content Sync

Built on an enterprise Drupal framework that manages five flagship microsites from a single codebase. A custom sync engine allows the central team to push "Single Source of Truth" content (like legal disclaimers and ESG policies) across the entire network instantly.

2. Global Single Sign-on (SSO)

The platform features a Global SSO integration between the main Hill Group site and all five microsites. This allows users to move between the corporate site and development-specific sites without needing to re-authenticate, ensuring a unified "customer account" experience.

3. 3-Way Property Portal Integration

The site features a sophisticated XML/API data feed. When a plot's status changes to "Reserved" or "Sold" on the Hill website, the update is pushed automatically to Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket. This ensures 100% data integrity across the web and eliminates manual data entry for the marketing team.

4. End-to-End Sales Integration (Unlatch CRM)

The digital sales journey is fully automated through a deep integration with Unlatch. Every lead captured via "Book a Viewing" or "Enquire" forms is injected directly into the Unlatch dashboard. This integration allows Hill to manage the entire lifecycle of a sale—from initial enquiry to digital contract signing and reservation—within a single, professional CRM workflow.

5. Financial Intelligence & Mortgage Tools

The site features an integrated Mortgage Calculator and support for the Own New scheme. These interactive tools allow prospective buyers to model affordability based on current interest rates and specialized incentive schemes directly on individual plot pages. By providing this transparency early in the journey, the platform generates "warmer," more qualified leads for the sales team.

6. "Created for Living" Editorial Hub

A dedicated lifestyle and blog section, "Created for Living," acts as a content marketing engine. It hosts rich media, interior design trends, and community stories. This section is designed to improve SEO and keep users engaged beyond the functional property search, building an emotional connection with the Hill brand.

7. Corporate & Social Value Archive

The Corporate area of the site serves as a professional hub for partners, land-owners, and stakeholders. It hosts technical reports, sustainability targets, and social value metrics. This section is built to handle heavy document management, allowing users to access Hill's latest annual reports and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) commitments.

Smart Features That Make It Work

Dynamic Content Sync

The platform intelligently manages content across a primary site and five flagship microsites. When the central team updates a legal disclaimer or a group-wide sustainability policy, the change is instantly reflected across all child sites. This ensures that every development, from Marleigh to Dagenham Green, remains 100% compliant and brand-consistent without manual intervention.

Cross-Domain User Sessions (SSO)

Because of the SSO integration, a user's preferences, saved plots, and contact details follow them as they browse from the main site to a microsite like Marleigh, creating a personalized, high-end "concierge" feel.

Real-Time Portal Tracking

The site is constantly communicating with Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket. When a plot is marked as "Reserved" on the website, that status is pushed to the major property portals automatically. This ensures prospective buyers never waste time on unavailable properties and keeps the sales data accurate across the entire web.

Interactive Affordability Modeling

Buyers can use integrated Mortgage Calculators and Own New eligibility tools directly on plot pages. The site takes the specific price of a home and allows users to model monthly repayments in real-time, helping them understand their financial position before they even book a viewing.

Seamless Sales Progression

Interested buyers don't have to wait for office hours to start their journey. Through a deep integration with Unlatch, users can go from a web enquiry to a digital reservation and contract signing within a single, secure workflow. This reduces the friction of traditional paperwork and speeds up the "Exchange of Contracts" phase.

A high-performance search engine allows visitors to filter properties by region, price bracket, number of bedrooms, and specific buying schemes (like Shared Ownership). This makes it easy for users to find their ideal home across Hill’s wide geographical footprint, whether they are looking for urban London apartments or rural Cambridge houses.

Security and Reliability

  • Lead Data Integrity: Every enquiry is securely injected directly into the Unlatch CRM, ensuring personal data is handled according to strict GDPR standards and never lost in email inboxes.
  • Encrypted Digital Reservations: The reservation process is fully encrypted, allowing users to safely sign legal documents and manage their plot purchase through a secure, private digital portal.

The Result

The Hill Group has a modern, high-performance multisite platform that:

  • Removes user friction by utilizing SSO to create a single, continuous journey between the corporate brand and local developments.
  • Maximizes Market Reach by maintaining a perfect, automated presence on Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket.
  • Drives sales efficiency with a seamless, search-led journey from initial plot discovery to digital reservation.
  • Ensures total brand consistency across five flagship development microsites, managing them all from a single, unified dashboard.
  • Automates inventory management through real-time synchronization with major property portals, ensuring 100% data accuracy for users.
  • Injects lead data directly into the CRM, eliminating manual entry for the sales team and speeding up response times for prospective buyers.
  • Empowers buyers with financial transparency, allowing them to model affordability and incentives like Own New instantly.

Why Drupal was chosen

  • Sophisticated Multisite Support — The platform needed to power a primary corporate site while simultaneously managing five unique, high-profile flagship microsites. Drupal’s multisite architecture was the only enterprise-grade solution capable of syncing "Single Source of Truth" content across multiple domains with ease.
  • Enterprise Multisite Support — Drupal allows Hill to scale. As new flagship developments launch, the team can deploy new microsites that instantly inherit the SSO, CRM, and Portal Sync functionality.
  • Advanced SSO & Identity Management — Drupal’s ability to handle complex Single Sign-On (SSO) protocols was critical for maintaining a unified user session across multiple independent domains.
  • Deep Integration Capabilities — Hill’s digital ecosystem relies on several complex third-party tools. Drupal provided the robust framework required to build high-performance integrations with Unlatch CRM, Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket, as well as real-time financial calculators.
  • Content Control at Scale — With multiple editors across corporate, marketing, and local sales teams, it was essential to have granular control over permissions. Drupal’s workflow and role-based access ensure that the right teams can update local development news without affecting global corporate data.
  • Security and Compliance — As a major developer handling significant financial transactions and private customer data, security was paramount. Drupal meets the rigorous enterprise security standards required for managing digital reservations and sensitive buyer information.
  • Performance and SEO — To rank in the highly competitive property market, the site needed to be fast and indexable. Drupal’s built-in caching and modular content structure ensure that high-resolution galleries and interactive maps load instantly, providing a premium experience that supports Hill’s market-leading position.
Hill website homepage featuring a modern living room and kitchen interior, with the headline ‘Created for Living’ and a property search bar for finding homes by location or postcode.

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen
  • Geofield + Leaflet - Powers the donation checkout, payment processing, and order management
  • Matterport embed - Integrates 3D virtual walkthroughs and property tours.
  • Paragraphs - Provides the modular system for building flexible page layouts
  • Media library - Centralizes management for images, videos, and property documents.
  • Content moderation - Manages the approval workflow for corporate and legal content.
  • metatag - Controls SEO and social media sharing metadata across all sites.
  • Svg image - Ensures technical site plans and logos stay sharp at any scale.
Collection of Hill website pages including a list of available homes with filters, development property cards, a site plan map with labelled plots, a news and press section, and an interior image gallery.