A property websitethat shows the full priceand the sunlight

Step 01

Start with what the buyer is afraid of

Buying a flat in a building that doesn’t exist yet is the biggest purchase most families will make, and they are making it on trust. They have heard the stories from relatives and colleagues: the price that grew by ₹8 lakh at registration, the possession date that slipped by three years, the builder who disappeared, the “east-facing” flat that never sees the sun.

So before designing anything I wrote down what a buyer is really worried about. It came down to four fears:

1. What will I actually pay? Not the base price, the final amount.
2. Will it be finished on time?
3. Can I trust this builder?
4. Will I like living there? Light, air, space, the commute, the school run.

Most real estate websites answer none of them. They show a render of the building at sunset, a list of 40 amenities, “starting from ₹65 lakh*” and a form that hands your number to a call centre. Banyan Court answers each fear with something the buyer can check for themselves, and each answer is a section of the site.

Step 02

A first screen that leads with light and a real price

The headline is a promise about how the home will feel: “Morning light in every room.” Behind it, room photos change slowly from the living room to the lounge, bedroom and kitchen, with the room’s size, direction and floor in a small card. The two buttons are Choose your flat and Step inside. There is no “Enquire now”.

Under the photo sits a white strip with four facts that most projects hide until the second meeting:

• ₹71.16 L for a 2 BHK, all-in, nothing added later
• Dec 2028 possession, with the structure 3 weeks ahead
• 37 of 192 flats still available
• The RERA registration number, right there on the first screen

Step 03

Let them live a day in the flat before they visit

Before any floor plan, the site shows “A day inside a Banyan Court home.” It follows the light through a 3 BHK on floor 11: breakfast in east light at 7:10 am, the kitchen window at 8:30, an afternoon nap at 2:00, tea on the balcony at 6:30, and a quiet evening at 9:00 because the towers face the park, not the road. Each photo has the time, the room and its size.

Next is “Walk through every room”, a curved gallery you drag like turning your head, with each room’s size and when it gets the sun, like Master bedroom, 13′ × 12′, morning sun from 6:40 am.

Step 04

Sizes in the unit the law uses

The two home types each get one card: a floor plan with room sizes, how many are left, and the all-in starting price. The size shown first is the carpet area, the floor you actually live on, which is what RERA requires builders to sell by. The bigger super built-up figure is there too, with one plain sentence on why it is bigger.

Step 05

Choose your flat from the building itself

This is the heart of the site. Instead of a list of flats, the buyer sees a drawing of the two towers. Hover over a floor and it lights up; click it and its six flats appear as cards, each marked Open, On hold or Sold, with its size and the direction it faces.

Under the drawing is a sun slider. Drag it from 6 am to 6 pm on the shortest day of the year and the windows on the drawing light up or fall into shade. The chosen flat then shows its carpet area, super built-up area and hours of sun in winter and summer, followed by the all-in price, a link to the full breakdown and an Add to shortlist button.

Step 06

One price, with all nine charges shown

Click Full breakdown and the buyer sees the total in very large type, ₹77.07 L, with the line “This is the full amount. Nothing is added at registration.” Next to it is every charge: base price, floor rise, preferred location charge, covered parking, GST, stamp duty, registration, maintenance deposit and club membership. Each one has its rate in a small line underneath, and the total sits in a dark bar at the bottom.

Pick another flat in the picker and the whole breakdown updates. A note says the GST, stamp duty and registration rates are demo values to be checked before launch.

Step 07

What it costs each month

Most families don’t think in lakhs; they think in monthly payments. So the next section turns the total into an EMI. Three sliders set the down payment, interest rate and tenure, and the card updates live: ₹53,509 per month for A-1302 with 20% down at 8.5% over 20 years.

Two lines under it answer the next questions before they are asked: the monthly income a bank will want to see (₹1,07,017) and the pre-EMI interest until possession (about ₹24,021 a month). Below that are the banks that have approved the project and the full construction-linked payment plan: what share is due at each stage, how much it is, and when, with future stages shown as dotted forecasts.

Step 08

Progress against the promised dates

The headline is the boldest line on the site: “Don’t trust us. Check us, every month.” A large site photo has month tabs from May to October; each month has its own photo and a one-line update like “Tower A slab 12 cast, 3 weeks ahead.”

Below it, each tower shows its progress by stage, and a promised vs actual timeline plots every milestone: the date promised to RERA as a hollow circle, the date it was actually done as a filled one, and future milestones as forecasts. The right-hand column reads 1 mo early or On track. A link goes to the RERA registration and its quarterly updates.

Step 09

The neighbourhood, for the life they actually lead

The neighbourhood section starts with real distances, not “close to everything”: “A 4-minute walk to the park. 11 minutes to school.” Three tabs change the list for a family with kids, a working couple or parents moving in, so a retired couple sees the hospital and the market first, and a family sees the school.

A dark card asks where you work. Pick Sector V, DLF IT Park, Park Street or Infosys and it shows the drive off-peak and in the 9 am rush, because buyers know the rush-hour number is the one that matters. Below this, “Life downstairs” shows four amenities with their real sizes and hours, not forty with none.

Step 10

A track record that includes the late one

The builder section is titled “532 families already moved in.” It shows every recent project with the date promised and the date the keys were handed over. Two were early or on time. One, Sarani Lakeview, was three months late, and the card says so, with the reason: the Covid lockdown, and buyers paid no pre-EMI for the delay.

Step 11

An NRI desk and a documents room

Many buyers in Indian cities live abroad, and most project websites treat them as an afterthought. Banyan Court gives them their own section, “Buying from abroad?” They pick where they live (US East, UK, Australia, Singapore or the Gulf) and see video-visit slots in their own time with the IST time next to it. Five steps explain the whole process, from an NRI home loan to registering by power of attorney, followed by the documents they’ll need.

Next to it is “The documents room.” Every approval is listed in full, the RERA certificate, building plan sanction, land title summary, fire NOC, the sample agreement for sale and the bank approval letters, each with one line on what it means, like “The exact contract you will sign, to read before you pay anything.”

Step 12

A visit booking that respects their time

The site ends with “Come and stand in the light.” The form has a switch between a video visit and a site visit, and only three fields: name, WhatsApp number, and the flat they’re interested in, already filled in from the picker with its all-in price. The promise next to it matters as much as the form: “One person from our team calls you once, at the time you choose. No call centre.”

Step 13

It works on a phone

Most property links are opened from WhatsApp or an Instagram ad, on a phone. On a small screen the towers, the flat cards, the price breakdown and the EMI sliders all stack into one column, and the sun slider is large enough to drag with a thumb.

At a glance

The psychology at a glance

Every principle used on the site, where it shows up, and what it does for the buyer.

Your turn

Steal this for your own project website

You don’t need a full rebuild to use these. Most can be added to the site you have.

• Show the all-in price for at least one real flat, with every charge listed and its rate.
• Lead with carpet area, and explain super built-up in one sentence.
• Publish which flats are open, on hold and sold, even if you update it by hand each week.
• Add an EMI example and the monthly income a bank would want to see.
• Post one dated site photo every month, next to the dates you promised RERA.
• List every past project with the promised and actual handover date, and explain any delay.
• Put the sample agreement and the approvals on the site, each with one line on what it means.
• Show NRI visit slots in their time zone, and promise one call at a time the buyer chooses.

Questions

Questions people ask

Further reading

Sources and further reading

The principles above come from published research in psychology and behavioural economics. If you want to read further:

1. Ellsberg, D. (1961). Risk, ambiguity, and the Savage axioms. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2. Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica.
3. Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science.
4. Elder, R. S. & Krishna, A. (2012). The “visual depiction effect” in advertising: facilitating embodied mental simulation through product orientation. Journal of Consumer Research.
5. Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of Political Economy.
6. Reber, R., Schwarz, N. & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
7. Norton, M. I., Mochon, D. & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology.
8. Worchel, S., Lee, J. & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
9. Blake, T., Moshary, S., Sweeney, K. & Tadelis, S. (2021). Price salience and product choice. Marketing Science.
10. Central Consumer Protection Authority, India (2023). Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023.
11. Gourville, J. T. (1998). Pennies-a-day: the effect of temporal reframing on transaction evaluation. Journal of Consumer Research.
12. Buell, R. W. & Norton, M. I. (2011). The labor illusion: how operational transparency increases perceived value. Management Science.
13. Buell, R. W., Kim, T. & Tsay, C.-J. (2017). Creating reciprocal value through operational transparency. Management Science.
14. Noar, S. M., Benac, C. N. & Harris, M. S. (2007). Does tailoring matter? Meta-analytic review of tailored print health behavior change interventions. Psychological Bulletin.
15. Eisend, M. (2006). Two-sided advertising: a meta-analysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing.
16. Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
17. Trope, Y. & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review.
18. Fogg, B. J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. Proceedings of Persuasive 2009.