Contents
Significant cost saving versus the Google Distance Matrix solution
New level of accuracy in search results
Better business outcomes
Barratt Developments is the UK’s largest and most established housebuilder, with over 60 years of experience.
Operating through its three major brands—Barratt Homes, David Wilson Homes, and Barratt London—the company builds approximately 15,000 homes annually and helps property seekers find a new home through their website.
A key part to supporting their prospects is leveraging innovative technology to stay ahead of customer expectations, including partnering with TravelTime to provide superior property search experiences for users.
This case study explores how Barratt integrated the TravelTime API to introduce time-based search, improving customer satisfaction and overall business outcomes.
Distance or Time? Choosing a Travel Time Matrix API
The primary purpose of Barratt's websites is to help customers find properties that meet their unique needs.
Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager, says: "We're always trying to enhance functionality on the website to meet consumer expectations and to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to find properties that suit them."
However, feedback from users revealed a critical gap in the property search experience: the results often lacked relevance, and users were being shown properties that were inaccessible, leading to a less effective process for converting leads.
This is because Barratt relied on Google to calculate straight-line distances between properties and user locations—while functional, this approach failed to account for real-world travel times, resulting in poor property-to-seeker matches and customer frustration.
"We had feedback from customers that the search wasn’t returning the most relevant results. A property might be only a few miles away but over an hour away by car. For example, someone searching in Bristol was being shown properties in Cardiff because, as the crow flies, it seemed like a good match—but in reality, it wasn’t relevant."
Recognising the need for a more sophisticated approach, Barratt moved away from straight-line distance calculations to explore the TravelTime API. This transition promised to provide customers with more relevant property options, improve the search experience, and convert more property seekers.
Why Choose TravelTime?
Barratt needed a journey time API that could calculate multi-modal journeys in an instant to support their site traffic and search. TravelTime stood out as the best option due to the data accuracy, performance and cost-effectiveness.
Performance
"We needed a service that could calculate drive times to hundreds of properties at once, and for the response to be fast enough that it wouldn’t impact the user experience." - Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager
The TravelTime API was selected because it met all performance requirements, was easy to test, and offered straightforward integration into their website search thanks to TravelTime documentation and support.
Accuracy
One of the key reasons Barratt moved away from straight-line distance calculations was to provide more relevant and precise property matches for customers.
The TravelTime API brought a new level of accuracy to their search functionality by calculating real-world drive times, ensuring that results aligned with customer expectations.
Cost-Effectiveness
While improving accuracy and performance was a priority, Barratt also needed a solution that was financially sustainable. TravelTime delivered significant cost savings compared to their previous Google Distance Matrix implementation.
"At the same time, we’ve seen a significant cost saving versus using the Google Distance Matrix solution, which is another big tick." - Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager
By reducing operational costs while enhancing functionality, the TravelTime API provided exceptional value for Barratt, making it the clear choice for a long-term solution.
Reliability
API reliability also played a role in the decision-making process for Barratt. It was important that the location API would meet the high volume of traffic and property searches.
Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager speaks about the TravelTime API: “There have been no issues with performance or reliability. The service performs exactly as we need it to."
How the TravelTime Solution Works
Today, whenever a user searches for a property on the Barratt website, the TravelTime API instantly calculates the drive times between the user’s location and all available properties.
The search results are then filtered and ranked based on drive times and other key factors, ensuring only the most relevant properties are shown to the end-user.
Learn more about the technical implementation by chatting with our team.
The Impact of Commute Time Search and Match
Since implementing the TravelTime API, Barratt has significantly improved the relevance of its search results.
Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager, says that "by introducing the TravelTime API, we’ve been able to enhance the search experience for users by surfacing content that is much more relevant for them than we ever could previously."
The solution has eliminated negative feedback related to search results and has driven better outcomes for the business.
"We’re able to give customers a better understanding of the location of our properties as part of the search experience, which means more leads generated and ultimately more sales for the business."
Additionally, Barratt has realised significant cost savings by moving away from Google’s Distance Matrix solution.
Future of the Partnership
Barratt plans to further enhance its search functionality with additional features powered by the TravelTime API.
Leonie Baxter, Marketing Systems Product Manager shares future plans in partnership with TravelTime:
"It’s on our roadmap to use the Isochrones API to allow users to search for properties based on journey times to multiple locations simultaneously. For example, we’d love to let someone search based on access to their workplace, their family, and their kids’ school—all at the same time."
This functionality will enable Barratt to deliver even more tailored search experiences for their customers.
Build Better Search and Match
Barratt Developments has successfully used the TravelTime API to transform its property search functionality, delivering a more relevant and user-friendly experience for its customers.
By prioritising travel times over straight-line distances and making TravelTime a cornerstone of its digital strategy, Barratt has increased customer satisfaction, generated more leads, and reduced costs.
"We’re a happy customer and would definitely recommend the TravelTime API to other businesses looking to provide a more relevant search experience to their customers."
Want to build time-based search and match into your online marketplace? TravelTime supports property search and much more.
Chat to us or start your free API trial now.