+39%

user engagement

+10%

views per active user

+38%

form submissions

Gentoo Group is a housing association and new homes provider serving communities across Sunderland and the wider North East. The Gentoo digital estate supports both social housing customers and prospective buyers exploring new-build homes through Gentoo Homes.

Challenge

Gentoo needed a long-term digital partner who could help them build a vision for their digital services and get the most from Umbraco, both for their internal teams and for the customers and homebuyers they serve.

Their search for a partner came at a point where Gentoo had two websites at very different stages of maturity. The Gentoo Group website was built on Umbraco and supported internally, while Gentoo Homes was a simple brochure site with no content management system. Even small updates to the Homes site required developer input, creating delays and a lack of autonomy for the Marketing & Communications team, and limiting their ability to respond quickly to changing sales priorities.

Alongside their immediate need for greater day-to-day flexibility, Gentoo wanted a partner who could strengthen their internal capability, assess the health of both platforms and establish a more secure, maintainable and scalable foundation for future development.

For Gentoo Homes in particular, the website also needed to work harder as a marketing and lead-generation platform. Buying a home is a significant, highly considered decision, so the experience needed to present developments and properties with greater clarity, visual impact and support performance across desktop and mobile.

Approach

Discovery and migration

We began with a comprehensive technical review of both websites, assessing implementation, source code, database structure, client-side assets, security and the existing Umbraco CMS. The review identified issues that could affect performance, security, usability and maintainability, allowing immediate risks to be addressed and lower-priority findings to be incorporated into a clear forward roadmap.

With that baseline in place, we planned and delivered the migration of both websites to Umbraco Cloud. A new multi-site estate brought Gentoo Group and Gentoo Homes together within a single managed platform, creating a more resilient hosting and deployment model while retaining the distinct purpose and identity of each site.

By introducing Umbraco behind the previously hard-coded Gentoo Homes site, we gave the Marketing and Communications team direct control over content for the first time, creating the foundation for a wider evolution of the customer experience.

Designing the experience

A collaborative UX workshop brought the team together to test assumptions, sharpen requirements and build a shared view of what prospective homebuyers actually needed from the site. From there, we designed and developed a reusable component library using Umbraco's Block Grid Editor, combining practical content-management flexibility with a richer and more responsive front-end experience.

The component set covered the full customer journey, from site-wide navigation and calls to action through to property cards, development details, image galleries, key features, and enquiry forms. Each component was designed to work consistently across screen sizes and to give editors the freedom to create engaging pages without relying on developers.

Delivery

Delivery followed an agile, two-week sprint cadence. Completed and tested components were released into user acceptance testing at the end of each sprint, giving Gentoo regular visibility of progress and allowing content population to begin in parallel with the build rather than waiting until the end of the project.

Services & requirements

Outcome

Gentoo now has a more secure, maintainable and flexible digital estate that supports both its housing association and new homes entities. The move to Umbraco Cloud has created a stronger technical foundation, while the introduction of a modern CMS and reusable component library has put day-to-day control of Gentoo Homes into the hands of the team closest to its customers and sales objectives.

The work has moved Gentoo Homes beyond its original minimum viable platform into a richer, mobile-first experience capable of showcasing developments and properties with greater confidence. Just as importantly, the underlying approach gives Gentoo room to keep improving: new content and journeys can be introduced more quickly, without repeatedly returning to bespoke development.

Our partnership continues through ongoing managed support, combining proactive monitoring and maintenance with regular conversations around performance, priorities and future opportunities across the estate.

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