New research from Parapet Intelligence has found that 1 in 4 proptech firms do not tell visitors to their website what they actually do. The analysis, based on a survey of 500 proptech websites, found that 119 (23.8%) failed to communicate what they did in the part of the page that first appears to visitors, known in the industry as above the fold.
Parapet Intelligence is the research division of strategic communications agency Parapet, which works across the proptech, property and mortgage sectors. The analysis looked at the above the fold section of each website only and was carried out in October 2026.
01What the research covered
The research covered websites across a broad range of proptech sectors, including estate agency, construction, property management, investment and asset management, conveyancing, planning, facilities management and smart buildings.
According to Parapet, firms that fall foul of the problem have often already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on branding, websites, events, staff and marketing campaigns. The agency says it also means that millions of professionals across the world of property are left confused when all they want to know is whether a company can help them.
02Why firms struggle to be concise
Parapet, a communications consultancy, says many firms struggle to be concise because they feel they do so much that it is impossible to boil it down into one neat phrase. Where that is the case, firms often fall back on vague language about how much better they make the world, which the agency says is a mistake when used on its own.
It adds that graphics are routinely neglected as a way of solving this problem without compromising design. For readers following how technology businesses in the sector are developing, PAD has also looked at why UK property platforms are investing more in software reliability.
03Advice for proptech businesses
Neil Millard, co-founder at Parapet, said: “Growing a business is hard. You don’t want to make it more difficult than it needs to be, so disguising what you do isn’t the way to go.”
He added: “Clear and concise language is the order of the day. Do what you say and say what you do. It’s timeless advice and it works.”
Millard also addressed the role of artificial intelligence, saying: “The temptation is to think that AI will crawl entire websites in the future so this doesn’t matter, but people will still want to eyeball sites for themselves.” He noted that mistakes made on a homepage tend to crop up in a firm’s other marketing and communications channels too.
He stressed that websites are seen by people outside the core industry as well. “Remember, not everyone who visits a website has been in the sector for 20 years and speaks the lingo. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. They are the industry’s new recruits, researchers, your next hire, a partner or investor.”
His closing advice was direct: “Keep it simple, and just tell people what you do. Don’t make them work for it.” For companies that feel they do too much to sum up in one sentence, Parapet recommends using tools such as breakouts and graphics to get messages across without spoiling the design of the site.
Details and image via Parapet Intelligence.
