Builders
Websites and enquiry systems for builders
A builder's problem is rarely too few enquiries. It is that too many of them are for jobs you would not take, at budgets that do not exist, from people who want to start next week when you are booked into next spring.
Enquiries - this week
Qualified on budget & timescale
An illustration of the kind of screen this builds towards - yours is built around how your building company actually runs.
The reality
Where the time and money goes in a building company
Enquiries that were never going to happen
A double-storey extension from somebody with a budget of twenty thousand pounds. It takes a site visit and a quote to find that out, and that is most of a day gone.
Timescales that do not match
Good builders are booked months ahead. Customers who want to start in a fortnight are wasting both parties' time, and neither finds out until the conversation is well under way.
Quotes take days and vanish
A proper quote for a large job takes real work, then goes into an inbox and gets no response for three weeks. You do not know if it was too expensive or simply never opened.
The work is the proof, and nobody can see it
Building work is judged on finish and reliability, both of which are best shown in photographs - and most builders have hundreds on a phone and none on a website.
Staged payments tracked in a notebook
Deposit, first fix, second fix, completion. Chasing stage payments on a large job while running the site itself is where cash flow goes wrong.
The approach
How we'd fix it
The most valuable thing a builder's website can do is disqualify people politely. An enquiry form that asks about the type of work, the rough budget range, the intended timescale and whether planning permission is in place will lose you some enquiries - and every one it loses is one you were going to lose anyway, after a site visit and half a day of quoting. What comes through instead is a shorter list of genuine jobs.
The rest is proof and process. Project galleries with proper before-and-after photographs, grouped by job type, do more selling than any amount of copy. Quotes go out as documents the customer can view, accept and sign online, so you know whether they have been opened. And staged payments get tracked against the project rather than in a notebook, with reminders when a stage is reached.
What we build
Built for building companies
Enquiry forms that qualify
Job type, budget range, timescale and planning status captured up front, so site visits go to genuine jobs.
Project galleries by job type
Extensions, loft conversions, renovations and new builds shown properly with before-and-after photographs.
Quotes that can be tracked
Itemised quotes viewed, accepted and signed online, so you can see whether the customer has even opened it.
Staged payment scheduling
Deposit and stage payments defined at quote stage and invoiced automatically as each stage is reached.
Waiting list management
Customers who are happy to wait recorded properly, so a gap in the schedule can be filled from a list instead of from scratch.
Area and service pages
Separate pages per job type and per town, which is how people search when they are planning something big.
What changes
The difference it makes
- Far fewer wasted site visits and quotes for jobs that never existed
- The work sells itself through photographs rather than through description
- You can see whether a quote has been read, so follow-ups are worth making
- Stage payments get invoiced on time instead of when you remember
In practice
A worked example: fewer enquiries, more work
A building company was getting a healthy number of enquiries and converting very few. The pattern was consistent: site visit, measure up, two evenings on a quote, silence. The jobs were real enough, but the budgets were not, and there was no way of knowing that before the visit.
Adding budget range and timescale to the enquiry form cut the number of enquiries by a noticeable margin and increased the amount of work won. The enquiries that disappeared were the ones that were never going to convert. What remained was a shorter list of people who had thought about what it would cost, which meant site visits started leading somewhere.
The systems behind it
What this is built from
Everything on this page is put together from the same handful of systems, shaped around how building companies actually work.
Questions
Builders - the questions I get asked
Will asking for a budget put people off?
It will put some people off, and those are the ones you want it to put off. A builder's scarcest resource is time, and a site visit plus two evenings quoting a job that was never affordable is the most expensive thing you can do. Asking for a range rather than a figure keeps it comfortable while still doing the filtering.
How much difference do project photos make?
A very large one, because building work is bought on trust and finish, neither of which can be described in words. Before-and-after sets grouped by job type let somebody planning a loft conversion look at three of your loft conversions. Most builders have hundreds of photographs on a phone and none of them anywhere a customer can see.
Can I tell whether a customer has looked at my quote?
Yes. Quotes go out as a link rather than an attachment, so you can see when it was opened and how often. Three views and no response is a very different situation from never opened, and it tells you whether a follow-up call is worth making or whether the price was the problem.
Can it handle staged payments?
Yes. The stages are defined when the quote is accepted - deposit, first fix, second fix, completion, or whatever suits the job - and each one generates its invoice when the stage is reached. It is the simplest way to stop cash flow problems on a long job.
We are booked up for months. Is a website still worth it?
Being booked up is a good reason to be more selective, not a reason to stop marketing. A site that qualifies properly means the enquiries you do take are the profitable ones, and a waiting list means a cancellation or a gap gets filled from a list rather than from a standing start.
How Lancashire tradesmen get more enquiries from a website
If you're on the tools all day, your website has to do the selling for you. Here's how to make it actually bring the work in, not just sit there looking pretty.
Similar businesses I work with
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Run a building company? Let's have a look at it
Tell me how things work at the moment and I'll come back with a clear, fixed quote - and an honest view on whether it's worth the money. No pressure and no jargon.