What your website's prices tell you about your business

Most trades run on gut feel

Ask a busy trade how the phone's been and you'll get an honest answer: "quiet this month", "mad since September". It's usually right. What it can't tell you is why.

Was it quiet because fewer people were looking, or because plenty looked and didn't ring? Are people after the jobs you most want, or the ones you'd rather not do? Do they look on a Tuesday evening or a Sunday morning?

Those are different problems with different fixes. A few simple numbers tell them apart.

The four numbers that matter

When a customer uses a price calculator on your website, four things can happen. Each one is worth counting.

• They start. They pick a job and begin answering the questions.
• They get a price. They answer the questions and see what the job would cost.
• They save it. They email the price to themselves to think about, or to show someone at home.
• They send you an enquiry. They want you to get in touch.

Each step is a customer getting closer to booking. Where they stop tells you where to look.

Which jobs people are pricing

If you offer more than one kind of job, the count for each one shows what your customers actually want, rather than what you assume they want.

A heating engineer might expect boiler swaps to lead and find that power flushes and radiators are priced just as often. A roofer might find most people are pricing repairs, not new roofs. That's useful when you decide what to put first on your website, what to mention on your van, and which jobs to price more sharply.

Which days people look

Counting by day shows when customers are thinking about the job. Some trades see most of their pricing at weekends, when the customer is at home and looking at the problem. Others see a steady flow through the week. Your own figures are the ones that count.

It matters because a customer who prices a job on a Sunday and sends an enquiry is waiting for you on Monday morning. If weekends are busy, a quick reply first thing on Monday wins work that a reply on Wednesday doesn't.

Reading the gaps

The numbers on their own are half of it. The gaps between them say the most.

Few people starting. If hardly anyone is getting as far as the calculator, the problem isn't your price. It's being found. Is the calculator easy to spot on your home page, or tucked away on a page nobody visits? Is it linked from your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page and the bottom of your emails? A link on the van with a QR code is cheap to add.

Plenty starting, few getting a price. People are giving up partway through. Check the calculator on your own phone, as a customer would. Are the questions clear? Is there one they won't know the answer to? Small changes to wording help here.

Plenty of prices, few enquiries. People are seeing your price and not getting in touch. That can mean a few things:

• Your price is above what people in your area expect for that job. That's not always bad. If you're the firm that does it properly, say so next to the price: what's included, your guarantee, your reviews.
• The price is fine but the next step isn't obvious. Make sure it's clear the customer can send the job straight to you.
• They're shopping around. That's normal, and you can't stop it. But you can be the one who replies first.

Lots of saved prices. Customers who email the price to themselves are interested but not ready. They're often talking to a partner or waiting for payday. They're worth being ready for when they come back.

Enquiries but few jobs won. If plenty of people send you an enquiry but few turn into work, look at what happens after. How quickly do you ring back? Does your quote after the visit match the guide price, or is it often well above it? If it's often higher, your rates in the calculator may need a tweak, so the price customers see first is closer to the one you give.

An example

Here's a made-up month for a small flooring firm:

• 120 jobs priced, mostly carpets and LVT, with very few for wood flooring.
• Almost half the prices were on Saturdays and Sundays.
• 9 enquiries sent, 6 of them over a weekend.

What the owner might take from it: carpet and LVT are where the demand is, so they lead the website and the van. Weekend enquiries get a call first thing on Monday. Wood flooring, which they like doing, gets a photo or two on their Facebook page to see if more people price it.

And if those 120 prices had brought in just one or two enquiries, the first question would be whether the price for carpets is out of line with local firms, or whether something on the page is getting in the way.

A few numbers, read regularly

None of this needs a spreadsheet or a marketing department. A look at the numbers every few weeks, with a cup of tea, is enough to spot a trend and try one change. Then see what the next few weeks say.

The point isn't the numbers themselves. It's knowing where to put your effort: getting found, the price, or the reply.

Where Build A Quote fits

Build A Quote is a price calculator for trade websites. Your customer answers the questions you'd ask on a visit and sees a guide price, worked out on your rates. You get the enquiry by text and email.

Your tool also keeps count of how it's used: how many prices each tool gives, day by day, how many are saved and how many turn into enquiries. It counts prices, not people. Ask for a report any time and we'll go through it with you.