Website for solar installers where the roof survey comes first
Every enquiry is really a sum: the pitch, the orientation, the shading from next door's sycamore, what the household actually uses and when. The caller wants the payback figure in the first minute, and you cannot give an honest one until somebody has been up on the roof.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.
One day on a solar installer's phone
The work is not the problem. The problem is that the interesting answer sits behind a survey and everybody wants it before the survey happens.
Ten past nine, the payback question
He has read something, he has a south facing roof, and he wants to know how many years. You ask about the roof covering, the age of the consumer unit, whether anyone is home in the daytime, and he hears all of that as evasion.
What he wanted was a number in the first minute. What you have is a proper answer that takes a morning on a roof and an hour at a desk, and no way of getting him to sit still for either.
Two o'clock, and the rules have moved again
Somebody rings having read a headline about support for home energy work and asks whether they qualify. The scheme has been renamed, the eligibility has narrowed, and the answer that was right in the spring is not the answer now.
You explain it, carefully, for the third time this week. Meanwhile the wording on your own site still says what was true two schemes ago, because nobody has had an afternoon to change it.
Half four, the quote from eleven weeks ago
A couple you surveyed in the spring have decided. They want to go ahead on the design you sent, and they want to know whether the price still stands now that the scaffold hire has gone up and the panel you specified has been superseded.
Somewhere in your sent items is the PDF. Somewhere else is the version you revised in June. You are fairly sure they are looking at the wrong one.
Three things that make the solar sale work on a page
The whole system is behind them, but for an installer selling a survey rather than a product these three do the lifting.
Book the roof survey, do not promise a payback
The call to action on the page is the survey, not a figure. The form asks for the address, the roof covering, roughly what the household spends on electricity, whether there is anyone in during the day and whether they are thinking about a battery.
By the time you climb the ladder you already know whether it is a straightforward south facing pitch or a listed cottage with a conservation officer attached to it.
The design and the numbers on one page they can approve
The quote carries the array, the inverter, the scaffold, the electrical work and the certification as separate lines, with the battery on its own line so it can be taken out without redoing the whole thing. Underneath sits the estimate the design is built on, so the customer can see where the figure came from.
They approve it on its own page and it is dated. A deposit, if you take one, runs through your own Stripe account into your own bank.
You can see whether they read it before they went quiet
A long decision is normal in this trade and following it up feels like nagging. Knowing that the quote page was opened again on Sunday evening turns a nag into a well timed phone call.
The visitor statistics do the same for the site itself, so you learn whether people are landing on the battery page or the certification page, and there is no cookie banner in front of any of it.
The service list for a solar installer
Names and figures are yours. The pricing types are the useful part, because almost nothing in this trade is a fixed price and the list should say so.
Keep the survey at the top of the list. It is the only thing on the page anybody can buy on the day they read it.
Questions installers ask us
The survey, priced and bookable, with a plain explanation of what it produces: the design, the export arrangement and a written quote. Selling the survey is the only honest thing you can sell before you have been on the roof.
Yes, and you should name the mechanism rather than a figure. Say that you are MCS certified, say what that unlocks for the customer, and describe how a scheme works and who assesses it. Never put a rate or an amount on the page, because those change and a wrong one costs you more trust than a right one earns.
You edit the paragraph on the page itself by clicking the pencil next to it, and if it is a bigger rewrite the AI editor drafts the new wording from your own site content. It is minutes rather than an email to whoever built the site.
The quote is a live page rather than an attachment, so you can revise it and send the same link. Seeing that it was opened again tells you when a phone call is welcome rather than annoying.
Plans run £49 to £199 a month plus VAT. Every plan has the site on your own domain, SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support; quoting with online approval starts at £149.
It can be imported, so the pictures of finished jobs and the pages worth keeping come across, and the builder writes the solar side around them. Then you rearrange it yourself on the page.
More trades
- Heat pump installersHome visit, quote and service plan in one place.
- BuildersQuotes with cost lines, approved online.
- PlumbersThe emergency line, unburdened by prices and an FAQ.
- ElectriciansFixed prices for small jobs, quotes for the rest.
- Painters and decoratorsQuoted per room and surface, sold on photos.
- Flooring fittersPriced per floor type and square metre.
- All trades
Start with the survey and build the site around it
Describe what you install and where you work, or point at your current site, and you get a first version with a survey booking form, a service list and a quote template built from the lines a solar design actually has. Edit any of it in place.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.