Should your website give customers an instant quote?.

If every new enquiry starts with the same question, how much will it cost?, you have probably wondered whether your website could just answer it. For a lot of service businesses it can. An instant quote calculator lets a customer enter a few details and see a real price straight away, without a phone call or a chain of emails.

It is not right for everyone, though. Here is how to tell whether it suits your business, and what separates a useful quote tool from a frustrating one.

What an instant quote actually is

An instant quote is a short set of questions on your website that works out a price from the answers. The customer picks the options that apply to them, and the site applies your pricing rules to show a figure. A good one then lets them carry on and book, sign or pay, all in the same visit.

It differs from a simple price list. A price list shows fixed prices for fixed things. A quote tool handles the "it depends" jobs, where the price changes with size, distance, materials or level of service.

When it works well

Instant quotes suit businesses where:

• The price follows clear rules. If you could write your pricing down as a table or a short set of if-this-then-that steps, a website can work it out.
• You get lots of similar enquiries. Surveys, cleaning, removals, printing, lessons and repairs often fit this pattern.
• Customers compare before they call. Someone who can see a price at 10pm on a Sunday is less likely to move on to a competitor who makes them wait.
• The quoting itself eats your time. If you spend hours each week answering pricing emails, that is time you could get back.

When it doesn't

Be honest about this part. A quote tool is a poor fit if every job needs a site visit before anyone can price it, if your prices depend heavily on judgement, or if you rarely get two jobs alike. In those cases a well written contact form that collects the right details is the better choice. You can still give a guide price or a "from" figure so people know roughly where they stand.

If you can write your pricing down as a set of rules, your website can probably do the quoting for you.

What we learned building one for NR Surveyors

NR Surveyors is a RICS regulated firm here in Norwich. Pricing a survey depends on several things: the survey level, the age and type of property, the number of bedrooms and how far it is from Norwich. Before the new site, that usually meant a phone call or a few emails before anyone could book. Then there was an engagement letter to sign and a payment to take before the inspection.

We built a website and booking system that handles all of it. Home buyers get an instant price for their own property, sign the terms and pay online, so a survey can be booked from start to finish without a phone call. The surveyor gets a daily email listing that day's surveys, and we have handled the firm's price changes and page updates since launch.

A few lessons from that project apply to almost any quote tool:

1. Map the pricing first. Before any design, we needed every factor that changes the price written down. The calculator is only as good as the rules behind it.
2. Don't stop at the price. A quote on its own still leaves the customer to email you. Joining it to the next step, signing and paying, is where the real time saving comes from.
3. Check the price on the server. On the NR Surveyors site, the server works the quote out again before taking payment, so prices can't be tampered with in the browser. If money changes hands, this matters.
4. Plan for price changes. Your prices will change. Decide up front who updates them and how, so the site never shows an old figure.

Getting the questions right

The questions are the part customers actually see, so they decide whether people finish. Keep these in mind:

• Ask only what changes the price. Anything else can wait until after they have booked.
• Use words your customers use. "Number of bedrooms" is easier than "property size band".
• Explain the tricky ones. If customers might not know which survey level they need, give a one line explanation next to the choice.
• Show the price clearly, with what's included. A number with no context raises more questions than it answers.
• Make it work on a phone. Many people will try it on their mobile, so big buttons and one question at a time help.

Accessibility is not optional here

Accessibility is getting a lot of attention at the moment, and quote tools are exactly the kind of interactive feature that can trip people up. Labels need to be read out properly by screen readers, everything should work with a keyboard, and error messages should say what to fix. A calculator that some customers can't use is a calculator that turns away business.

Is it worth the cost?

A quote tool is more work than a contact form, because the pricing logic has to be built and tested. A simple way to judge it: think about how many pricing enquiries you handle each week, how long each one takes, and how many go quiet after you reply. If the answer is a lot, an instant quote tends to pay for itself in time saved alone, before you count the customers who book out of hours.

If you run a Norwich or Norfolk business and spend too much of your week answering pricing questions, we are happy to look at your pricing and tell you honestly whether a quote tool would help.