By Daniel C. Brown
"It's kind of like dating when a prospect visits our website," says remodeler Loren Schirber, owner/business manager of Castle Building & Remodeling, Minneapolis. "The website speeds along the process of choosing a remodeler. The marriage is when we consummate the remodeling deal."
Up for only about a year, Loren's Website (www.castlebri.com) has already netted Castle three or four projects from visitors to the site.
Loren views his website as one component in the sales process: a hard-working sales tool that also can drive up his revenues per project. "The website is a credibility builder after prospects have found out about you some other way," he says. "We'd like to do more jobs for $50,000 and $100,000 each, and customers [who do projects that size] expect you to have a website. It gives a sense of stability and security about the company."
It's all about image
That's very similar to the view that remodeler Harvey Collier, CR, president of Collier & Company Construction Inc., Portland, Ore., takes of his website (www.collierandcompany.com). Harvey believes that while a website is not a direct link to guaranteed sales, it does offer his firm a way to showcase their work to a fairly affluent clientele.
"Looking at our website is part of the background process that people go through when they hire us," says Harvey. "The industry dictates that you need a website to place yourself in the league of professionals in which we do business. If our customers don't have access to our company by the Internet, then we're missing a very large segment of the market."
Harvey says his website cost about $7,000 some five years ago, not counting the cost of photography of projects featured on the site. The firm publicizes the site by printing the URL on company business cards and on each of the firm's five company vehicles.
Educate the buyer
The Castle website not only shows off the firm's project portfolio, it educates prospects and customers about remodeling and about how the firm does business. Loren wants his business methods to be transparent to customers, and it shows in his website.
Loren developed the website with the help of his father, Marty Schirber, CR, who is an owner and president of the firm. A teacher by training, Marty often talks about giving "mini-seminars" as part of the sales process, Loren reports. So the website captures those mini-seminars in a section called Customer Education Center, which contains treatises on topics such as Choosing a Contractor, Inspections, Lead Paint and What is a Mechanic's Lien?
In the future, Loren plans to upgrade his website to the next level–to make it an interactive tool where clients can see all their project documents and get updated on the status of their own projects. Subcontractors will also be able to visit the site and see project plans, view the clients' estimates and see other subs' prices. "Our estimates are an open book," says Loren. "We try to make the remodeling process as transparent as possible."
For both Loren and Harvey, their websites have proven to be not only necessary venues to enhance their company image but also effective matchmaker tools for attracting prospective customers.
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