Calculators appear on the sites of small service companies as well as on the pages of banks and insurers, and for the same reason: a visitor who can work out the price on the spot is much closer to an order than one who has to ask. This article looks at what a calculator gives your marketing, how to measure it, and when it does not pay off.
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More leads, and better leads
Services such as cleaning or home repair often use a calculator to bring back visitors who were not ready to place an order. It lowers the barrier for the first request: instead of writing a message and waiting for an answer, the person plays with the parameters and sees a number.
Visitors usually compare several sites before they decide, and a calculator can be the thing that keeps them on yours. Sometimes the difference is a single field that the competitors’ calculators do not have. Sometimes it takes a different approach altogether, and the practical way to find it is to build two or three variations of the calculator and compare them.
Before you start, ask how much your customers need a calculator at all. If the price is one of the main reasons people choose between providers, a calculator is worth building. If not, the same time is better spent on an advertising campaign.
Engagement and search
Many people look for a way to calculate a price, so a calculator can be a reason to visit your site and to come back to it. A search engine does not rank a page higher only because it has a calculator, but a useful tool tends to keep visitors on the page, reduces the number of quick returns to the search results and can earn links from other sites.
For companies that sell products with a price depending on parameters, such as construction, insurance or finance, the calculator also answers the exact question visitors type into the search box, which makes the page relevant to the searches about cost.
Higher quality of requests
A calculator reduces the number of questions about the price. The visitor finds the cost for their own case without contacting a consultant, and the request that arrives is better prepared: the person has already seen the pricing and the range of services. This also helps filter out irrelevant requests and lowers the workload of consultants, who can spend their time on customers with the highest potential.
How to measure the result
Do not judge a calculator by the number of clicks alone. Look at how many visitors start it, how many reach the total and how many send a request after seeing the price, and compare that with your plain contact form. If many people leave on a particular field, rewrite it or remove it. Change one thing at a time so you know what made the difference.
When a calculator does not help
If searches about the cost of your product or service are among your most important queries, a calculator is almost a must. But it is not always a source of direct orders. A calculator may get a lot of traffic and still bring fewer orders than a simple call-back form. A window company, for instance, can see high traffic on its window calculator while most customers still order through a form that asks a manager to call back.
First look at behavior: whether visitors stay on the site because of the calculator and interact with it. If you want the calculator to replace other forms on the site, it has to carry an offer that matches what the customer expects. For example, the calculator can offer a 10% discount if the order is sent right away. In the same window company example, a banner that appears on the calculator page after a few minutes and makes it easy to place an order raises the conversion of that page.
Where to go next
If you decide to build a calculator, start with the examples of cost calculators for repair, cleaning and mortgage and the step-by-step guide. You can also browse the catalog of ready-made calculators or open the online calculator builder.
