There’s no denying that technology in the 21st century has been evolving in leaps and bounds. We’ve gone from dial-up internet and push-button phones to smartphones, AI, VR and wearable tech.
However, in spite of all of those advances, for a long time, we weren’t truly taking full advantage of the available technology.
All of that changed when the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world. Overnight in March of 2022, everything that we used to do in person moved online. We all installed Zoom to talk to our colleagues, our kids moved to online schooling, and e-commerce companies saw revenue and profits skyrocket to previously unthinkable levels.
When Covid tried to change our lives, we simply changed the way we did things as best as we could.
Things have changed since the early days of Covid, and many things have gone back to normal. But the interesting thing is that now that we’ve had a taste of doing everything digitally at any time of the day or night, we’re not going back to what we did before. Online shopping revenues are still breaking records. People are still looking for remote-only jobs and moving to the country, and we’re all looking for better, smarter ways to do nearly everything.
One of the side effects of the pandemic, and our shift to all things digital, is that we’ve all lost patience with many of the old, accepted ways we have always done things.
Now that we can stream movies on demand, plug into a digital workout session in real-time and take a virtual tour of the world’s most famous museums, we’re just not satisfied with waiting.
We don’t want to wait for an estimator to fire up their old estimating system, painstakingly enter information and give us a single quote. We don’t want to wait a week while they struggle their way through their construction estimates backlog. We especially don’t want to wait another week every time we ask for an alternative option.
Construction, as an industry, has been very slow to change and evolve, and it shows in many of the processes and systems many companies still use. They’re inaccurate, time-consuming and hard to use. Many also produce hard-to-readconstruction quotes that leave homeowners wondering whether they’ve even been quoted on the project they want to have done.
Very often, the reason homebuilders, renovators and contractors stick to their old construction estimate software is that they just don’t think they have the time to adopt new technologies. However, in the current economic landscape, it’s the consumer that is dictating what kind of services they want – and that includes construction quotes.
Consumers in 2023 and beyond want their construction purchasing decisions to be more like their e-commerce experience, with a focus on speed, flexibility and visual appeal. Let’s take a closer look at each of these factors and how they affect construction estimating software.
The first big change that modern e-commerce has made in the way we all shop is that it’s significantly shortened the decision-making process. In fact, in a study done by Clutch, a digital marketing company, 60% of online shoppers make a decision in a day or less.
Of course, the higher the price tag attached to the decision, the longer they are likely to take to research and investigate, but it’s clear that if you are taking a week to get construction estimates done and construction quotes to your customer, you're probably losing business unnecessarily.
The next big thing that is driving change in the world of construction estimates and construction quotes is the demand for flexibility.
Henry Ford might have told people they could only have the Model T in black, but consumers today want to know what their options are.
One of the reasons this is such a strong trend for construction estimating software in 2023 is that, given the opportunity, many customers will upsell themselves. This is exactly why, on large e-commerce sites like Amazon, you will always see a list of “customers also viewed” and similar items on each product page. Customers want options, and giving them the ability to choose increases sales and profits.
In keeping with the parallels between modern construction estimating software and e-commerce, the next big factor in purchasing decisions is images. In fact, according to Search Engine Journal, one of the longest-running digital marketing blogs out there, 62% of all customers who shop online say that images influence their decisions.
Even though we’re all doing more of our shopping and purchasing research online, we still want to see images and even videos of what we will be getting. If your construction estimates are nothing more than Times New Roman on your letterhead, blocks of text and complicated information, your customers can’t visualize what you’re offering them. Just like e-commerce, if your construction quotes have visual appeal, they’ll convert more customers.
Probably one of the best things to come out of the recent, rapid digital shopping evolution we’ve all been through is that we’ve got more information than ever before about what consumers want – not only after they make a purchase but during the process.
In depth research and studies into consumer online shopping habits have given us insights into what people want from the shopping process, and by applying that information to our construction estimating software and processes, we can create a real world construction industry sales funnel.
Whether you like the digital revolution or not, there’s no denying that most of the biggest companies in the world today are either solely online or have a strong online presence, because that’s what people want.
We want to click and collect. We want to be able to compare prices and options late at night, with our feet up, sitting on the couch. We want to see what we’re getting and visualize what we’re going to spend our money on.
These trends are not going to go away. In fact, you can expect to see more disruptive shopping experiences, more digital innovations and more of a shift from the traditional construction estimate to something closer to that e-commerce experience.
Bolster Is Ready
Perhaps the strangest thing about Bolster's construction estimating software is that we built it before the pandemic. So, we didn’t have the insight and input from the online shopping explosion when we first started creating the platform.
What we did know was that the construction estimates we were doing on old-fashioned software were not setting the world on fire, and our construction quotes were hit-and-miss.
Now that we’ve built and refined the Bolster system, we’ve changed all of that. We can create complex construction quotes in minutes. Strike rates for quotes are up, and in most cases, our flexible quote customization options result in an increase over the base price offered.
We can do all of those things right now, and so can you. Contact here the Bolster team to find out more about how our faster, more flexible visual selling tools can change the way you do construction quotes.
It’s disruptive. It builds on all the best information we have about how modern customers make buying decisions, and it can change the way you estimate and quote every project.