In this episode of Contractor Radio, our guest Travis Harvego spoke with us about cutting-edge technology for the roofing industry. Travis is the president of roofle.com and a well-respected member of the roofing industry.
The consumer is ready to buy their roof online.
Travis Harvego
After many years working in the industry, there was a realization that the next innovation that needed to be introduced to roofing was finding a way to sell roofs directly to the consumer online. E-Commerce has been taking over the sales world from car sales to retail, so Travis and his team decided that it was time to bring this way of reaching the consumer to the roofing industry; especially with the new generations prioritizing technology and convenience.
They launched in July 2020, which happened to be the perfect time since going door-to-door knocking was not advised during the pandemic lockdown. “We launched our website, we built all the possible tools for the consumer to go online and be able to get anything from an instant estimate to their final price, their final quote, visualizers, everything possible on there that they needed to do to be able to buy a roof online. They went to the website, entered their address, got the instant quote, and if they liked what they saw, they went to the checkout process where they’re able to go through a visualizer and upload a picture of their house so they can say, ‘Okay, I feel comfortable with being able to buy this roof online.’ So that’s what we did for about two and a half years, and that was basically proof of concept to say the consumer is ready to buy their roof online.”
Data from the website showed that 70% of customers were online between 9 pm and midnight. With most households having no one at home during normal business hours to meet with sales reps, being able to buy roofs online at whatever time is convenient for them makes the process much better for the consumer.
Roofle works with highly recommended local contractors who send crews to do the work purchased through the website. The local contractors benefit from this because they are being given jobs that are already sold and guaranteed. Roofle, with no brick-and-mortar locations, was able to do $6 million of work through their website and contractor partnerships.
Because the homeowners never meet anyone from Roofle in person, transparency is an important value for the company. Consumers were provided with a portal that gave updates on the work being done, including photos and videos. “We value ourselves on the fact that we are going to show you our customer experience. So when you hire us, here’s what you’re getting, here’s the experience that you’re gonna get.”
When expanding to more contracting companies, Roofle offers widgets and embedded links for the contractors’ sites using RoofQuote Pro. This feature allows contractors to give accurate quotes online for their consumers as well as show the products and pricing they offer. By using this technology, the SEO for the companies will improve. “We have seen some people that have our technology show up on the first page of Google. So the embedded version, you know, really does help out.”
Roofle also has an onboarding specialist that helps contractors when first using this service “The onboard specialist helps to set up this technology, making sure that you have everything optimized for the customer experience. Where, when they get to this part of your page and they’re going through it they can think, ‘This is reasonable. Let’s go ahead and have this contractor come out and give me this final quote.’”