Concept study
Specialist home-service company
A search-focused website helping customers confirm the service, explain the problem and request a response.
1 — The scenario
A six-person damp-proofing and timber-treatment company covering three counties. The work is skilled, the guarantees are long, and most jobs start with a worried homeowner rather than a builder.
Winter books out months ahead. Summer is quiet. The team is on site all day, so the phone rings while someone is under a floor.
2 — The customer problem
Nobody searches for damp-proofing. They search for what they can see: a dark patch spreading behind a wardrobe, a skirting board that crumbles, a smell in a back bedroom that will not go.
They want three things before they will speak to anyone. Whether it is serious. Whether it is their responsibility or their landlord's. Roughly what it costs.
A website that opens with company history answers none of that, so they go back and try the next result.
3 — The page and workflow
The route runs from a symptom search to a page about that symptom, then to a request that carries enough detail to price.
- A search for the symptom, not the service
- A page that names the symptom in its heading
- A short explanation of likely causes and what is urgent
- A quotation request that accepts photographs
- An immediate confirmation with a realistic timescale
- The enquiry routed to whoever surveys that county
4 — Key decisions
01
Organise the site by symptom, not by service name.
The customer knows what they can see, not what the trade calls it. Service pages still exist, but the symptom pages are the front door.
02
Let people send photographs with the enquiry.
One photograph of a wall answers questions a form cannot ask, and it lets a surveyor rule out a wasted visit before anyone gets in a van.
03
Reply with a range, not silence.
An honest bracket and a named next step beats a precise number that arrives four days later, because by then the second and third quotes have already been booked.
5 — What would be tested
- Hero-message clarity
- Form completion
- Mobile performance
- Enquiry quality
6 — Concept status
This study demonstrates an approach to strategy, copy, design and workflow planning.
It does not represent work commissioned by a client or results achieved for a real business.