More leads are not always better. Especially if you're paying for them.
For roofers, a bad-fit enquiry does not just waste inbox space. It can waste ad spend, admin time, follow-ups, a site visit, and an evening spent pricing a job that was never serious.
So today we built a simple demo: The Roof Quote Fit Checker. Have a play with it here.
It shows how a roofing business could filter enquiries before they hit the inbox.
- Good-fit leads get the quote CTA.
- Maybe-fit leads get asked for more detail first.
- Bad-fit leads do not get sent straight to the contact form.
That is the point. Most websites are built to collect every lead. This one is built to protect quoting time.
Built around a real roofer
We built it around a real Bay of Plenty roofer, Bradley Roofing. They do proper roofing work across the BoP: leaks, repairs, re-screws, full roof replacements, new metal roofs, skylights, ESPAN cladding. Family business out of Papamoa, Licensed Building Practitioner, Site Safe member, NZ Coloursteel products, 5-year workmanship warranty. Real services, real area, real jobs.
Jared is not a website client of ours (yet). The demo lives on our client subdomain and is just there to show the tool on a demo site.
Six questions a roofer would normally ask on the first phone call
The filter asks:
- What's the job? (leak, repair, replacement, new metal, re-screw, maintenance, skylight, cladding, gutter, inspection, not sure)
- Where is the customer at? (ready to book, comparing, checking rough cost, insurance/landlord/body corp, just exploring)
- Budget range
- Urgency
- Photos or details
- Location (Papamoa/Mount/Tauranga, wider BoP, outside area)
Then it routes the enquiry into one of three buckets.
Good fit
"Drop your details and we'll be in touch ASAP." Inline contact form. Customer also gets the option to book a tentative site visit slot directly. From the roofer's side, a structured email lands in the inbox with all six answers attached, plus contact details, plus the chosen slot. No tab-switching, no detective work.
Maybe fit
"We just need a couple more details first." Same inline form but with a 1-2 day response framing, plus a checklist of which photos actually help speed up a quote.
Not quote-ready
No contact CTA. Outside the area? Customer gets pointed to NZ Master Builders for their region. Just exploring with no urgency, no photos, no budget? Gets a "come back when you're ready" page with the prep checklist.
Contact CTA hidden. Quoting time protected.
If you want to see how the routing decisions get made, we built a strategic walkthrough version on the PlainBlack site. Each question card has an annotation card alongside it explaining what the filter is checking for at that step.
The strategic move is not making the form longer
It's stopping the wrong people from reaching the same finish line as the right ones.
Run the maths on a roofer fielding 10 quote requests a week, 4 of them poor-fit, 45 minutes each to check, price, reply, follow up. That's 3 hours wasted per week. 12 hours per month. 144 hours per year. Before you count the ad spend that brought those bad-fit leads in.
If a lead costs money to get, every bad-fit quote request hits twice. First in ad spend. Then in time. That's a shit deal.
Quote filter, not lead generator
The website's job changes from "collect every enquiry" to "send the right enquiries through with the context already attached."
Same logic works for plumbers, sparkies, HVAC, builders, landscapers, decks and fences, anyone running quote-heavy trade work where the inbox is starting to outpace the site visits.
Oh, and as a bonus, there's a matrix-pill 404 page wired up to the demo. Click anything that isn't part of the quote-checker flow and you get a "blue pill or red pill" choice. Pure self-indulgence, would not bill a client for it. Fun though.
I kinda made 3 things today, so can I have the day off tomorrow Ian?