A Quote Form That Asks for Photos

Descriptions that cannot do the job

A homeowner fills in a quote form: grab bars for the bathroom, a standard tub, tiled walls. Before anyone can give a price, the business has to phone back with a list of questions.

Most people cannot describe a staircase, a damaged fence or a stained ceiling in the terms a quote needs. They do not know which details matter.

A photograph taken on their phone often answers half the questions before anyone asks them. Standing in the room, the customer can take one in seconds.

Many quote forms still give them nowhere to put it.

What a few photos save

• The first phone call, spent working out what the job is.
• Site visits for jobs that turn out small or unsuitable.
• Wrong assumptions about materials, access or size.
• Quotes padded to cover what the description left out.
• The customer's time, answering questions they could have skipped.

The fourth is the one customers feel. A business quoting blind has to allow for the worst case, and a photograph often shows the job is simpler than that.

Ask for particular photographs

A field labelled upload photos gets one close-up of the problem. A field that says which photographs help gets what the quote actually needs.

Name them: the whole staircase from the bottom and from the top, the tub with the taps in view, the doorway and the step outside it. Two to five is plenty.

A sample photograph beside the field shows what a useful one looks like faster than any instruction.

Where size matters, ask for one shot with a tape measure in it. It turns a photograph into a rough dimension and saves a question.

Optional, never required

Some people fill in the form at work, some are arranging a job at someone else's home, and some will only get round to photographs at the weekend.

Make the field optional, and say that photos can also be emailed or texted later. A required upload turns away exactly the people who were ready to enquire today.

Limits on size and type

A photograph from a recent phone is typically a few megabytes. Some hosting accounts are still set to accept only a couple of megabytes per upload, which rejects the very first real photo.

Set a limit that comfortably fits several phone photographs, and state it beside the field before anyone chooses files.

Accept images only, plus PDF if plans or drawings would help. Phones save photographs as JPEG, so JPEG and PNG cover nearly everyone.

Never leave the field open to every type of file. An upload field that takes anything can be used to place a harmful file on your server.

Where the photos go

A form that emails photos as attachments can exceed the mailbox's size limit with three or four of them, and the message bounces without anyone knowing.

It is usually better for the form to store the files on the server, in a folder that is not public and cannot run scripts, and to email a link to whoever prepares quotes.

The form should also give each file a new name as it arrives, so a name chosen by a stranger never lands on your server.

Setting up the limits, the private folder and the renaming is quick work for the person who maintains your site, and it only needs doing once.

Then decide how long they are kept. Photographs of the inside of someone's home are personal information, and there is no reason to hold them once the job is quoted or done.

A worked example

A medical supply store sells mobility aids, bathroom safety equipment and stairlifts, and installs grab bars, bath lifts and stairlifts in customers' homes.

Its quote form asked for a name, a phone number and a description. Most descriptions said something like grab bars for my mother's bathroom.

Every one needed a phone call, and many needed a home visit before a price could be given, even when the job turned out to be two bars beside a standard tub.

Stairlift enquiries were harder still: whether the staircase was straight or curved, how many steps, what was at the top. Customers often did not know how to say it.

The store added an optional photo field with three named shots for each kind of job, and a line saying who would see the photographs and that they would be deleted after the quote.

Simple bathroom jobs can now often be priced from the photographs, and the home visits go to stairlifts and jobs that need measuring.

Say how the photos are used

People hesitate to send pictures of their home to a business they have not met. A sentence beside the field settles most of it: who sees the photos, what for, and how long they are kept.

Canadian privacy law expects a business to say why it collects personal information, and photographs of a home count.

Promise plainly that they will not appear on the website or in advertising without asking first. Then keep the promise.

Test it on a phone

Most quote forms are filled in on phones, and on a phone the upload button opens the camera or the photo library directly.

Test the form on an iPhone and an Android phone, with real photographs, on mobile data and away from the office wifi.

A large upload on a weak signal takes time. The form should show it is working, and should not lose what was typed if the upload fails.

The counter-case

Some jobs cannot be judged from a photograph. Anything structural, electrical or hidden behind a wall needs a visit regardless.

And a business that always quotes on site may gain more from a quicker way to book the visit than from photographs.

Even then, a photograph helps decide who goes and what they bring. Ask for them by name, and keep them optional.

Adding the field

1. Name the two to five photos each job needs.
2. Add an optional upload field to the quote form.
3. Accept images and PDF only.
4. Raise the size limit to fit several photos.
5. Store the files privately and email a link.
6. Say who sees them and for how long.
7. Test from a phone on mobile data.

Step four is where most photo fields fail. A limit set below the size of one phone photograph rejects exactly the pictures the field exists for, usually with an error the customer cannot understand.

A form that rejects a photo loses the enquiry as surely as any of the leaks in the enquiries your business lost last year.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.