What a Roofing Consultant Website Needs

The confusion is the first problem

Somebody searching about a roof is usually looking for somebody to fix it.

They land on your site, see roofing, and read it as a contractor with an unusually text-heavy page.

Then they either telephone asking for a quote to replace a roof, or leave.

So the first line of the site has to say what you are: an independent consultant who assesses and reports and does not perform the work.

What the site has to establish

• You do not do the work.
• You have no interest in the outcome.
• What a report contains.
• Who typically hires you.
• What it costs.

The second is the whole value. A strata council or a building owner is paying for an opinion from somebody who does not benefit from the answer being replacement rather than repair.

Who actually hires you

Which is a different list from who visits.

Strata councils and property managers facing a large expenditure and needing a defensible basis for it.

Building owners deciding between repair and replacement.

Buyers wanting an assessment before closing.

Insurers and lawyers needing an independent opinion on a failure.

And owners in a dispute with a contractor over workmanship.

Writing a short page for each of those five is more useful than a general services page, since each arrives with a different question.

Say what a report contains

Which is the thing being bought and is almost never described.

How the inspection is conducted, what is examined, whether it includes moisture testing or core samples, and what the deliverable looks like.

Say how many pages, whether it includes photographs, whether it includes a cost estimate, and whether it includes a recommended scope of work.

A redacted sample report, with the property details removed, is the single most persuasive thing on this kind of site.

Nobody in this field publishes one, which is exactly why it works.

Say the turnaround from inspection to report, since somebody with a deadline is choosing on that.

A worked example

A consultant had a site describing services in general terms and received mostly homeowner calls wanting a roof replaced.

They rewrote the first screen to say plainly that they assess and report and do not perform roofing work.

They added a page per client type, a description of what a report contains, and a redacted sample.

Homeowner calls fell to almost nothing and enquiries from property managers rose.

Several mentioned the sample report specifically as the reason they made contact.

Nothing about the practice changed except what the site said it was.

Impartiality has to be demonstrated

Not asserted.

State that you take no commission, hold no supplier relationships, and do not tender for the work you specify.

Say what happens if the assessment concludes the roof is fine, which is that you say so and issue the report.

Where you have professional credentials, name them and the body, since that is what a strata council minutes as justification for the appointment.

Carry your errors and omissions coverage as a stated figure, since that question arrives in every commercial engagement.

Those four items together are the argument, and each is a sentence.

Price the assessment, not the project

Which is achievable here in a way it is not for contractors.

An assessment of a defined building is a scoped piece of work, so a range by building type is publishable.

A single-family home, a small strata building, a larger complex, and a commercial roof are four different figures.

Say what adds to it: moisture scanning, destructive testing, drone or aerial work, or attendance at a meeting to present.

That last one matters for strata work specifically, since presenting to an annual general meeting is a common additional request.

Publishing this filters out the homeowner expecting a free inspection, which is most of the wasted contact.

Explain the depreciation report relationship

Which is specific to this market and comes up constantly.

Strata corporations here commission depreciation reports covering all components on a long cycle, and a roof assessment is a different and narrower thing.

Say how the two relate: whether your assessment feeds into one, whether it supersedes an estimate in one, and when a council needs the specific rather than the general.

A council reading that page understands why they need you when they already have a report on the shelf.

That is a page no competitor will have written and it addresses the objection directly.

Write for a committee, not an individual

Since strata and commercial work is decided by a group rather than a person.

A council member who likes your site has to persuade six others, some of whom will not read anything, at a meeting where several things compete for attention.

So give them something to circulate: a one-page summary of what an assessment involves, what it costs, and what the council receives at the end.

Written that way, your page becomes the document attached to the agenda rather than a link somebody mentions.

That is a small change in how the page is written and it decides whether you are one of three quotes or the only one discussed.

The counter-case

Much of this work is relationship-based.

Property managers and engineering firms refer repeatedly, and a consultant with three good sources may never need enquiries from strangers.

Publishing assessment fees also constrains pricing on complex buildings where the work varies enormously.

And a redacted sample report requires client permission that is not always available.

Say on the first screen that you do not perform the work, write a page per client type, describe what a report contains, and publish a fee range.

What to build first

1. State you are not a contractor.
2. Say it on the first screen.
3. A page per client type.
4. What a report contains.
5. A redacted sample.
6. The impartiality statement.
7. Fee ranges by building type.

Step five is the one nobody does, since a prospective client can read every consultant's description of their methodology and has no way to compare the thing they are actually buying.

Describing what you do rather than listing it is covered in describing a service without listing features.

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.