Is the roofing industry ready for online pricing?

By Hannah Ford. 

Preparing to navigate roofing pricing in an online space. 

In this Roofing Road Trips® podcast episode, Karen Edwards visits with Mike Goldenstein and Chris Morris of Roofle. They discussed how to further increase e-commerce business in your roofing company.  

Transitioning to e-commerce is a major step for many in the roofing industry and while the shift has already begun, some are slow to adopt. Many roofers are moving their business to online forms like Roofle to help access a wider range of customers. When beginning this change to an online platform, contractors must “know your numbers and not all contractors really know their numbers until they sit down and really figure that out, which leads into the next step, which is, are you comfortable with making that public, being transparent about your pricing and putting it online?” Mike explains. 

Nowadays, when a customer is in search of something they look online first. It’s fast, simple and easy.  They think, “I'm not asking my neighbor about the new whatever we're buying. I'm going to go look at the product reviews,” says Chris. “And now we're seeing all this goodwill and all this online stuff being used in concert with that. So, we're delivering them price and then the company's able to go warrant that price, that credibility that they have in that local marketplace.” 

There are several potential areas for growth but there are also a few concerns that may arise with e-commerce roofing. “As soon as you start looking into a transparent pricing that's online, what are the fears that contractors are going to have to work through as this evolution happens,” asks Mike. “Number one, my competition can see my price. Am I okay with that. And number two, my goods and services are complex. How do I actually present that? And number three is, ‘What if my consumer sees the price and is immediately scared off?’” These questions are all reasonable concerns to have when a major change occurs to a business.  

It is important to remember in a time of progression, several industries have updated to e-commerce before and succeeded. To keep up with the unavoidable advancement of consumers and the world, it is crucial to stay up to date on technological improvements. Mike shares, “Every single industry that's gone through this evolution has had to deal with those issues and it's something that I think they all will because when we're entrepreneurs and we own a company and we have our processes, and maybe we've been in business for five, 10, 20 years, we have to move past the, ‘This is how I do business,’ and into, ‘How does my consumer want me to do business and how will they continue to do business in two, three, five, seven years from now?’" 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to learn more about the best way to transition to e-commerce and expand your business.