Solar systems: a site that shows how long it takes to pay for itself
A website for a company that puts solar systems on private houses. The hardest thing to explain here is why the panels need a battery as well. We did it without text: on the first screen the same house appears by day and by night, with a switch between them. Below, the calculator figures out the payback from the amount on the bill, and the finished installations carry the output that the monitoring app reported.
A solar system is sold with sunshine
and bought on payback.
Nobody buys panels. They buy a smaller bill and light at the times when the power has been cut. The site is built around those two things.
- The first screen by day and by nightOne photo of the house in two states. By day the panels are working, by night the windows are lit, and the caption changes along with the frame. The question “why would I need a battery” is answered before the first line of text.
- A calculator that starts from the billPeople do not know how many kilowatts they need, but they do know what they pay. The slider takes the amount on the bill and returns the capacity of the system, the cost, the saving each month and the payback period.
- Installations with their actual outputThe district, the type of roof, the pitch, the capacity, how many days the work took and how much the system really produced over the year. The figures come from the monitoring app, not from a design on paper.
- The installation that came in below forecastOne of the five is shown with an explanation of why it came out lower. A line like that is what makes the other four worth trusting.
- The guarantee set out part by partThe panels, the inverter, the battery and the installation work have different terms, and each one is named separately. A single number, “a 10-year guarantee”, means nothing on a purchase like this.
- Two languagesThe whole site is translated into English, with the switch at the bottom of the page.
The screenshots are taken
from the live site.
First screen
The same house in two states, with the switch in the middle of the frame. Press “At night” and the windows light up, the panels go dark, and the caption under them says the house is running off the battery. Two sentences instead of a section of explanations. Here the switching is shown in motion.
The installations
Five systems of different capacity on different roofs. Each card gives the district, the roof, the pitch, the time the work took and the output for the year. The fourth one says the installation came in below forecast because of the morning shade from the house next door.
On a phone
On a narrow screen the photo is cropped so that the roof with the panels and the switch are what is left. The “By day / At night” button is big enough for a thumb: it is the main action on the first screen, and it has to work from a single tap.
A solar system is not bought on emotion,
it is bought once the payback has been figured out.
The payback is visible before the call
A person puts in their own bill and sees the payback period. Anyone who finds it too long does not take up an engineer's time, and whoever does call has already accepted that figure.
A visit to look at the roof costs half a day
For the client it is free, for the company it is not: the engineer drives across the region, measures the roof and the pitch. The calculator leaves those trips to people who have already accepted the ballpark price.
Figures that can be checked
The output is taken from the monitoring, together with the installation that came in below forecast. In an industry where everyone promises the same, that is the only thing that tells one company from another.
We can do the same for your company
Heating, ventilation, wells, windows — anything people mull over for months while they figure out when the money comes back. Write and tell us what you install and how many jobs you have finished.