A Buying Website for High-Ticket Construction Technology

The client sells and installs automation systems for excavators, dozers, graders and skid steers. The site's package estimates run from $21,500 for a basic 2D excavator system to $123,500 for an automatic mini excavator with a tiltrotator. Its old website was a set of product pages with no prices.

The owner put the sales problem in one sentence: "it's always been really difficult to explain like the ROI on this stuff." Payback depends on the machine, the job, the crew and the hours. In his view the trade holds prices back on purpose: "people don't give out pricing because they're, you know, they're trying to get you to start communicating with the salesperson." In the dealer buying paths I inspected across four regions, none published an installed price or a build-and-price tool. The owner's own view as a buyer: "I'm drawn to providers that give me some pricing up front." He also said that unless a website is really interactive, "you're just gonna leave right away."

I started with the sites buyers compare against. I ran a ranking tournament in 10 heats: construction technology, equipment makers, mining and heavy equipment, energy equipment, automation and robotics, drones and GPS survey gear, dealers and rental, complex catalogues, interactive education, and machine automation and survey. From 239 candidate rows, 161 websites were captured. Eight of those captures showed a cookie wall, a location prompt, an access-denied page, a domain for sale or the wrong company, and the rankings mark them that way. The rest were ranked on six criteria: visual hierarchy, how clearly the company says what it sells, intentionality, premium feel, readability, and how well the navigation handles a big catalogue. The leaders got a second, screen-by-screen read of their homepages on desktop and phone, and the site took its patterns from what they did well. The build puts the buyer's question first. One menu opens by machine, by job, by system and by maker, with product counts and a starting estimate in it. The catalogue filters and loads 24 products at a time. A five-step builder walks through machine, control, positioning, add-ons and review, with a running estimate, yearly costs kept separate, and anything without a sourced price marked on request. A finished build saves to a share code, so a buyer or a sales rep can send it as a link. Five calculators do the payback math on tiltrotator time savings, a subscription against owning a base station, staking against a 3D model, grade-checker labor, and fuel and passes. Each shows its assumptions and what happens if only half the benefit shows up. A profitability worksheet turns a machine and job into a profit picture and exports it as a PDF. The request form takes the buyer's machine, job, location and build as context, and a request started from the builder opens with the machine and the build already filled in. Installation, training, modeling and financing each have their own page.

• 10-heat website ranking tournament
• Next.js site with 71 page templates and static generation
• Five-step system builder with shareable build codes
• Five payback calculators and a PDF profitability worksheet
• Mega menu by machine, job, system and maker
• Request forms that carry the buyer's build

The site has 71 page templates, and the latest preview build generated all 138 of its static pages, with three slow pages passing on retry. Every build with a sourced price shows its estimate before the buyer gives a name or an email. When the owner walked through the interactive pages, his verdict was "I like that," and he loved the calculators, because teaching payback had always been the hard part.

The sales team can send a buyer a saved build instead of re-explaining the options, and a quote request started from the builder opens with the machine and the build already filled in. A buyer can see an estimate and a payback calculation without waiting for a call.

Put the estimate on the page. The dealer buying paths I inspected published no installed price, and this owner told me pricing up front is what draws him to a provider, so the builder shows an estimate for every build it can price from a sourced figure and marks the rest on request.