Windows price per unit, doors and screens price per metre. A glazing site that only knows one of those gets the other wrong. How to build one that handles both.
Glazing has a quirk that most trades do not, and it is the reason so many glazing websites give up on pricing entirely.
A casement window is priced as a unit. A bi-fold or a shopfront screen is priced by the metre of opening. A door is a unit with a hardware and glass specification hanging off it. Secondary glazing is different again. One trade, several pricing bases, and a customer who has no idea which one applies to what they want.
Faced with that, most glazing sites do the same thing: a gallery, a list of products with no prices, and a contact form. Which means every single enquiry starts with the installer working out what the customer is actually asking for.
Let the product decide the basis
The fix is not to simplify the pricing. It is to let the visitor pick the product first, and switch the pricing basis behind the scenes once they have.
Someone choosing casement windows gets asked how many and what size. Someone choosing bi-folds gets asked the width of the opening. They never have to know that those are two different calculations, because they were never asked an abstract question — they were asked about their own house.
There is no glazing example on our public showcase yet, so there is nothing to click through here and I am not going to pretend otherwise. This is the pattern we build estimators around — product first, basis switched behind the scenes, a range rather than a spot figure — and the first glazing build is the one the trade gets designed around. A demo is always free, which is the honest way to see it with your own products in it.
Show a range, never a spot price
This matters more in glazing than almost anywhere, because the variables that move the price are invisible from a form. Frame material, glazing spec, whether there is a lintel involved, access, whether the old units come out easily or fight.
A range with the assumptions stated under it does the job a spot price cannot. It qualifies the enquiry, it filters out the person who thought a full house of sash replacements might be two thousand pounds, and it does not tie you to a number you have not surveyed. Nobody has ever been annoyed by a range that turned out to be accurate.
The accreditation question
If you are FENSA or CERTASS registered, that belongs high on the page and stated plainly, because a homeowner replacing windows has usually been told to check for it and often does not know what they are checking for.
If you are not registered, leave the slot empty. Our example pages hold to exactly that rule — trust slots stay blank rather than being filled with a generic badge, because a trust mark that turns out to be decorative is worse than no trust mark at all. The same rule applies on client sites: nothing goes on the page that cannot be checked.
What it costs
Right now that is £99 to build and then a monthly that starts at £17.99 just to keep it online, or £35 — about £8 a week — to have it looked after and kept current. That is a launch price for the first ten trades who take it, not a standing rate, and the site and the domain are in your name from the day it goes live rather than after some qualifying period.
That includes the estimator built around your own products and your own rates — not a generic calculator with your logo on it. When your prices change, we change the calculator, because a tool quoting last year's numbers is worse than no tool at all.
The short answers
- How much does a glazing website cost?
- £99 to build, then a monthly from £17.99 to keep it online — or £35, about £8 a week, to have it looked after and kept current. That is the launch price for the first ten trades, not a standing rate, and nothing is paid until the site is built and you have seen it. For glazing that includes the estimator built around your own products and rates.
- Should a glazing website show prices?
- Show a range with its assumptions stated underneath, never a spot price. The variables that move a glazing price — frame material, glazing spec, lintels, access, how the old units come out — are invisible from a form, so a range qualifies the enquiry without tying you to a number you have not surveyed.
- What if I'm not FENSA or CERTASS registered?
- Leave the slot empty. A trust badge that turns out to be decorative is worse than none, and nothing should go on the page that cannot be checked. If you are registered, it belongs high on the page and stated plainly, because homeowners are told to look for it without being told what it is.