Are you asking too much of architects & specifiers?

Have you ever considered how many hoops specifiers are required to jump through just to find your product information and build up an understanding of your products? It could be killing your marketing efforts.

Architects and specifiers are important to your company, right?

For many building product companies, they are one of, if not the most valuable market segment.

If you fall into this category, then you likely know how ‘time poor’ these professionals are.

Our own recent research highlights that all the main frustrations specifiers have with the product research process are all related to the time it takes to complete the task.

And the recent Specification Report from the NBS highlighted that 60% of specifiers ‘re-use specifications they have written for other projects’, whilst 52% ‘copy and paste from previous specifications’.

All in an effort to save time.

So if you want your company to perform well in this market, or if you want to gain an edge over your competition, it’s important that specifiers can:

1) Quickly and easily find your products and access your information, and
2) Quickly and easily understand what your product does and how it would benefit their project

The emphasis here being on quickly and easily.

But have you ever stopped to think about just how quick and easy you really make specifiers’ lives?

Or, perhaps more accurately, how complicated you might be making it?

And how this potentially impacts your lead generation and sales?

It’s easy to assume that because you’ve got all your information online that you’ve made everything really fast and clear and simple and straightforward.

But let’s take your company website for example.

If you work through all the steps that specifiers have to go through in order to access the information they need to decide to specify your product(s), you might be shocked at the hoops they need to jump through.

Some of the worst offenders are:

• Complicated on-site navigation and site structure (eg. products not having their own pages)
• Product pages that don’t have the information specifiers need
• Grouping file types onto a single part of the site, rather than in context with the products they relate too
• Requiring specifiers to register to your website to download content
• Requiring specifiers to contact your company to get a file they need
• Asking specifiers to fill in a contact form, rather than just providing an email address
• Only having a telephone number as a way to get in touch
• Having some information (often BIM or CAD files) exclusively available on a third-party site, which requires the specifier to visit and/or register there as well
• Requiring high levels of detailed information before providing a quote (found a leading insulation manufacturer who requires 13 fields to be filled in to submit an enquiry — too much)

Many of these in isolation seem like small, low impact requirements which shouldn’t cause too much issue for specifiers. But when grouped together, the whole process quickly becomes a chore.

Importantly, and this is a point almost all building product companies overlook, remember that you are not the only company the specifier is interacting with.

Unfortunately, you are not the centre of their world.

They are potentially doing this research across tens or even hundreds of products and websites.

So when you ask something of architects and specifiers, keep in mind that they are likely being asked to do the same by your competitors too.

If you’re responsible for marketing, sales or lead generation, I highly recommend spending just 30 mins reviewing your company website, and seeing what steps you could simplify, or take out altogether, and make specifiers’ lives easier.

You can quite easily stand out from the competition with some simple changes.

SpecifiedBy is a modern search & comparison platform, which helps specifiers to research building products quickly and efficiently and without all the time consuming tasks they hate.

If you’d like to see how we can help empower specifiers find and specify your products, book a demo.