Online business calculators

Excerpt.

The case on how to add an online calculator to the website to increase user loyalty and attract new customers.

What is the purpose of the business calculator? It increases the engagement of potential customers, answers their basic questions and allows calculating the approximate cost of services.

In 2021, EuroBrokers contacted us with a request to create a customs clearance calculator. Using only their formulas from the Excel file, we developed programming and visual parts.

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Client story.

EuroBrokers is engaged in customs clearance of goods, cars, small parcels (DHL, Post) at the airport, sea port and all over Latvia. Initially, the company had a request for a specialized online calculator that would allow website visitors to calculate the approximate cost of customs clearance.

Purpose of adding the calculator:

To take an interest of clients and keep their attention

To allow them to independently calculate the service cost

To attract "warm" customers who already know the price

To reduce the workload on staff due to inappropriate requests

The prospect is the development of generic calculators that can be applied to any business in the service industry. In fact, the calculator is a ready-made request form. It answers the following question, "How much does the service cost?" automatically, without a manager.

The customer's problem was that all the calculation data was stored in an Excel file, and it was impossible to insert it into the website properly. The customer did not want to use third-party online calculator constructors (for example, Calconic, JotForm, etc.), for several reasons:

A monthly subscription pays off only with frequent functional changes, which was not planned.

For the expected result to achieve, the plugins would still have to be refined to collect the entire calculator's math and calculation formulas.

Online constructors do not synchronize exchange rates, which is especially important for the customer.

The calculator was supposed to be White label (without a brand)

Therefore, during preliminary work, we found out that a custom solution for specific business tasks should be developed.

Our solution.

We offered to develop a calculator in a widget format adapted to the current website design.

The customer provided us with the mathematical calculation logic in Excel format:

Initial data for calculator development from a brokerage company

This was enough for us to create a calculator based on the calculation formulas.

We also integrated the exchange rate synchronization with the European Central Bank into the calculator. All calculations are based on the current exchange rates.

Let's note that Calconic and Jotform online calculator constructors do not provide such integrations. This was a custom solution created specifically for this project.

We develop all other calculators for any business using the same algorithm. If the website is built on WordPress, the calculator is built as a WordPress plugin (using WordPress coding standards). It can be placed anywhere on the website with Shortcode.

The result.

Customs tax calculator

Live version in Russian: https://eurobrokers.lv/

Live version in Latvian: https://eurobrokers.lv/

Live version in English: https://eurobrokers.lv/

It calculates the approximate value of VAT and import duties. To find out the amount of taxes on goods in Latvia, the following fields should be filled in:

Currency choice
Cost of goods
Insurance, delivery
Origin of the goods (EU or outside the EU)

Online calculator on the brokerage company website

Summary.

The online calculator development took less than a week. After the calculator was published on the website, the customer noted high user engagement, and organic (search) traffic increased.

The company started getting real requests within the first month. This suggests that the calculator helped improve the interaction between a potential company customer and the manager, as well as attract new customers.

Having received an approximate calculation of customs taxes, the customer started building a more constructive dialogue. Earlier he talked about how the company can solve his problem, and now he is discussing solution options straightaway.

The price given by the calculator allows identifying the target audience that is interested in services and loyal to their cost.

Bonus.

In this case, we indicated only one of the calculator options. In fact, calculators can be created with any subject fields that will help calculate project cost.

The calculator may have additional functions:

Charts
Data export in PDF and Excel formats
Sending data by email
Actions (signals) in Google Analytics, aimed at collecting statistics

At the same time, to develop a custom calculator, only an Excel table containing parameters, variables, variable values, and calculation formulas is required.

Those who might be interested in this:

Construction companies
Insurance agencies
Banks (for calculating loans and mortgages)
Freight forwarders
Furniture factories
Cleaning companies
Repair teams
Beauty projects (for calculating calories, body fat percentage, body mass index, etc.)
Brokers

We prepared several calculator options by our company to introduce their capabilities.