Owner Pip Karl of McKenzie House Interiors, needed a custom calculation tool developed for her website. As a curtain and blind making business, she required a series of interactive calculators that could translate the complex formulae involved in making curtains and blinds into a tool her customers could use to generate an instant quote.
These custom built calculators had to allow for varying material prices, widths and pattern repeat sizes, as well as a range of making styles and various other product options which all produce different price outcomes. She needed the calculators to prompt a series of answers from the customer and then take all of that information and turn it into an accurate quote.
Quoting for custom made work is a huge part of my business and extremely time-consuming. If a quote isn’t accepted, the time spent doing it is wasted when I could have spent it on other aspects of my business.
Pip Karl, Owner McKenzie House InteriorsFor custom soft furnishing manufacturers, turning around accurate quotes quickly is often the biggest bottleneck to growth. McKenzie House faced a classic industry challenge: quoting complex, highly customised curtains and blinds requires intricate mathematical calculations—from pleat ratios to patterned fabric drop repeats—taking precious time away from actual production.
The size of the curtain is not a simple calculation. Depending on the choice of pleats, the curtain may require more or less fabric. With patterned fabric, the size of the curtain will impact on the number of drops, and some off cut fabric may be wasted, but needs to be priced in. For curtain tracks, they may need to be bent around a corner, this adds more time and complexity.
By leveraging Website World’s advanced product customisation options and dynamic custom calculation plugin, McKenzie House implemented an instant, automated online quoting tool. The result? Customers receive instant pricing without the huge price tag of custom web development, giving this business a distinct competitive edge.
Custom Feature Development - Complex Calculations Tool
In the manufacturing and trades sectors, quoting is inherently time-consuming and requires specialized expertise. Many business owners find themselves trapped in a unpredictable cycle of revenue: swinging between doing the work to meet tight deadlines and spending hours drafting quotes for new business.
For McKenzie House, soft furnishings bring specific quoting complications:
- Complex Fabric & Pleat Ratios: Curtain sizing isn't a straight price calculation. Different pleats demand varying amounts of fabric.
- Pattern Repeats & Off-Cuts: Patterned fabrics require specific drop calculations, where wasted fabric off-cuts must still be accurately priced into the job.
- Hardware Customisation: Bending tracks around corners adds additional labor and complexity to the pricing structure.
Meanwhile, modern consumers expect immediate answers. When custom quotes take days to compile, customers often move on to competitors simply to get the job done—even if it means paying a higher price. McKenzie House needed a solution that delivered instant, user-friendly quotes to capture warm leads without burdening the owner or driving away customers.
To give customers an instant online quote, a business usually needs an intuitive front-end tool that asks only relevant questions, paired with a complex back-end logic engine. McKenzie House utilised Website World’s flexible product customisation features alongside its custom calculation plugin, creating a seamless, self-service online quoting journey which provides:
- Conditional Logic: Dynamically hides or reveals options based on previous answers, keeping the interface clean and easy for the customer.
- Mathematical Equation Engine: Automatically calculates exact fabric requirements and making prices from customer dimensions and pleat choices.
- Grid/Spreadsheet Lookups: Easily pulls accurate pricing based on two-dimensional grids (e.g., width x drop).
- Cross-Category Material Selection: Allows users to pick fabrics from separate categories while keeping the total price updated in real time.
- Owner Independence: McKenzie House can easily duplicate quoted products, tweak parameters, update pricing, and add new options without paying a developer every time.
My first customer to use the new feature thought it was a great service all round and she made a purchase directly from one of the calculators – just two days after they were launched. I was absolutely delighted to get a positive result so quickly!
Pip Karl, owner McKenzie House InteriorsBenefits of a Custom Calculation Tool
Pip needed her website to be more interactive and productive - not just a source of information, requiring her website to produce instant pricing results based on data entered by the user. She also wanted the experience for the user to be fun and interesting; a place where they could feel that they had real input into the process of choosing their custom made product.
End customers are in a hurry; they want a quote as soon as possible so that they can compare quotes and make a purchase. Often manual quotes come too late, with the customer has already chosen another quote. However this has the ability to change if an instant quote is provided. View the custom quote feature in action here.
Being able to generate an instant quote online means my customers can potentially place an order straight away while they’re focused on it. They can then put that job to bed and get on with whatever else they need to do
Pip Karl, Owner McKenzie House InteriorsWith a combination of unlimited product customisation options, and the addition of a custom calculations plugin, it is easy for a business owner to solve the instant quote problem without massive development fees. A business owner can:
- Add quotable products
- Add custom options, with pictures and pricing
- Hide/Reveal other custom options depending on the answers to previous questions
- Add custom calculations with mathematical equations to convert dimensions into pricing
- Add custom rules to lookup spreadsheets for a price based on 2 dimensions
- Enable customers to choose a material from another category
- Automatically determine the amount of fabric required, and keep the shopping cart updated with the making price and material cost.
I’m really excited about the potential of these calculators! I have wanted this feature incorporated into my website for a very long time and Website World have been able to achieve exactly what I wanted.
by Pip Karl, owner McKenzie House InteriorsIf you would like to use our Custom Calculations plugin to calculate a complex manufacturing cost (quote) for your business online, sign up for a free trial today!
