Arseni FilonEstimating engine, website, Google Business Profile, and Google Ads
An ICF block estimator, and the site around it
- Client
The ICF Guys- Trade
- ICF home builder
- Place
- White Salmon, Washington
- Live site
- theicfguys.com
The problem
ICF stands for insulated concrete forms, blocks that stack into walls and get filled with concrete. Homeowners searching for it want a number before they call, and many have never heard of the system. The company builds ICF homes, supplies the blocks, and consults, from White Salmon, Washington, in the Columbia Gorge.
How it runs
Goes in
- A wall length and a height
- Openings, corners, and gables
What happens
- Openings come off the wall area
- The area is divided by 5.33 square feet, the face of one straight form, and rounded up
- Concrete is figured from the same area and the thickness of the core
Comes out
- The form count
- The concrete volume
- The rebar footage
- A typical budget range, with no contact details asked
What I built
A site written for one reader
Every page speaks to a homeowner who already owns land and has a budget in mind. The site has 22 pages, organized around the three lines of work, building, supply, and consulting, with 12 town pages across the Gorge. ICF is explained for homeowners who have never heard of insulated concrete forms.
A block estimator for owner-builders
Supply is one of the three lines of work, so some customers build the house themselves and buy the blocks. The estimator takes a wall length and a height. It returns the form count, the concrete volume, the rebar footage, and a typical budget range, at 5.33 square feet per straight form. Openings, corners, and gables are adjusted on the result, and no contact details are needed to see the number.
Before and after sliders and project galleries
The owner already had photographs of finished concrete. They are shown at a size that shows the work, with sliders for before and after.
An estimate form that books the site walk
The form asks what kind of project it is and how far along the plans are. Then the homeowner picks a time for a site walk. The builder gets an email marked site walk requested, with the project, the stage, the time, and where the lead came from.
A verified Google Business Profile
I built the company’s Google Business Profile, the listing a homeowner sees on the map, and got it verified. The address is hidden, and the listing shows a service area on both sides of the Gorge, out to Portland and Vancouver. It is where the company’s reviews live.
Google Ads aimed at people ready to build
I built the Google Ads account from zero. It is set to run Search only, in Washington and Oregon, on the terms a person types when they want to hire, such as ICF builder and ICF contractor. The negative list keeps out job seekers, do-it-yourself searches, courses, and supplier names.
How it is built
A straight form is 16 inches tall and 48 inches long, which is 5.33 square feet of wall. The estimator divides the wall area by that and rounds up to whole forms.
Openings come off the wall area before the count. Concrete is figured from the same area and the thickness of the core.
The arithmetic sits in one small module with no network in it, so it runs as a test on every build.
The result
An owner-builder gets his form count and his concrete in seconds, and the company has a verified Google listing with its reviews on it.
Pages
Four of the 22 pages on theicfguys.com. Each one opens.
Screens
