A configurator that qualifies enquiries for you
„How much does a window cost?” is not an enquiry — it is the start of four emails and two phone calls. A configurator has one job: to turn that into a complete set of details you can answer once.
The problem is not on the customer's side
A joinery manufacturer receives enquiries along the lines of „please quote for windows for a house”. To calculate anything, a salesperson has to establish dimensions, material, opening method, glazing type, colour, installation, timing and country of delivery. Each of those is one exchange of emails. By the time the set is complete, days have passed and the customer has written to three other companies.
The customer is not at fault here. They do not know those eight things are needed — how would they. It is the site's job to ask for them in a way that does not feel like a government form.
Seven paths instead of one form
In the configurator we built for a manufacturer in the German-speaking market there are seven separate paths — because somebody looking for a front door has different questions from somebody planning a conservatory. Each path runs through its own set of steps and ends with a complete set of details from which a quote can be produced.
Those 655 verified price combinations are the part nobody talks about and the one that decides whether a configurator is fit for production. With seven paths and several hundred options, the number of possible combinations is large enough that clicking through a few proves nothing. You have to walk them by machine and compare the output against the price list.
That verification surfaced nine faults which had little chance of showing up under manual clicking. The prettiest: a field holding three values separated by semicolons was being read as a number and quietly turned into zero — a price came out, it just was not true.
Five languages from day one, not „in phase two”
The configurator runs in five languages from the start. That looks like a marketing decision and is a technical one: adding a language to a finished configurator means walking every path, every option name and every error message. Doing it up front costs little more than one language; adding it later costs nearly as much as building it again.
On top of that, this industry brought in four Austrian subsidy schemes in force in 2026, calculated live during configuration, and four instalment plans. That is exactly the kind of knowledge an off-the-shelf tool does not have and will not acquire.
Why off-the-shelf plugins are not enough here
The question always comes: there are configurators you can buy, so why build one. The answer is not „because ours is prettier”. It is this:
- Dependencies between options. With made-to-measure products some choices rule out others — a certain fitting does not go with a certain profile, at a certain width a certain opening method is impossible. Ready-made tools handle lists of options; rules of the form „this excludes that” begin where they end.
- Local regulations and subsidies. In this project the price includes four Austrian subsidy schemes calculated during configuration. No off-the-shelf tool has that, because it is knowledge that changes yearly and applies to one country.
- Instalments. Four payment plans with different interest — this changes how the customer looks at the price, and it has to be calculated by the same mechanism as the base price so the two figures always agree.
Any one of those three could be worked around. All three at once mean the workaround costs more than building it properly.
How to order the steps so people do not abandon them
A configurator fails not because it asks a lot of questions, but because it asks them in the wrong order. Four rules we apply:
- Start with the choice the person already has in mind. Somebody landing on a window manufacturer's site knows it is windows, not doors. The first question should confirm their intent, not test their knowledge.
- Hard questions in the middle, not at the start. Dimensions and glazing type are the point at which some people have to get up and measure. If that is step one, nobody comes back. If it is step four, they have already invested time and will.
- Show a price before they finish. A range or an indicative price after a few steps holds attention. A configurator that reveals the price only after you hand over contact details reads as a trap — because it is one.
- Contact details last, and only the necessary ones. A name and a way to reach them. Every extra field at that step costs you enquiries.
Where 771 options come from without introducing errors
A configurator is only as good as the data feeding it. Across seven paths and eight product categories the database ended up with 771 options and 621 product images. Retyping that by hand from the client's material would have taken weeks and produced typos in prices.
We pulled the data from the manufacturer's source material by machine, then verified the result: 655 combinations calculated and compared against the price list. That is the order worth remembering — enter by machine, verify by machine. Manual entry plus manual checking is the same work twice, with the same chance of error twice.
Without measurement a configurator is faith, not a tool
It is worth building a configurator so that it records which step people drop out at. In this project the traffic on the configuration module is counted separately, with the visitor's address turned into an irreversible hash — that is, without storing anything that would identify anybody.
That single number — which step loses the most paths — says more than any opinion about the design. If half drop out at the dimensions step, that is not a problem with the configurator; it is a signal that you need an option reading „I do not know the dimensions, please measure”.
A configurator without measurement improves according to the hunches of whoever commissioned it. With measurement, it improves according to where people actually get lost. The difference after six months is large, and the cost of adding a counter is small.
What a configurator does to your sales
It does not sell. That is the most common misunderstanding: with made-to-measure products nobody buys online, because measuring and fitting are inseparable parts of the purchase.
It does three things: it filters out people who realise mid-way that this is not for them; it educates those who stay, because walking through the steps teaches them what actually affects the price; and it hands the salesperson a complete set, so the first reply can be specific instead of asking for more details.
Honestly: we have no before-and-after figures for this project, because the client did not measure what enquiries looked like previously. What we do have is pace — a working demonstration was ready four days after the first conversation, on real product parameters rather than sample ones.
When it is worth it
- When the product has dimensions, variants or installation — that is, when the price is not a single number on a page.
- When your sales team loses time asking the same questions over and over.
- When you sell across several markets, each with its own regulations, subsidies or standards.
- Not worth it when you have a simple catalogue with fixed prices — there a configurator adds clicking rather than removing it.