Building Connection Spring 2018

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Spring 2019 ACROSS THE TRADES 5 5
at $69 per month, extending all the way up to $900 per month,
and include credit on future lead payments. Typical leads
might cost in the order of $10–$36.
Like Oneflare, the portal has a cap (3–5) on the number of
leads per job that its trade business registrants might buy.
We might assume its merits are similar to Oneflare’s, i.e. it
might suit professional, highly selective tradies wanting to cherry-
pick intermittent or seasonal work in average-volume professions.
In 2018, Hipages announced a national partnership
with Bunnings to deliver a new installation service.
Making access to licensed tradies easier and offering
customers a solution for installing a toilet suite at a fixed-
price, the service is now available at all Bunnings stores
around the country.
Those wanting to access the service simply add a Hipages toilet
installation voucher at the checkout when purchasing a toilet at a
Bunnings Warehouse store. A time is then organised, either online
or via a self-serve kiosk desk, with a Hipages plumber to install
the toilet and dispose of the old unit.
ONLINE REVIEWS
Customer reviews are a major feature (albeit contentious)
of find-a-tradie websites. These reviews serve a complex
purpose, helping tradies to shore up a bank of (hopefully
favourable) customer reviews, which might help them stand
out from the crowd and win more business. A long and current
review profile, we should add, encourages trade businesses to
focus on one website, rather than dilute their presence over
multiple platforms.
Trade businesses that are adept at winning positive public
feedback – through swift communication, well developed
quotes, timely completion of jobs, as well as reasonable pricing
(not the cheapest, not the priciest, but somewhere in the
middle) – will perform best on digital job sourcing platforms.
Finally, it pays to look at independent reviews of the
websites themselves on portals like .
For example, Billy Tucker at Oneflare says he was gratified
recently to see that his service went 35 consecutive days
without a single negative review on ProductReview, during
which time there were 200 different pieces of feedback.
Overall, find-a-tradie websites are like a pair of overalls –
either they fit or they don’t. At a basic level, the success of
a trade business using online job sourcing might depend on
the raw salesmanship of the tradie, or their ability to spot
potentially lucrative jobs based on sometimes meagre details,
rather than the structure of the find-a-tradie website.
The only way to find out if it’s the right fit is to test the
waters with an entry-level registration.
Additional reporting by Paul Skelton.
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