Selling solar starts with the payback question.
What a building owner wants to know before asking for a solar survey, and how a website can answer it with honest numbers and a clear process.
The idea in brief
Let a building owner estimate cost, saving and payback for their own roof. Explain the ways to pay and the approval steps before asking for a site visit.
The owner of a warehouse opens a solar company’s website. The homepage shows a drone shot of panels, a paragraph about a cleaner future and a button marked “Contact us”. The owner came with one question: what will this cost me, and when do I get it back? The page never says.
Rooftop solar is a considered purchase. It involves a roof survey, a utility application, a financing decision and often a board or a family to persuade. A website cannot close that sale, but it can answer the first questions well enough that the right people ask for a survey.
Answer the payback question first
Give visitors a way to estimate the numbers for their own building. A simple calculator that takes a monthly electricity bill or a roof area and returns an indicative system size, saving and payback period does more than any slogan.
Be open about the assumptions. State the tariff, the system cost per kilowatt and the yield you used, and the date you last updated them. Label the result as an estimate that a site survey will refine. A figure that turns out to be optimistic costs you the sale later, at a worse moment.
Show how the figure changes. An owner with a high daytime load and an owner with an empty building at noon will see different results, and both deserve an honest one.
Explain the ways to pay
A buyer may assume that solar means a large payment up front. Often there are several commercial models, and the choice between them matters more than the brand of panel. Set them side by side: who pays for the equipment, who owns it, who maintains it, what the customer pays each month and what happens at the end of the term.
A table works better than three separate pages, because the reader is comparing. Say plainly whom each option suits. An owner with capital and a long lease is in a different position from a tenant with five years left.
Show how approval works
In Dubai the process runs through DEWA’s Shams Dubai initiative, which lets building owners install solar panels and connect them to the grid. The electricity is used on site first. According to DEWA’s questions and answers, any surplus is exported and credited against future bills, and the producer is not paid money for it. Only consultants and contractors enrolled with DEWA are authorised to install, operate and maintain a system, and the permitted capacity depends on the building’s connected load.
Those rules shape the numbers, so the calculator and the copy should reflect them. Other emirates and utilities have their own schemes.
Lay out the steps as a timeline: survey, design, application, installation, inspection and connection. Say who does each step and which documents the customer has to provide. A customer who can see the whole path is less likely to stall halfway along it.
Qualify before the site visit
A site survey takes an engineer away from other projects, so the enquiry form should help decide whether to send one. Ask who owns the building, the type of roof, the approximate monthly bill and the location. A short quiz can feel lighter than a long form while collecting the same answers.
Only promise a response time you can keep. If the site says a specialist will call within an hour, someone has to be assigned to make that call, including on a Saturday. Route the enquiry with its answers attached so the first conversation starts from what the customer already said.
Think about the partners as well as the customers. Villa builders, architects and facility managers meet building owners long before a solar company does. They need their own page, with what they gain from a referral and how a project is handed over.
How we help solar companies
SolTech connects site owners, investors and DEWA-accredited contractors for rooftop solar in the UAE. We built its English and Russian website with a savings calculator, a 60-second quiz and a one-hour callback promise. The site explains three commercial models side by side: Buy and Own, ESCO with zero capex and Co-Invest, each with its payback and the customer it suits.
We also researched 24 potential partner companies across four segments, with contacts verified on official pages, and prepared 23 tailored one-page proposals with savings charts and financing tables built from SolTech’s published rates.
- Roughly what would a system for my building cost?
- When would it have paid for itself?
- Do I have to pay for it up front?
- Who deals with the utility?
- What happens after I send the form, and how soon?
See our work for solar energy companies, or how we plan an offer before building the page.
