Online design consultations are likely more convenient and easier than you realize. You might be at home hitting design link after design link and thinking you can't do a thing about your desired project right now. That is not true! Our online design process means you can discuss styles, pricing, and other options, all in real time, just as if we were sitting around the kitchen table. Here are the top ten advantages we’ve found to our online design consultations.

Top 10 Advantages of an Online Design Consultation

1. More Efficient Meetings

Perhaps the biggest advantage to online design consultations versus in-person meetings is the increased efficiency. These meetings are more efficient for two key reasons:

One, you eliminate drive time from the equation. You’re no longer ferrying yourself to and from the meeting, so that’s time back in your day.

Two, the meetings are more agenda driven. Rather than a lot of preamble, everyone is queued and ready to jump right into business, which is often not the case with in-person meetings. It’s still a friendly, personable exchange, but the actual meeting tends to be quicker than a comparable in-person consultation.

2. No Strangers in Your Home

Even when you’re dealing with a company you fully trust, it’s still inconvenient to have strangers in your home. You worry about vacuuming and getting all those dishes in the sink into the dishwasher and picking up the kids’ toys. One in-home meeting becomes a much more involved process of getting yourself and your home ready. With online design consultations, you don’t have to worry about making a great impression. It’s inherently a much more casual, stress-free meeting than any in-person meetup.

3. Extremely Detailed Meetings

An online design consultation presents the opportunity for us to do a lot of research about your project ahead of time and come ready with relevant information and details. Going in, we’ll already have pictures of your home, which we can study before the meeting and use to provide a much more detailed consultation. Even at a short initial consult, this allows us to cover more topics and to have a more productive conversation.

When it comes to home projects, everyone wants to know the same thing: How much is this going to cost? By doing this research ahead of time, you can get a pretty accurate ballpark estimate with a low and high parameter. From there, you’ll typically get a finalized estimate within twenty-four hours.

4. Multitasking Meetings

Because these consultations are so detailed, one meeting can accomplish many things. We work within the CoConstruct platform, which allows for screen sharing. That means everyone can see the different railing styles, fascia boards, trim types, and other stylistic options. We can earmark products to send to customers, scrapbook ideas, order samples, and more. All this is done in real time right in front of the customer, so everyone knows the task is taken care of, and there’s no need to coordinate a second meeting to accomplish these things.

5. Work around Illness

Maybe you have a cold and don’t feel your best. You don’t have the energy to get dressed, to drive to a meeting location, and to fully participate in that design consultation. With online meetings, though, you simply have to open up your laptop and log in. There’s less energy required, and when you’re done with the meeting, you can immediately get back to resting. If you’re worried about being contagious, an online meeting also eliminates the possibility of putting anybody else in that meeting at risk.

These online meetings are also convenient when your kids get sick. If you’re at home with them, you just get online to do the consultation, and you’re set. No logistics to handle. No babysitters to call. No worries about having people in your home when you or your family are sick.

6. Schedule Early Meetings

A lot of people are averse to early morning meetings because they need time to get ready and then to drive to the actual site. With an online meeting, you can easily schedule it for 8:00 a.m., and you don’t have to worry about being fully ready and prepared for the rest of your day or battling morning traffic. Because you’re just logged into your computer and using the audio feature, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t gotten out of your pajamas or showered yet. Nobody will even know!

Having the meeting early also means you can get it out of the way, and then the rest of the day is fully free for the rest of your commitments.

7. Flexibility of Location

Online design consultations can happen anywhere you get an Internet connection. That means you can hop into the meeting from your office, from home, or from that coffee shop down the street. It doesn’t make any difference to the productivity and efficiency of the meeting.

If your schedule is particularly difficult to work around, you could even just call in. You won’t get the benefit of the shared screen that you’d see with a laptop, but if you simply can’t carve out a time, calling in on your cell phone is another option. Online design consultations are inherently remote and designed to ensure you can participate, no matter where you are.

8. Coordinate Schedules

Everyone has such a hectic schedule nowadays. It seems almost impossible to get multiple people in the same physical room at the same time. Say you travel for work and are out of the state one week, and your spouse is swamped under with meetings. Then add in the schedules of our team members, and it quickly becomes difficult to find any window. By allowing all participants to be essentially anywhere in the world, it’s much more conceivable to find time slots that work for three or more people.

9. No Unnecessary Delays with Your Project

When you’re excited to get a home project started, the last thing you want to do is bump out the timeline again and again. The project, however, can’t start until everyone is on the same page and these initial meetings have taken place. If you have to delay meeting after meeting just because it’s too difficult to get everyone in the same room, the advantage of an online design consultation quickly becomes apparent.

10. More Inclusive Meetings

Not everyone is in a position to easily jump into a car and drive to a location. Online design consultations are more inclusive in this way, and they pose far fewer barriers to participation. Whether the client has a newborn at home or has a disability that prohibits driving, online meetings help ensure everyone has equal access to our services.

Interested in learning more about how we operate? Give us a shout. We’d love to discuss how we can take your next home project from idea to reality!