Try to imagine receiving an important job offer in a city far from yours. Imagine also deciding to embark on this new phase of your life and pack your bags and move to this new city where you know absolutely no one.
First you will have to look for a house. Once found, you will have to check the status of the heating systems, replace the bathroom fixtures, and maybe even change the upholstery of your sofa in the living room. How to do in a city where you don't even know a person? The internet takes care of it.
Indeed, on the web for some years now there are several specialized price comparison websites of the activities of professionals in the heating sector, upholstery, building renovations and much more. Two out of all are InstaPro e habitissimo.
The logic is that of affiliation. The website allows industry professionals to join the community and users to make their own request for a quote for a particular service, such as the purchase and installation of three awnings. The user receives estimates from the professionals who work in his area and then decides to choose the one he considers best according to his tastes.
instapro, for example, is a website born in Holland in 2005 and has more than 7700 affiliated professionals all over the world. There are 60 employees of this company and 12 of them have been in Italy since Instapro made its debut in September 2014.
habitissimo is a website born in 2009 and which is the leader in 8 markets: Spain, Portugal and Italy in Europe and Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico in Latin America. As with InstaPro, Habitissimo also aims to bring user requests closer to the thousands of professionals affiliated with the network. 130 people of many different nationalities work for Habitissimo and every month there are over 90 requests for estimates. This means that the 17 professionals registered on the platform can receive several requests for quotes from users registered on the platform every month. And these are requests for estimates of considerable scope given that the site moves something like 840 million euros every year in construction, renovation and home services works.
On the other hand, Habitissimo is a platform that has 2 million visits a month with users who not only ask for quotes but also talk to other users and professionals through the question function. As in the case of Mrs. Silvia who, after publishing a series of photos of her entrance and living room, asks the professionals for advice on the right color to paint the walls and on the best furnishing components to best complete that area of the his house.
We close this overview with a similar but opposite case to that of the two networks that we have previously mentioned. The story highlights the potential of the web world and the right moves to revive a business in difficulty. Mr Happy Mulfari he is a Lombard house painter whose business was no longer going so well but thanks to the help of his son Diego he manages to recover with a simple but at the same time creative idea: to present himself on the web. The site and blog dedicated to Mr. Felice's activities are born. With the site you can find out what Mr. Felice's duties are and also get a quote. The beginning is not the simplest but then thanks to a newsletter sent to historical customers and the decision to print the name of the website on the company van, requests for estimates and jobs arrive. A PC, a postal address, a website and a good professional (in this case his son) have given a new lease of life to Mr. Felice Mulfari's business. Long live the web!
