When it comes to the online solar buying landscape, the team at EnergySage is well positioned as a thought leader. Founded in 2009, EnergySage was created to educate homeowners about solar and the solar purchasing process. Back in 2012/13, they launched the first online comparison marketplace to connect shoppers to a vetted network of solar installers. Today, over 907k people shopped using their platform. 

So when their team investigates what’s winning sales on EnergySage, they have quite a dataset to explore. Tune into this excerpt with Chris Seguin from the free course Selling Solar-Driven Home Electrification in a Virtual World to see what has been winning online solar sales on their platform. Spoiler alert: it’s not just price alone.

Savings at a reasonable cost. Well, there’s a lot of different things that go into it, but it still maintains as the #1 decision making factor for customers. 

So again, we looked at a big group back in the fall of 2023 – folks that we’re currently buying, even in this interest rate environment, even in the craziness that was 2023. And we know that they don’t just shop on price alone, but cost savings, it’s going to be the biggest thing that they look at.

Now, when we say that that’s a reasonable cost, it goes back into that – what is that quality that they’re purchasing? What is that quality of the work that’s going to be done and that service after the installs happened and well down the line and a lot of other different factors?  

EnergySage is built as a comparison marketplace. We encourage consumers to take a look at all the different offerings from that equipment and those warranties, but most importantly, who’s out there. Who’s going to be coming to their house and doing that install? And so we take a look at our data all the time to understand, “Well, what’s winning sales on EnergySage?”

And historically this number’s always actually kind of rung the same and been the same. Most recently, we looked at this for the first half of 2023, 70% of shoppers didn’t choose on price alone, because they didn’t choose the bottom price. They were looking at all these other factors, utilizing the marketplace, utilizing the energy advisor teams, but most importantly, utilizing you. Getting educated by you, letting them understand who your team is and why you guys want to be invited in their house is absolutely important. 

We know there’s several other factors like the environmental aspect, the power outage and reliability and resilience aspect, but most important still rings that it’s going to be saving money – cost savings overall.
Want to dive deeper into how to stand out selling solar, storage, and more online? Enroll in the Selling Solar-Driven Home Electrification in a Virtual World course for free today.