Houzz this week launched a Pro Center with tools and other services designed to ease participation on the site by both remodelers and their customers.
Among the touted features:
- Customizable review forms that can be given to clients and included in invoices.
- A special "Pro" badge that can be placed below the remodeler's name on all discussions, comments, and question sections.
- An "Add to Houzz" button that pros can put on their product pages so that visitors can save items to their Houzz ideabooks.
Houzz this year has steadily added services that affect remodelers. On July 8, the company unveiled Houzz Real Cost Finder, a service that pulls data from a survey of more than 100,000 homeowners to give estimates of potential costs of remodeling projects in more than 50 metro areas and every state. That came a half year after the release of Houzz Pro+, in which Houzz sold to remodelers guaranteed spots on the first page of its pages listing contractors in particular markets. In March, Houzz Pro+ was expanded to 425 markets nationwide.
Houzz claims more than 14 million unique visitors each month, 90% of them homeowners. It also counts 230,000 remodelers, designers, architects, and other home professionals as users of Houzz to help promote their work. A survey this spring by the National Association of Home Builders found that 30% of the remodelers who responded said they use Houzz. --Webb is editor-in-chief of REMODELING. Follow him on Twitter at @craiglwebb and the magazine at @remodelingmag.
