03/06Demonstration
NORTH/ROOFnorthroof.co.uk
Nobody can judge roofing work from the ground, so the site shows the working.
Somebody spending five figures on a roof is buying something they cannot see and cannot check, usually with two other quotes on the table. So this site is built like the survey report the winning contractor hands over: everything drawn and labelled, including a record of the jobs that went wrong and what was done about them.
- Sector
- Roofing & Exteriors
- Where
- North West
- Layout
- Bound like a survey report: contents down the spine, numbered pages.
- Status
- Demonstration · built and running
This is not client work. NORTH/ROOF does not exist. We invented the business, wrote everything on it and built the website to show how we would approach this trade. Every price, record and review inside it is made up, nothing you type is sent anywhere, and we are not claiming it won anybody any work.
01The brief
The business we invented, and the person landing on it.
A made-up company is only useful if it is specific enough to argue with. So each one has a real trade, real constraints and a visitor turning up in a particular state of mind.
- AThe business
- A roofing and exteriors contractor in the North West doing big residential jobs: full re-roofs, flat roofing, storm damage and cladding. Everything is sold off the back of a survey.
- BWho lands on it
- A homeowner with a stain on a bedroom ceiling, three quotes in a drawer and no way of telling which of them knows what they are doing.
- CWhat the site has to fix
- Nobody can assess roofing work from the ground. The site has to make the contractor's thinking visible: what they look at, how they specify it, and what happens when a job goes wrong.
02The decisions
Five decisions, and what forced each one.
Every one of these answers something about the business, not a preference of ours. They are also what makes this site different from the other five.
01
Bind it like a survey report.
This trade is judged on the document the surveyor hands over. Making the website that document is more convincing than describing it.
On the page
A spine down the left carries the contents and follows you as you read. Everything to the right is a numbered sheet. Nothing floats and nothing is a card.
02
Draw the roof instead of photographing it.
A drawing can be labelled and a photograph cannot. How a roof is actually built up is the one thing no homeowner has ever had explained to them.
On the page
A cutaway of the layers, an elevation and a map of which walls take the weather — all drawn, all labelled, all part of the argument rather than decoration.
03
Show the guarantee as a specification.
Every roofer says twenty-five years. Setting out the system, the conditions and what voids it turns a slogan back into something you could hold them to.
On the page
Systems and cover set out as a table, with the conditions attached to each line.
04
Publish the jobs that went wrong.
A wall of five-star reviews reads as marketing. A job log that includes the problems, and what was done about them, reads as a firm that keeps records.
On the page
A job record and an issue record, written in the flat tone of a site diary.
05
Ask for what a surveyor actually needs.
A surveyor who turns up already knowing the property, the access and the symptom does a better first visit, and the homeowner can tell.
On the page
The last sheet collects the details a surveyor needs, not name and email.
03The build
Nothing in it is shared with the other five.
Six sites built out of the same set of parts would prove nothing. This one has its own typefaces, its own layout, its own drawings and its own working parts, made for it alone.
- Typefaces
- Tanker for the headings, Switzer for the text
- Layout
- Contents down the spine, numbered sheets
- What you can do
- Move through the sheets, read the exposure map, request a survey
- Drawings
- Cutaway, elevation and exposure map, all drawn by hand
- Deliberately left out
- Card grids, floating panels, review theatre
04The built site
Now use it.
The whole website runs below, inside the frame. Every button, form and slider works, and nothing you type leaves this page.
Starting the NORTH/ROOF demonstration
Everything above the frame is us. Everything inside it belongs to the invented business: its own typefaces, its own colours, its own voice. That is deliberate. An agency that puts its own look on every client site is selling you a template.
05What is missing
Everything that happens after somebody presses send.
A demonstration can only show the front of the job. The rest is where the enquiry goes, who picks it up, what it is allowed to see and how you know it worked.
If NORTH/ROOF were a real business, the ticket, note or quote a visitor builds here would land somewhere real: an inbox, a customer record, a job in the diary, with a name against it and a date it has to be answered by. The words would come from you, the prices from your own books, and we would agree what counts as working before anything got built. That part is most of the job, and no demonstration can honestly fake it.