Tasmania Safer Solar (TSS) is Tasmania’s leading solar installer. To grow further, they needed a more reliable way to engage with prospective customers earlier in their journey, building a pipeline of educated, high-quality leads directly associated with their brand. This case study focuses on one key part of that broader digital strategy: a custom-built solar calculator that gave customers personalised savings estimates without overwhelming them. By balancing accuracy with simplicity, and presenting results in a way that felt safe and transparent, we helped TSS turn industry hesitation into trust.

In its first year, the calculator generated around $300,000 in direct revenue, produced the highest-converting leads across all channels, and became a cornerstone of TSS’s growth.

TSS set a long-term goal to build a self-sustaining lead generation channel that could support growth and strengthen their reputation as the trusted choice in Tasmania.

The barrier wasn’t customer demand, but industry-wide perception. Years of aggressive sales tactics and unreliable operators in the broader industry had left many Tasmanians wary of even starting a conversation with a solar company. People feared being harassed by calls or locked into overpriced systems that didn’t deliver. While TSS was founded to counteract this, never operating in this way, they still had to overcome that 3rd part industry bias before customers would feel comfortable engaging.

The challenge: a lack of trust across an entire industry isn’t solved overnight. Mistrust can’t be talked away, it has to be earned back. TSS needed a way to demonstrate value and expertise upfront, giving prospective customers a safe and transparent way to explore solar before committing. The solution had to lower the barrier to first engagement, as well as build confidence from the very start of the customer journey.

Given the challenge, we drew on learnings from other industries. By not niching our business, Flying Pigs can carry ideas across sectors and solve problems that often seem ‘part of the way things are’ within an industry.

In B2B marketing, for example, we need to convert business owners or c-suite executives who score very low on the agreeableness personality trait. Extremely skeptical and more resistant to sales tactics, they are not won over by hype but by tangible value delivered upfront. Over time, that value earns trust and opens the door to meaningful conversations.

We applied the same principle here. In a market where consumers feared being hassled or misled, the answer was not to push harder but to provide something genuinely useful that proved credibility before they ever spoke to a sales rep. A personalised solar calculator became the vehicle for that, giving Tasmanians a safe and transparent way to explore the benefits of solar while positioning TSS as the trusted provider.

A new approach was needed.

For the calculator to work, it had to feel valuable. If it was too technical, customers would end up doing all the heavy lifting themselves. Even if the output was accurate, it wouldn’t feel like value that was provided to them, as they had to work for it. If it was too simple, the result would feel vague and untrustworthy, and customers wouldn’t see it as valuable enough to start earning confidence. At the time, no competitor or off-the-shelf calculator solved for this.

So we built a new model from the ground up. We mapped the psychology of customer decision-making and demographic profiling against the technical requirements of quoting solar, working with TSS to uncover the “why” behind every element they needed to calculate. Once we had the “why,” we could translate it into customer-friendly questions that delivered the same information.

Instead of asking for: 

“Power usage projections or making theoretical future assumptions for the next 5 years”. 

We asked questions anyone could answer in seconds:

“Select any of the following you’re likely to add to your home, in the next five years:  An electric car, a home office, a new family member, a home theatre, etc.”

Behind the scenes, the model extrapolated from these relatable inputs to produce precise numerical outputs that the TSS team could stand behind. The result was a calculator that was accurate, low-friction, and quick to complete (usually in 1 to 3 minutes).

Design that made complexity seem simple.

The UX/UI was built to reduce friction at every step. Every question needed to feel instantly answerable, even when it was handling complex logic behind the scenes.

• Image and text relationships: each question was explained through both words and visuals. For example, when asking about household energy use, the multiple-choice answers displayed increasing sets of appliances. Customers could often answer at a glance, without having to calculate or overthink.
• Custom iconography: designed so customers could recognise their own situation immediately, reinforcing confidence in their choice.
• Intuitive flow: the order of questions was as important as the design itself. Each one built naturally on the last, creating momentum while quietly narrowing variables in the background. This kept quiz time short, not by rushing customers, but by making every step feel obvious and easy to answer.

The end result was a tool that appeared effortless on the surface, but was carefully engineered through marketing psychology and design strategy. Every element, from icons to answer structures, was built to reduce cognitive load, speed up completion, and leave customers with the sense that TSS understood their needs better than anyone else.

Technology with strategy built in.

Custom PHP and API build for maximum CRO: we built the tool from scratch with custom PHP on a WordPress backend, supported by a custom API that processed user inputs in real time to allow quiz progress without page reloads. This served two purposes: it kept the experience smooth and uninterrupted, and it allowed us to present questions sequentially rather than all at once. Customers never felt confronted by a long form. Instead, after answering two or three simple questions, they were already part-way in and more likely to continue; a subtle use of sunk-cost psychology that helped drive completion rates.

To reinforce trust, we also added a subtle loading animation at the end. While the results were already calculated instantly by the API, the animated loading pause gave customers the sense that significant work was being done on their behalf, adding weight to the personalised results.

SEO built in from the start: because our developers are also SEO specialists, optimisations were woven directly into both the build and the content. Technically, the architecture was designed so all questions lived dynamically on a single page, ensuring full crawlability and relevance without disrupting the seamless UX. On the content side, the page was researched and structured using Flying Pigs’ proprietary SEO framework, targeting the most valuable search terms in the Tasmanian solar market. Design tied it all together by keeping the calculator as the focal point, with supporting content placed just below the fold; visible to those who wanted more detail but never distracting from the tool itself.

Reinforcing trust at every step.

The calculator was designed to deliver value at two levels. Customers received key results such as projected savings, costs, and payback period immediately, without needing to share any details. The decision to do this goes back to the original goal: building trust by showing value before moving further in the journey.

For those who wanted more depth, the tool offered an optional personalised PDF report that broke down the full calculations. Choosing to receive it meant opting in with their contact details, creating a natural bridge between curiosity and lead generation.

Behind the scenes, we also built behavioural tracking into the tool. This infrastructure recorded how customers engaged with each step, providing insight into patterns of attention and drop-off. These signals helped inform both ongoing optimisation of the calculator itself and the wider campaign strategy.

• $300,000 in direct revenue in its first year.
• Highest-converting leads across all channels, with customers entering educated and confident.
• Hundreds of voluntarily requested personalised PDF reports, directly driving the $300k attributed revenue.
• A self-generated pipeline of warm, educated leads associated solely with the TSS brand, with no reliance on third-party sources.
• Behavioural tracking insights fed into broader campaigns, improving overall strategy.
• SEO target keywords won ensuring a steady flow of organic users and leads.
• Industry bias turned into a competitive advantage, creating a marketing strategy competitors have yet to match.

Why it matters.

In a highly skeptical market, Flying Pigs and TSS proved that confidence can be built through value, unlocking a channel of both immediate revenue and long-term profitability. The calculator does not just generate sales, it flipped industry hesitation into confidence by giving customers something useful upfront, before they were ever asked to commit.

By redefining “the ways things are done”, we helped to flip the narrative on negative industry bias into $300k of revenue for our client.

Client: Tasmania Safer Solar