There is a well-established pattern for a marketing calculator. Ask for a few numbers, produce a confident-looking figure, gate it behind an email address, and never explain how the figure was reached.
It converts well. We have built the tools differently, and it is worth explaining why rather than leaving it as an unexplained design choice.
Three constraints we applied
- 01
The method sits outside the gate
Every tool shows how the answer is produced — including the full effort model behind the cost comparison — before it asks for anything. You should be able to judge whether the answer is worth an address before you give one.
- 02
The locked state shows the shape of the answer
Every row label, the headline's unit, with only the values masked. You know exactly what you are trading for.
- 03
Every result is labelled an estimate
The tools use indicative emission factors so you can size a problem quickly. A filed disclosure needs the published factor for the reporting year with its source and version recorded. Those are different things and conflating them would put a number into someone's board paper that should not be there.
The reason, plainly
We sell compliance software to people who will be personally accountable for a filing. A vendor that oversells its certainty in a free calculator has told that buyer something about how it behaves when the stakes are higher.
The tools are also genuinely useful, which is the other half of the argument. A visitor who can see the method, disagree with an assumption and change it is getting something a gated black box never provides.
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