The page counts only the seconds the quote is really in front of someone and stops when they switch away. One alert on the first open. Time is recorded against the person who identified themselves, so a forwarded quote shows up as a second reader. Your own previews never count. Post-frame and barndominiums only — so the quote being read is a building with a porch, a slab and a payment schedule, and the minutes tell you which part they're chewing on.
Also called: did they open my quote · how long did they look at it · estimate opened alert
You hear about it the first time they open the quote
Following up used to be a guess. Call the same day and you are nagging; call Friday and somebody else has been out to the site. The first open stamps the estimate and fires one alert to whoever you route it to, in the bell and by email. It fires once for the deal, not once per page load — so a buyer who opens it four times on a Sunday night does not give you four alerts on Monday.
You call the same afternoon and sound pushy, or wait until Friday and find somebody else has already been out to the site.
A rep who calls right after the first open sounds attentive, not pushy. One alert per deal — not per page load — means the signal is worth acting on, and the call lands while the building is still on their mind.
Read time, because ten seconds and twelve minutes are different calls
The quote counts only the seconds it is actually the tab in front of somebody, and stops the moment they switch away. A glance and a real review arrive as two different numbers instead of one identical open. Totals are capped at a day, so a tab left open on a laptop overnight cannot report as twenty-four hours of interest.
Two customers both show one open; one glanced for ten seconds, the other spent twelve minutes on the payment schedule — and you call them both the same way.
A rep who knows how long they read can match the call to the interest. Counting only the seconds the quote is in front of somebody, capped at a day, turns 'opened' into how serious they are.
It tells you who opened it, not just that somebody did
Time is recorded against the person who put their name on the link. So a quote forwarded to a spouse, a partner or a lender shows up as a second reader rather than as more minutes on the first. A buyer who sends your document on has moved — and that is worth knowing before you pick up the phone.
The quote went to the husband; the wife and the bank read it twice as long, and you never knew they were in the decision.
The person reading longest is often the one deciding. Seeing a second name tells a rep the quote has moved inside the household or to the lender — worth knowing before he picks up the phone.
Checking your own quote never trips the alert
A builder opening their own customer link used to mark the estimate as read — so the one signal worth acting on was the one you could not trust. Your visits are excluded where the page records and again where the server writes. Shutting one door and not the other changed nothing, because the page tripped the alert a few seconds later anyway. The check runs against your real sign-in, not anything the browser claims.
You open the customer's link to double-check a number, get a 'they opened it!' alert about yourself, and stop trusting the alerts.
A signal you can't trust is a signal you ignore. Your visits are excluded where the page records and again where the server writes — so every alert means a real customer, and reps keep acting on them.
The minutes right before they call you are not the ones you lose
Read time is sent every thirty seconds and once more as the tab closes, on the path browsers keep open for exactly that. That last run through the payment schedule before somebody phones is the most informative part of the whole session — and a timer that only reports on a clean page load misses exactly that.
The customer's last five minutes on the payment schedule before phoning you never get recorded, because the tab closed before the timer reported.
The last read before a call is the most telling. Reporting every thirty seconds and once more as the tab closes means a rep sees exactly what the customer was looking at when they decided to ring.
- 1The customer opens the quote and you get one alert
- 2The clock runs only while the quote is the tab in front of them
- 3A second name on the link tells you it got forwarded
- 4The last stretch before they call you still gets recorded
- 5Your own visits are excluded, checked against your real sign-in
Knowing a quote has been opened four times is the difference between calling with a reason and calling to nag. For a stretch the tracking never ran at all — it looked in the wrong place, gave up immediately, and recorded nothing. Builders were following up blind while believing they had data. Your own previews are excluded on the page and again on the server, because fixing one door and not the other fixes nothing.
- No signal on whether a quote was read
- Follow-up timing based on guesswork
- Builder previews firing false open alerts