What's in a home-services customer portal
A well-built customer portal has four elements:
- A visual of the install, specific to the customer. For permanent lighting, this is the AI-rendered photo of the homeowner's actual house with lighting installed.
- Custom pricing tiers — typically two or three options (e.g., trim-only vs whole-home for permanent lighting) so the customer can self-select.
- A "pay deposit" button that charges directly to the installer's account via Stripe Connect or an equivalent payment processor.
- The installer's branding and credentials — name, license number, insurance status, contact info, schedule-a-call widget.
Why customer portals work better than traditional quoting
Traditional home-services quoting goes: phone call → schedule estimate → drive out → measure → email PDF quote → phone follow-up → maybe close. The customer's intent peaks at the first inquiry and drops every step thereafter — by the time the PDF lands in their inbox, half of them have moved on.
A customer portal collapses the flow to: postcard scan (or web inquiry) → see rendered photo → see prices → pay deposit. Intent is captured at peak. No installer phone call required.
For permanent lighting, the recognition response on a rendered photo is what makes the portal work. The homeowner doesn't have to imagine what their house would look like — they see it. Asking for the deposit at that moment is asking when intent is highest.
How Light Launch generates customer portals
Every render created in Light Launch automatically gets a customer portal at a unique URL (typically lightlaunch.ai/h?t=<token>). The portal pulls:
- The rendered photo of the home (from the Render Agent).
- The auto-calculated linear footage and pricing tiers (from instant property measurement).
- The installer's branding, credentials, and Stripe Connect account info.
The installer doesn't build the portal — it's generated automatically. When the homeowner scans the postcard QR code or clicks a link in a follow-up email, the portal opens on their phone, fully personalized.
How customer portals integrate with the rest of the workflow
The customer portal isn't a standalone page — it's the entry point to the deposit-paid lead flow:
- Customer lands on the portal, sees their rendered house and prices.
- Customer picks a pricing tier (trim-only or whole-home).
- Customer clicks "Pay Deposit" → Stripe Connect charges 50%.
- Deposit-paid lead appears in the installer's CRM with full context.
- Installer schedules the install from the lead card.
End-to-end, the customer spends about 4–6 minutes and the installer spends zero time until the lead is already deposit-paid.
Every render gets a customer portal — automatically.
Free account, free rendering, every render gets a personalized customer portal with deposit collection built in.
Start free →