How to create a custom calculator for your website

Benefits of interactive calculators

Increased engagement

Interactive calculators boost user engagement by turning passive browsing into active participation. By addressing visitors' needs directly, they keep visitors on your site longer. This interactive experience makes users more invested in your business and encourages them to explore your content and services more.

Enhanced lead generation

One of the standout benefits of interactive calculators is their ability to generate high-quality leads. These calculators act as a gateway for capturing and converting leads by providing valuable and personalized insights in exchange for user information. Users interacting with your calculator often share their contact details to receive customized results. This information can then be used to build a targeted email list or sales pipeline. You can craft tailored content and offers with these leads, effectively nurturing potential customers and guiding them through the sales funnel.

Better customer insights

Interactive calculators offer valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. Analyzing user inputs helps you understand their needs and decision-making processes, allowing you to refine your products, services, and marketing strategies. This leads to better customer satisfaction and guides future content and tool development.

Improved SEO

Websites with above-average "time on site" often rank higher in Google search results. For instance, increasing the time users spend on your site by just 3 seconds can correlate with moving up a position in the rankings. While we can't say definitively that time on site directly influences rankings, it's clear that engaging, high-quality content keeps users on your page longer. Additionally, calculators are highly shareable, encouraging users to link back to your site, which further enhances your SEO.

Types of calculators you can build

Interactive calculators enhance user experience and decision-making across various sectors. Here are some common examples:

Financial planning calculators

Mortgage calculators: Calculate monthly payments, total interest, and loan amortization for home loans.
Tax calculators: Estimate tax liabilities based on income, deductions, and tax brackets.
Return on Investment (ROI) calculators: Assess the potential profitability of investments or projects by comparing the cost to the expected returns.
Loan repayment calculators: Estimate monthly payments and total repayment amounts for various types of loans.
Cost Estimation Calculators: Provide estimates for project costs, service fees, or product pricing based on user inputs.
Insurance Calculators: Estimate insurance needs and coverage amounts based on personal or business information.

Health and wellness calculators

Calorie calculators: Track daily calorie intake and expenditure to support weight management and nutritional goals.
BMI calculators: Calculate Body Mass Index (BMI) to assess if an individual is underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese.
Disease risk assessments: Evaluate the risk of developing certain diseases based on lifestyle and health factors.

Educational and productivity calculators

GPA calculators: Calculate Grade Point Averages to help students track their academic performance.
Time management tools: Assist users in planning and managing their time effectively by calculating schedules, deadlines, and productivity metrics.

Build your calculator

Let's build a simple hypotenuse calculator to understand how to work with calculation variables.

Click Create New and Start from scratch to build a custom form. Choose between a conversational format and a traditional format. Here, we'll use the traditional format so that the user can see the results as they input values and try different input values without going back and forth.

Click the plus icon on the left to see the elements you can add. Use the title field to describe your form. You can configure the element settings on the right side.

Next let's add two Number fields for getting the side lengths- side length a and side length b. Add a section if you want to arrange the fields side by side.

Note: Choosing the field format and setting it to Required enforces validation.

Let's assign a variable to side length a. Select side length a in the navigator. Go to the calculations tab on the right, and you will see a Score variable present by default.

Click on Score, set the variable name to a, and leave the rest as it is.

Now click on + add calculation and select variable a. By default, the input value will be added to variable a. You can also subtract, divide, and multiply the input value with the variable.

Follow the same steps for side length b. Select side length b in the navigator and go to the calculations tab. Under the calculation variables, click '+Add' to add a calculation variable. We will name this b and Add calculation to it.

Now, we need another variable to calculate the result of our calculation. Add another variable in the calculations tab and name it h.

Note: Click on the builder icon to see all the calculation variables you have added to a form. All the associated variables will appear on the right.

In the variable settings for h, we add our formula to the modifier. Make sure the modifier contains the variable it is modifying. Add your formula as shown. You can refer to the other variables by typing @, which will bring up a dropdown.

See Mathematical expressions for a complete list of expressions that you can use. In this case, we can also use the readymade hypot(a,b) function to get the same result.

Also, use a roundTo() function to make it look neater.

Let's use a title element and refer to the variable h to display our answer.

Note: Depending on your use case, you can ask for the user's contact information before displaying the result or emailing it.

Style your form by choosing a stock theme or custom theme. For more customization options, check out Styling your forms using Themes.

Your calculator is ready to go. Once the calculator is ready, share and embed it onto your website.