Please comment on my upcoming new site

[autovitals]

• I would ask your current customers, since they should find it appealing
• from a website effectiveness perspective please keep the following things in mind and check it out again

1. new visitors take 10-15 seconds to let the home page impress them before they decide to find out more about you or go away. Are you attracting them in 10-15 seconds?
2. German car owners strike me as less cost and more quality of work sensitive. Are you making sure your website appeals to that?
3. You are a local business in a local community, does your website develop a trusting relationship already? (empty service bays, no people in the pictures, no intro by the owner and or service advisor don’t seem to help here)
4. I would run a heatmap on your site, which will tell you exactly where people click, so you can optimize your website as you go.

[rmh1020]

A couple of thoughts:

• It’s not immediately clear what action you want visitors to take because there are too many competing elements without a clear hierarchy. Can the design be modified to visually emphasize your call to action (presumably call the shop or schedule an appointment)?
• While the parts pictures make sense to you and your staff, most of your customers couldn’t tell the difference between a fan belt and a timing belt. So the parts pictures are wasted opportunities to emotionally engage website visitors. Instead of the parts pics, how about pictures of your staff working with customers? Pictures of happy satisfied customers, etc. Those will give your site a more human emotional appeal.
• One other aspect I would consider adding is a “why?” section. Either on your home page or on your “who we are” page, tell customers explicitly WHY you are in business. What is your purpose? That’s much more interesting and engaging than WHAT you do (you work on cars; they know that already). If people understand your WHY, they’ll relate to you and your business in a different and more personal way than they do with the dealers or your other competitors.

You may also be interested in this article from the guys at Conversion XL (or other articles on their great web design blog): http://conversionxl.com/5-principles-of-persuasive-web-design/

[Alan Ollie]

You all are killing me lets get some new comments . test.germancardepot.com

[Alan Ollie]

More comments please test.germancardepot.com
No Graphics are the real ones yet.
Waiting for Graphics guy to finish. 

[Alan Ollie]

PS check it on mobile that’s where the beauty lies

[Tom]

Why do I go to a website? Answer that, then satisfy it immediately and obviously….large buttons/links/text and no scrolling. If I have to look for one or more of these for more than a few seconds odds increase that I will leave and try someone else.

Phone

Address 

Small map

Email

Hours

Make an appointment

Request an estimate

Oil change price

Towing phone number

Credit cards that you accept

[SpencersAuto]

vdepot, I don’t understand your comment about ‘killing’ you. Do you want something sugar coated? From a quick review, I really don’t see a difference. You’ve taken pretty much the same stuff and moved it around. rhm1020 made some excellent comments. I outlined a huge (and simple) change that you should make to testimonials. Only makes sense – people don’t read – they scan. But you want people to read. 

And then… what about video? People would rather watch than read. So what part of the comments don’t you agree with?

I think Matthew is spot on! The new and the old site look almost the same. To cluttered up for my liking.