rmh1020
Forum Replies Created
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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/
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Larry- sorry for the delayed reply here… Do you have a link to your YouTube profile? Would love to be able to share it as an example for other shops.
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I hear that! Sometimes “I can’t afford it” really means “I don’t see the value in it”. Showing customers the needed work can help them see the value of the work you’re recommending and hopefully get them to realize “I have to find a way to afford it.”
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Hi Gary,
Your site looks good. It has a lot of text on the pages, which is clearly driving your great Google rankings (I found your page and your review site near the top of Google search for “little falls auto repair”.)
Doug’s point is right that all the web traffic in the world doesn’t mean anything unless it converts to paying customers.
Some questions to ask your web guy here: how many appointments are being scheduled from your website? How many phone calls are coming in directly from the website? How many customers are mentioning or printing and bringing in the coupons from your site?
Some thoughts to help improve your site’s conversion: in line with what Doug said, you might make it a little more personal, with pictures and or bios of you and your team. People buy from people after all.
Also, the site features a lot of images of parts: engines, brakes, oil filters, etc. These look great to automotive repair guys, but not so enticing to the average customer who doesn’t know much about auto repair. I would consider swapping out those images of parts or of cars being repaired, and replacing them with pictures that show the benefits customers get from visiting your shop… such as a picture of a family in front of their car at the beach, or taking the kids to baseball practice… or generally doing something that really matters to them… but was made possible by their car. That is what your customers will emotionally connect with much more than pictures of parts they don’t recognize 🙂 Getting even that split second of emotional engagement is what’s going to win them over as customers more than anything else.
Really the site is good and ranking well, just some considerations to help get more out of it!
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Seriously cool vintage looking shop!
