I wrote an e-book, and I want you to have it for free. The link is below this post and all you have to do is fill out a few boxes and it is yours. In fact it could change your business. It’s all about the mistakes that I see auto body repair shops make on their websites all the time, and how to fix them immediately.
I’ve been a car guy my whole life (just a tick under 40 years) so I have seen cars evolve from kind of crude to NASA sophistication. I once had a Land Rover that had more wiring in it than my house did. And the repair techniques are just as advanced now too including aluminum, hydroforming, exotic steels, waterborne paint. As an industry, the collision repair business has evolved, grown, and become more sophisticated. You are all working an efficiency level unheard of before, and for many, your profits show it.
You have involved processes, lean procedures, advanced training, computer systems, and computer estimatics all in the name of progress. You all deserve more recognition than you receive for putting these methodologies to use to better your business and improve the safety and the lives of your clientele.
You e-mail and text status updates to your customers, and you allow people to log in and watch their car get repaired. This is all in the name of e-commerce, and you have embraced it.
However, there is one area that for some reason, a vast majority of you shop owners still lurk in the dark ages, and I am completely baffled by it. I’m not going to pull any punches here fellas and ladies in the industry, I’m going to come right out with it:
Your websites stink.
In 2008 every marketing guru began telling you that you needed to be on social media. And all through 2009 you all balked at the idea saying it would never help your business. Now, five years later, all of you have active Facebook and Twitter accounts. The reason you invested in this was because you realized that your customer’s communication needs were changing, and that you needed to “get with the times.” Kudos go to you for doing that.
You have now begun to find and attract new customers via the Internet. If you are measuring properly, you can even tell just what the ROI is for that investment. If you aren’t, you should be and we will address how to do that in later posts. Some of you might be getting along with Google adwords, and are happy with buying traffic to your site.
Where the train comes off the tracks however is your website. You lure in a digital consumer and then drop them off on a website designed 15 years ago by your nephew. What gives?
In most cases, your site is a cluttered mess, lacking in any proper design, and in many cases is non-functioning. Your digital consumer wants to continue this transaction with you online, yet your site has locked the doors to doing so. Not only that, you really just gave this person a bad taste for what your shop is like, even if that is not really the case.
Lesson number 1: Whether you like it or not, if you are in business today, you are in the e-commerce business, and your website is 80% of that equation.
If your customer comes to a cluttered website, with poorly written content, broken links, bad grammar, and no digital transaction tools, what do you think that says about the quality of work done at your shop?
Open another browser window right now and type in your shop’s website. Go through each page as if you were a customer considering taking your car there. Ask yourself this one question: “based only on this site, would I take MY car here?”
I think I might already know the answer. In the effort of brevity, I’m going to address the 12 common mistakes made over a series of blog posts. This is just the introduction to get your attention, and to get you thinking. But if you don’t want to wait, you can download my e-book right now, no strings attached for free. Simply click the button below, and follow the directions.
Your auto body shop website could be killing your sales! Learn 12 mistakes most shops make on their websites, and how you can fix them today!
We compiled the 12 most common errors effecting customer confidence in your shop, search engine web rankings, and other common mistakes that are bringing your sales down. Download our free guide and fix them yourself!