My fresh, new look web site.

[msherry21]

Hi all, I've just "refreshed" my own business web site and was wondering if you could take a quick browse and let me know what you think?
Is there anything particular that could be done better or anything I've missed out? I just want to make sure it looks professional and does what a website should for prospective customers looking for my services.

Thanks in advance, Michael.

Http://www.Planet-Wax.com

Edited by msherry21 on Wednesday 9th December 22:57

[dazwalsh]

The "create your own wix website" banner doesnt help the professional image.

[akirk]

honest view:
- no, it doesn't look particularly professional
- it looks like a website produced by someone who is not a web designer - quite amateur
- the URL it resolves to would worry me a bit as it is flipping over to a wix.com url

but:
- it is easy to get around
- I can find the costs and details of what you do
- your contact details are there and easy to see

would it put me off - possibly, but I think I would see it as the website of a one-man band who is probably good at doing the cars, but not so good at IT - happy with that, I don't really want an IT bod to detail my cars I want someone who is going to charge me a fair price and then work their socks off to deliver the end result - and that does come across...

suggestions:
- your before and after photos don't show enough contrast - the before look far cleaner than any of my cars!
- get your email address up with the phone number if the wix template allows...

spend your efforts getting out and getting business - not worrying about the website - I run a web company, but my advice would be that it is sufficient to do the job you need, I would suggest that spending too much time / money on it would't be sensible for your business - in fact to look too professional may be counter-productive as you might appear to be a bigger organisation and therefore not personal / too expensive!

keep it as it is - it is fine

[Magic919]

Just above pricing on the Silver page it says Titanium in error.

Site might be ok for your intended market. Word of mouth is good for that kind of work.

[msherry21]

Thanks so much for your suggestions gents, the business has been running great for the past 8/9 years so I don't need to have any real marketing strategies in place, word of mouth and repeat business is providing for the company just fine thankfully.

I just felt this business page could do with a refresh and I had a few hours spare yesterday to clean it up a tad. I will definitely move the email address upto the top beside the contact number and remove the "wix" banners, I'll also try and add a bigger selection of photographs.

Thanks again guys for taking the time to help me out with this.

Cheers, Michael.

[IATM]

Hi Michael,

Good on you for trying to take a step in your business to improve things.
However I would agree with what kirk has said.

Get someone professional to build the website - it might cost you 200-500 pounds but you could easily recoup that in 2-3 jobs you would get from a website.

Especially in Glasgow where I am also based its actually quite a competitive market you are trying to compete in. I understand you have been around for a while but as you are in that type of business - everything you do should look excellent!
The website doesn't put across your good reputation or skill set too well.

I won't paste them on here but some of the other detailers in Glasgow and surrounding areas have excellent websites that would make you want to go to them over yours.

[Rangeroverover]

If you do employ a web designer one important bit that many people overlook is this:

You will be shown your shiny new site on a huge screen in the designers office, make sure you have a look at it on an iphone and an android one, also look on smaller pc and mac screens.

Sometimes when viewd on a smaller screen a site is hard to read and navigate

[nyt]

One thing that sticks out is that all of the pictures that I saw seem to be of the same beautifully shiny beemer.

It would be nice to see your work on other colours and having just the one car makes it look like your are a startup with no customers.

Otherwise I liked the site.

[jammy_basturd]

Depends on who your market is.

For your average sort of car, I'd say this website is OK (not great). If I've had a recommendation then I'll only really want to see photos of your previous work and prices. As said previously, the website screams one-man band. In fact one-man band that can't afford to have a web designer do a professional job - but that can work in your favour as it also hints that your prices could be low, you value your service over things like brand image, or that you're prepared to muck in and turn your hand to all aspects of your business.

However, I'd say if you have any ambitions to be more than a one-man band, or do very high end cars, maybe do work for specialist dealerships of exotica then you really need a better offering than this.

Either way, your logo looks like it was made with word art in Word 97, the 'Gift Voucher' fly in animation becomes quite annoying, and red text on a grey background really jars.

I'd also rejig your gallery. The top two images aren't great, there's not the most noticeable difference between them, so re-order the gallery by the pairs where the difference is most noticeable. I'd also try to change it so you have a sub-gallery for each car you do.

[All that jazz]

I agree with most of the comments above.

- Site resolving to a wix domain when you've clearly bought the planet-wax domain is amateurish and off-putting. You should be able to sort that out easily enough with your host. Sort out the page URL names too as 'c1zkc' for your 'contact us' page makes no sense. URLs like that don't help your site ranking and search engines will put you on page 397 of the results. In a similar vein make sure you have appropriate key words and descriptions in each of your pages and use meta tags if you haven't already done so. All those done properly will increase your ranking.

- Lose the gift voucher. It doesn't do anything except piss you off, especially as it doesn't do anything when you click it. What exactly is the point of it?

- Fix your apostrophe key on your keyboard and use it. I've seen better grammar from a 5 year old.

- Strongly agree with others about the photos. They are very poor and don't show enough contrast/difference between the 'before' and 'after' pics. My immediate thoughts as a potential customer are that you don't do a particularly good job. There's barely any difference at all in the top 2 pics on your gallery page, or at least not enough to justify me paying £100+. It's the sort of difference I could do myself within 2 mins with a bit of rag and soap. The 2nd row of wheels is very amateurish showing kerbed alloys in a gallery illustrating your work. Surely if you've been in the business for 9 years you could've found a better illustration for your website? The 'before' and 'after' words on the pics are barely visible, unnecessary and misaligned. Also, the "show more" link is barely visible and only shows a single photo of a Porsche anyway.

- The 'find us' is misaligned and cut off and doesn't scale properly when zooming in and out on the map.

- Lose all the "this site was created with Wix, create your own site here" crap at the top and bottom of every page.

[sirtyro]

Try Squarespace instead of WIX...it's easy to use and the websites look more modern

[Junior Bianno]

IATM said:

Get someone professional to build the website - it might cost you 200-500 pounds but you could easily recoup that in 2-3 jobs you would get from a website.

£200 - £500 for a professional website - yikes!

Sorry but I just don't understand why people try to skimp on websites. Maybe we wouldn't charge less than £1000 for a basic site, but it would look great, reflect well on your business, work flawlessly, and rank well. None of which you could say of a Wix site. Your website is the face of your business more than anything else these days. The false economy of these DIY sites is astounding.

[Altrezia]

Junior Bianno said:

£200 - £500 for a professional website - yikes!

Sorry but I just don't understand why people try to skimp on websites. Maybe we wouldn't charge less than £1000 for a basic site, but it would look great, reflect well on your business, work flawlessly, and rank well. None of which you could say of a Wix site. Your website is the face of your business more than anything else these days. The false economy of these DIY sites is astounding.

I always want to post this sort of reply, but being in the industry probably makes me look like a shark to have that opinion!

(Our prices start at about £4k)

[technodup]

Junior Bianno said:

Your website is the face of your business more than anything else these days. The false economy of these DIY sites is astounding.

Agreed.

Especially with a mobile business with no premises to make a good impression from it's the only customer facing tool you have. Especially with a service that is all about attention to detail and quality of finish, your website must reflect that.

I think it's better to have no website at all than something that could easily put customers off. Especially in Bearsden of all places, where image counts. It's no coincidence I saw my first McLaren there last week.

Google 'detailing Glasgow' and you'll see all your competitors have professional sites. Professional in the sense they have paid someone to build it, had SEO work done and are ranking much better than your page 3. They are taking business away from you because their sites are better. You might be a better detailer but people get sold on the quality of the site.

Repeat business and word of mouth are great but there's always a dip, a period where it dries up for a while. That's the point people panic and start trying to 'do some marketing', when the answer is always to be on top of the marketing so the dips are less frequent and less deep.

[twoblacklines]

It looks crap.

A simple wordpress installation with a premium theme would do you much better, you could even just do this yourself, it is not hard to learn.

Then you can do all sorts of other things like run an online shop with products you never handle the delivery or purchase of (affiliate) as well as collect opt-in emails and re-targeting.

[matt-ITR]

If I were looking for a car valeting company and found your website, you wouldn't get my business.

It will not cost much to get a really good, professional site. Wix screams to me "hobby" website.

[mike80]

One thing I noticed, on my laptop screen is that when you click on the Home, About Me etc. buttons, you can't actually see what it brings up (need to scroll down). It almost looks like nothing happens. I think these should be smaller so on most screens you can see something.

Also, get some better pictures!

[twoblacklines]

mike80 said:

One thing I noticed, on my laptop screen is that when you click on the Home, About Me etc. buttons, you can't actually see what it brings up (need to scroll down). It almost looks like nothing happens. I think these should be smaller so on most screens you can see something.

Also, get some better pictures!

Yeah, because it is not responsive!

[V8mate]

Copper, silver and titanium detail levels.

I wouldn't have a Vauxhall advertising the top level.

Subconsciously get people who have bought more expensive cars to buy more expensive detailing work.

[singlecoil]

Try to avoid switching between "I" and "we". Decide on one and stick to it. Better still, rephrase what you say to avoid it altogether. People are more concerned about themselves than they are about you.