Critique my website please

PinnacleAutoCT

PinnacleAutoCT

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Hey guys,
I made my own website about a year and a half ago, it definitely brought in new customers, but not a huge amount. I recently redesigned portions of it, so I'm looking for feedback.

If everyone could give me some feedback on the ease of use, the general impression it gives, etc, that would be great.

Pinnacle Auto Detail: CT mobile car detailing

Thanks!
 
I am a former web designer, and still pick up a client every now and then if it is a friend or someone I know. I took a look at your site and I am going to be brutally honest with you, sorry if I hurt your feelings, but you asked.

1. Your pictures are WAY too big. You also want to limit redundant pictures (the same pic on different pages)

2. Your site is a bit clunky, as navigating to find exactly what I want is a bit difficult. I have to navigate around large pictures to find the small text to determine if you offer what I am looking for.

3. Assume that your customers don't have a clue what they want or need. For example, rather than just stating you do paint correction, how about something like this? "Has your car's paint lost it's luster? Do you yearn for that new car looking paint? When the sun shines on your car, do you see nothing but tiny swirled scratches? IF you answered yes, you need our amazing paint correction services. Restore your car, truck or SUV back to how it looked the day it rolled out of the showroom, or in most cases, EVEN BETTER."

When someone asks me what their website should look like, for their business; I simply ask them if they could take out an ad on the entire front page of the newspaper, what would look like. Then what would page 2 and so forth look like? Try to keep that in mind when you are thinking about a design.

There is a book called, "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. I believe this would be extremely helpful for you in moving forward with your website.
 
This topic could cover weeks of information. To keep it short and to give you something to chew on

You want your site to be a lead capture or lead generating website. Some things that make websites operate at high levels for this task is

phone number top right in a different color preferably
Call to action such as "call now to schedule a consultation
I didnt use the word free, never would on a website.
A contact form in the sidebar on every page. In the footer assumes people will scroll to the bottom of your page, most wont.

Page titles:
A Page Title is one of the most important on-page ranking factors and should be treated with care. Your page title tag shows up in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing use the title tag as the search results' title for that page.
Click to expand...

Your page title should include the phrase you think (backed up by research) people will search for. In the case of a detailer in Conn. It might be "Connecticut auto detailing services". The fact your mobile isnt of importance, you can include that in your copy which will get picked up by the algo.

So your home page title could use some tweaking to what I mentioned above but put your company afterwards (google places importance on the order of the words) Connecticut Auto Detailing | Pinnacle Auto Detail

On your inner pages treat each one like its own landing page, which it is. It should have a seo optimized page title, the H1 should have some seo wording re enforcing your page title; if you prefer to work in a group of towns you would add location elements to the H1's, or develop town pages all together.

Photos:

I dont host photos on flicker or photobucket. You should upload them to media manager in wordpress, reduce the file size with a plugin called smushit and enter a alt tag such as "porsche paint buffing" , or you can get location based if you need to try to squeek your rankings in a town search with "hartford ct detailing".

Your content isnt bad, you might hire someone to organize it with proper bullet points, bolding, italics, and even interlinking (more advanced seo).

If it were me I would goto themeforest.net and use a more advanced theme there. Take a look at this one which I like, it would need a contact form included someone in the widgets for it to be perfect-more or less Renew - Building, Renovation & Construction WordPress Theme Preview - ThemeForest. Construction or detailing it doesnt matter, both are set up for visual browsing.
 
Thanks for the help, I've reduced the size of some of the images, added contact info to the top of the page and changed the site title.

JeffM- You mentioned smushit for modifying the image sizes when uploading to the site directly, will this avoid the loss in image quality that I've seen with images uploaded to my site directly (when compared to an image linked from flickr)? Thanks.
 
This something I look for in small business websites: info about the owner/principle. I dislike the 'we' approach, and would rather read about the actual people that will do the work.

So my recommendation is to put a photo of yourself on the website, perhaps a brief background: something to show that you are a proud, hardworking, dedicated small business owner. I want to see who is going to be working on my car, and who I will be dealing with. How long have you done this? what is your approach? etc.

I really have a problem with folks putting 'we' in these things, when 'we' is almost always 'me'. If it is 'we' then show 'we': photos of the staff, etc, so it becomes more personal.
 
PinnacleAutoCT said:
Thanks for the help, I've reduced the size of some of the images, added contact info to the top of the page and changed the site title.

JeffM- You mentioned smushit for modifying the image sizes when uploading to the site directly, will this avoid the loss in image quality that I've seen with images uploaded to my site directly (when compared to an image linked from flickr)? Thanks.
Click to expand...

You shouldnt have a loss in image quality when uploading to wordpress. I assume its wordpress.org and not wordpress.com? Either way, web photos dont look much better the large the file is.

If you really want to tweak your pictures get lightroom and watch Anthony Morganit's videos on how to use lightroom, fantastic photo editing, including reducing file size. (name each photo relevant to what you want people to look for, "Maserati paint correction")

The page titles are a methodological part of site structure. Knowing your target's search habits influences all your on page seo decisions. Treat each page as if they are responsible for pulling their own weight, which they are. There is no fluff page(except gallery to an extent), each one should make the phone ring.

You will want to claim your google plus business page and verify your website as well. It will make it easier to rank in google maps. Use the "social media widget" plugin to link to your profiles in your footer.

Something important you will want to read up on is NAP (name area place), and how important that is to be exactly the same across the net. Your nap looks a little wonky in your footer, it should match your G+ biz. profile exactly.
 
JeffM said:
You shouldnt have a loss in image quality when uploading to wordpress. I assume its wordpress.org and not wordpress.com? Either way, web photos dont look much better the large the file is.

If you really want to tweak your pictures get lightroom and watch Anthony Morganit's videos on how to use lightroom, fantastic photo editing, including reducing file size. (name each photo relevant to what you want people to look for, "Maserati paint correction")

The page titles are a methodological part of site structure. Knowing your target's search habits influences all your on page seo decisions. Treat each page as if they are responsible for pulling their own weight, which they are. There is no fluff page(except gallery to an extent), each one should make the phone ring.

You will want to claim your google plus business page and verify your website as well. It will make it easier to rank in google maps. Use the "social media widget" plugin to link to your profiles in your footer.

Something important you will want to read up on is NAP (name area place), and how important that is to be exactly the same across the net. Your nap looks a little wonky in your footer, it should match your G+ biz. profile exactly.
Click to expand...

Thanks again, I already have my google plus page up, I'll have some reading to do tonight on those other subjects!
 
Changing the "design" of your website is not going to bring in more customers- ever

Having a website and properly optimizing it for search engines are completely different things

It doesn't matter if you pay someone $10,000 to redesign your site- it's ont going to bring in new customers.

You have to learn about search engine marketing in order for your site to be ranked on the first page of Google and to bring you in real traffic
 
DetailGroove said:
Changing the "design" of your website is not going to bring in more customers- ever

Having a website and properly optimizing it for search engines are completely different things

It doesn't matter if you pay someone $10,000 to redesign your site- it's ont going to bring in new customers.

You have to learn about search engine marketing in order for your site to be ranked on the first page of Google and to bring you in real traffic
Click to expand...

I originally designed it to attract paint correction customers, it is currently ranked #1 for the search term "paint correction ct", and is one of the top results for "auto detailing farmington ct". I'm trying to rank higher for more basic searches like "auto detailing ct", etc.
 
DetailGroove said:
Changing the "design" of your website is not going to bring in more customers- ever

Having a website and properly optimizing it for search engines are completely different things

It doesn't matter if you pay someone $10,000 to redesign your site- it's ont going to bring in new customers.

You have to learn about search engine marketing in order for your site to be ranked on the first page of Google and to bring you in real traffic
Click to expand...

A well designed web site will absolutely bring in new customers. Of course SEO's how they're going to get there in the 1st place. But it doesn't matter if your site has the most hits in the world if people can't navigate it. Both are equally important.
 
I dont like:
1. You should have some text that shows up on the main page rather that just a huge Porsche close up (like the services page). I scrolled down and found it but I'd resize the pictures or move them to a gallery section.
2. Font size is inconsistent on the main page.
3. Picture placement is inconsistent on the main page.
4. should have more links at the bottom of the page (advice, FAQ, about us, etc.) or make the menu bar on the top stay on top when people scroll (static frozen menu bar, like "contact us")
5. (paint correction page) The photo spacing is uneven and I'd consider centering them or something.
6. (paint correction page) the space below the line is too large needs to be more like the spacing at the bottom of the page where the additional items are.
7. for some reason when I load "about us" the picture of the mustang is stretched out but fix's itself (try a smaller picture)
8. richer FAQ, there's a million questions people have I'm sure you could come up with more and larger mustang photo.
9. On "contact us" you don't have the digital form at the top (only on the bottom) I would have it where users could see it once the page loads with the other contact options. Also, the text on this page is cut short compared to the other pages.
10. the "testimonials" page is nice but the before and after is a very different angel and the photos should be all sized similarly (more visual appeal).

I do like:
1. all of the social media integration (photos and page)
2. pricing seems very fair
3. I really like how the "Enhancement detail" page is laid out (I'd stick to this page format)
4. the "our work" page is great!

Most importantly... Good luck :)
 
:iagree::iagree:
DetailGroove said:
Changing the "design" of your website is not going to bring in more customers- ever

Having a website and properly optimizing it for search engines are completely different things

It doesn't matter if you pay someone $10,000 to redesign your site- it's ont going to bring in new customers.

You have to learn about search engine marketing in order for your site to be ranked on the first page of Google and to bring you in real traffic
Click to expand...
 
That's why I stay mobile,no web no social media no groupon no advertisement equals no headaches and wasted money.Had a deal of a lifetime on a fixed location,thought hard and long and decided to stay mobile.
 
Once you conquered to be on the first page,now somehow you have to reel them in with specials.2004 I spent 8k and bought 5 surrounding zip codes for advertisement,I think I closed maybe 3 deals in total of 400.00 and every phone call was someone who wanted stuff for nothing.lasted one year.word of mouth in this business that's it.
 
I like it. The simplicity of your detail menu is something I think a potential client would understand. And the paint correction pics to match the service is a nice touch to let them know what level they may need. Despite what some old guys say ^^^ you most definitely need to be on the Internet. My site is around $40 a year and the customers it draws and the time saved with redundant phone calls answering the same questions make it a no brainier.


www.JaxDetails.com
www.facebook.com/DentsAndDetails
I may be slow, but I do poor work.
 
pilotpip said:
I think your home page is a bit busy.
Click to expand...

It is and that is why I'm getting my own website redone, too busy and old. Getting a website and learning SEO was the single best investment for my business ever. I'm not mobile (thank god, been there done that, no way ever again) and my website drives customers to me on it's own once set up. Just sit back and the phone rings off the hook all day every day and more on Sunday, go figure. Total cost for a website and SEO, $0, did it myself. Next time it will be done by my friend who does this for a living, probably under $100 but I will hook him up...he needs a detail. :xyxthumbs:
 
I guess I should add a bit more:

The home page is busy. I stopped scrolling half way.

The rest, is good, but it's all on the home page if you have the attention span to scroll which I don't have. Maybe ditch all but the contact info, a general overview of your services, and a couple small pics of the finished product. Do a page with services provided, and a couple examples, a testimonial page, and an "about us" page. When I'm looking at a new-to-me business I almost always go immediately to the testimonials and "about us" because I want to know who I'm dealing with and what kind of work they're capable of. If I see glowing reviews, and they match what's on google/yelp (with a grain of salt)/etc I'm much more likely to call to set up an appointment.
 
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