10 Guidelines for Auto Business Websites
This page contains some tips and advice for auto businesses who have a website or are thinking of building one.
You don't need to spend a lot of money to have an effective website. But they do require some basic construction guidelines and your content needs to be interesting and current.
If your site suffers from the following traits, then hassle your website designer, they should know better, or contact us and we'll help you out.
1. Splash Screens and Sound
Entry screens for websites have absolutely no value except to show off the skills of the graphic designer who built the intro. The "Skip Intro" link designers put on these pages confirms that they are a waste of time and hide the real information of the site.Playing sounds or songs on the front page is also a bad idea, it annoys users and keeps them away from your site. If you really need to have the sound of a small block Chev revving it rings off, make it an optional link the user can click to play.
2. Websites that take ages to download
Studies show that web users are impatient and will probably go elsewhere if your page doesn't appear after 10 seconds. A lot of your customers most probably connect using dialup modems. Even on broadband your front page could be still be a bloated mess that takes 20 seconds to come up.Make sure your home page contains essential graphics only and that they've been optimised for the web. Also check if your home page requires users to scroll down the page for half a kilometre. If so, you may be better to move some of the content onto other pages.
3. Inconsistent and confusing menu navigation
You go to a site and starting looking through the pages, you want to go back to a section that you saw previously. You look around the page and there's no "Home" button, in fact there's no navigation at all! You're probably missing half the good content on the site simply because it's impossible to find.Apart from no navigation other problems include: menu buttons that don't like menu buttons (see this article for a humourous rant on this subject) , and fancy graphical menus that don't work on all internet browsers.
4. Not search engine friendly
Search engines are your friend. Why? You want Google to list your site when they people type in "Holden performance parts". Unfortunately most websites don't do some of the basics to make your appealing to search engines.What are the basics to making your website search engine friendly?
It comes down to correctly formatting your pages in HTML. Title your pages using the title html tag. Add meta tags containing key words and the description of your site. Use alt tags for images and use the h1, h2 tags where possible. Get other sites to link to your website.
Don't pay money for tools that offer to submit your site to search engines!! Stick to the basics and you should be fine.
If you website designer doesn't understand these basics, find a new website designer.
5. Product Catalogue mistakes
Probably the best benefit of a company website is the ability to display and describe the products you offer. Displaying an online catalog can save you money in the long run in terms of reduced phone calls, mail outs and staff time.Done poorly, the online catalogue becomes at best outdated and at worse a frustration to new and current customers. Common mistakes with online catalogues include:
- Products categorised by manufacturer, not by component; Under a category called "Cooling Parts", I want sub catgeories labelled thermo fans, radiators, trans cooler etc.
- Downloadable PDF Catalogues; PDF format is good for printing and that's it. A HTML product catalog is easy to do and a lot more people will be able to view it.
- Hard to browse products; Ever been to a site where you clicked on the "Product Catalog" menu and then been asked a whole lot of questions before you can even view a single product? - enough said.
- Products have no detail - no photos, price, description
- Hard/expensive to update catalogue - There are now cheap Content Management Systems (CMS) available that will allow you to update your information yourself, or if you're too busy, any person who can use a program like Microsoft Word.
6. Popups and links opening in a new window
If you're linking within your site, or even to an external site, don't open the link in a new window. Users get confused and annoyed managing a bunch of windows that have been opened by clicking on links.Users have the option of using the browser back button, which is well understood, should they wish to get back from a link they have clicked on.
7. Frames in websites
Framed websites unless done very well, are usually a bad idea.
8. Email and contact details
Your contact details (email, address, phone etc), should be clearly displayed as HTML text either on the home page, or on the "Contact Us" page (which should be linked from the home page). If you have walk-in customers, it's always a good idea to have a picture of your shopfront, your trading hours and directions if you are in the sticks.Your main email address should be easy to remember like info@your-domain-here.com.au. You've paid for a domain name, use it for your email instead of a hotmail or bigpond account. Talk to your web designer, they will be able to set it up for you.
Put your URL (website address) on all your stationery, cards and advertising but leave out the http:// prefix.
9. Visitor counters and website stats
Just say no to dorky website counters on your pages. Visitors don't care abour your stats and aren't impressed about the 12,492 hits to your site.You've gone to all this trouble to get a website, you might as well find out if anyones going there. Your website provider will have a tool to view your stats. Unique visits or page hits are the ones to read, also look at your referrers, to see if people are finding your site from search engines. Take stats with a grain of salt as your visits to the site will also be included.
10. Content is King!
Visitors will keep coming back to your site if they feel the content contains current and interesting information. Keep your content clear, brief and free of market speak "The best product in the world". Web users tend to scan pages instead of reading every word so write accordingly.Make sure you have an "About Us" page that describes who the people behind the business are. This gives a human element to the site, and people like to do business with other people, not a faceless company.
Classic Garage can create you an effective web presence at affordable prices. Contact us for more information.
