What Does Your Website Cost You?

[Alex]

There are many different website services, packages, and programs available when choosing the right company/webmaster for your auto repair business. You can sign up to a service that provides a robust website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), analytics, marketing services, social network management, integrations, etc. You can also sign up for much simpler solutions which usually only include a website and some SEO. You can also try to use an online website builder to get yourself online with something very basic, which is better than nothing. So many different option and they all have their associated costs. In some cases there are initial startup costs as well. In most cases however, there are monthly costs associated with operating a business website.

Please take a moment and share, if you would like, about your website costs and associated services. Please also take a moment to answer a few quick question in the attached poll. Thank you.

 

[xrac]

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[Jay Huh]

I use hostgator for webhosting service and have like 10 different websites on there. I just use wordpress and made my own site. It's convenient when I'm in control as I can make changes on the fly. I think I pay $150/yr for the hosting part (remember I host 10 other websites too) and pay $12.99/yr for the domain name.

 

[Alex]

  On 4/3/2017 at 1:38 AM, xrac said:

Alex, I answer the best that I could since I do not know all the details.  Car-x has a website with a page for our shop.  They do everything and we a fee monthly based on gross sales.  It is usually between $150-$200 and is called ad prep it covers different stuff including the web.  

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So you have a domain name that redirects to the corporate site where they have a location based page for you it looks like. Cool.

 

  On 4/3/2017 at 3:00 AM, Jay Huh said:

I use hostgator for webhosting service and have like 10 different websites on there. I just use wordpress and made my own site. It's convenient when I'm in control as I can make changes on the fly. I think I pay $150/yr for the hosting part (remember I host 10 other websites too) and pay $12.99/yr for the domain name.

 

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That's good that you have the time to manage it and I agree that you can then just edit as need. Wordpress is so widely used and does a good job. There are many website companies that use Wordpress and just customize it, add SEO plugins and such. Thanks for sharing. 

[Alex]

For anyone getting additional services with their website, is it paying off? What marketing services do you feel are providing the most ROI for you? 

What do you feel may be missing as a service? Would you recommend what you are getting now (Feel free to plug the company if you like)?

[meowpox]

We use Squarespace! Easy to manage, beautiful templates and easy to customize. I like to manage it myself because I have very particular taste, plus we have a very active blog. But that said, I probably am not using it to its potential in terms of SEO (still have to learn). We pay $26/mo for their basic commerce plan, which is $8 more than their basic business plan. We get tons of compliments.

I am a strong believer in building a strong brand, and that includes first and foremost an amazing logo and a beautiful website. People will follow you if everything you put out there just looks amazing.

Our Website

[mmotley]

Something that would be interesting is to have all this information correlated with shop revenue. IE, are there shops out there doing $1 million+/year that are doing their online marketing on their own?

[autoguy]

  On 7/5/2017 at 11:56 PM, meowpox said:

We use Squarespace! Easy to manage, beautiful templates and easy to customize. I like to manage it myself because I have very particular taste, plus we have a very active blog. But that said, I probably am not using it to its potential in terms of SEO (still have to learn). We pay $26/mo for their basic commerce plan, which is $8 more than their basic business plan. We get tons of compliments.

I am a strong believer in building a strong brand, and that includes first and foremost an amazing logo and a beautiful website. People will follow you if everything you put out there just looks amazing.

Our Website

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@meowpox I checked out your website and it looks very clean. Your front page has no information about your business at all. Do you ever get customer asking what you do? Looks like you sell merchandise, do you fix cars also?

[xrac]

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[Guest]

We use kukui. They do the Seo, website, reviews, Facebook, appointments and they mow my lawn (kidding)

 It costs me 800 a month and it seems like I break even with the new customers and the costs. I expect to retain those customers since we're awesome so I try to justify the cost that way. Sometimes I wonder if marketing is more about marketing to the business by the company than it is to potential customers. I feel like theres alot of truth about internet marketing but also alot of hype. They make it sound like a switch will flip and bang. You're overwhelmed with great clients. That doesnt happen.

I Iike kukui alot and I'm not putting them down but I still think the best advertising is old fashioned word of mouth from a job well done by people who give a poop. 

I've also noticed that some shops go full out on advertising and every time they either do that to pump their numbers to sell their business or they go under. I've never one single time in my area seen a shops name all over the place and stay in business for another 5 years. 

Another thing that's hard to quantify is that after kukui redesigned our site and made it more professional and helpful that my existing customers had an oh wow reaction and something about that reminded me of an article about perceived value by Mitch Schneider who I'm not sure I could have existed this long (30 years) without.  That perceived value seems to validate our existing customers opinion of us and allows us to charge as a premium business rather than compete with a discount chain. 

A few extra dollars will be forgotten but a crappy cheap job will always be remembered.

 

 

 

[meowpox]

  On 9/1/2018 at 12:15 PM, autoguy said:

@meowpox I checked out your website and it looks very clean. Your front page has no information about your business at all. Do you ever get customer asking what you do? Looks like you sell merchandise, do you fix cars also?

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You can read about our shop in the About section hehe. Address and phone number is on the front page. I'm really big on design and branding, and just really hate the look of a busy front page and feel it is a little overwhelming. Majority of our customers are word of mouth so if they're at our website, they already know a little bit about who we are. But I do believe it has to do with customer base. We are not a general repair shop. Our customers love a clean beautiful shop, because they have really really nice expensive cars. So our website reflects that well. We get tons of compliments on it by our customers. 

 

  On 9/1/2018 at 2:36 PM, xrac said:

I would add that while you have beautiful photographs I find the print too small and too light colored. This could make it hard to read for some people. There is no place on the opening page to click to find your services or to book an appointment. I think it is hard to get a customer beyond your front page and they need something fast and easy to move forward. If we take them to too many pages to do anything we will lose them. I think a customer should be able to book an appointment or call us from the front page. Just my two cents that is worth one cent. 

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If you hover over About, theres a link called Services. Thats just one click. For appt, people click on Quote. I think this is good advice but also depends on your customer base. Again, we're not a general repair shop and we're in a very niche market so most people that need to contact us AND are actually in our target customer base will find it not a problem to click one extra link to contact us.