Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi,

OK. A few thoughts.

The menu list below your main logo?

The following items: Oil Change Service, Brakes and Brake Services, and Tires & Tire Services can all go under the heading "Services".

Then, the items: Car Care Tips, FAQs (no apostrophe needed), Get Directions, and Specials can all go under "About Us"

Next: all those grey banners with Tires, Mercedes, and so on, they can all be simple text links.

Then: the blue menu on the right, under the heading "Services" all those things could disappear under the same "Services" drop down menu top left.

THEN ... the "Contact Us" box needs to move UP, into the space just vacated by the "Services" menu. And here, include your phone number: not everyone wants to fill in a form. Certain people want to call and talk to someone.

The text "Serving the communities of Dale City, Lake Ridge, Montclair, Dumfries, Quantico and Woodbridge" needs to be higher up the page, ideally near the "Contact Us" box. At the moment I have to scroll for it. Make me scroll for information and I'll walk. Not good.

Your November Promotion pipes? Nuke the pipes and you'll make the text easier to read.

The AutoNet TV icon? Nuke that as well.

If you're going to use video, use video and make it a YouTube video. Again, make the video easy to find (with one click, not two or three), and make it easy to recognize.

The Salvation Army banner slap bang in the middle of the page? Great visibility for them, not so good for you.

It's taking up too much valuable retail space. Move it down (or remove it), and move your "Here at Steve's Auto Repair we have been serving the community since 1979 ..." text UP the page and include with it (or above it) your "Why choose us?" text points.

The "We have tires to fit every budget" element?
Toast. Likewise the image of your shuttle van, and the additional address and telephone number blurb. You could wrap these elements into your scrolling images at the top of the page.

While you're about it, all those logos (BG, BBB, We recycle and so on), nice eye candy buy doing you no real favors I'm afraid. So, either nuke them too or significantly reduce their size because, as none of these things appear to be links, their presence on your home page is doing you fewer favors than you may realize.

And copyright 2011 at the bottom of the page? Needs updating.

Will that do for starters?

Hi, Margo.

To unclutter the site that you have, without creating a new site or new design concept, you'll need to simplify some of the busy design elements. Don't get fancy just because you can. Aim for a little more elegance since you're trying to attract owners of expensive cars. Try this:

1. Put each of the eight menu buttons from "Tires" to "Brakes" on a plain button background. Gray is fine, but kill the checkered flag and the speed trail.

2. The Salvation Army occupies PRIME real estate and has nothing to do with auto repair. And it does nothing constructive for the Salvation Army, either. Eliminate it here; instead, give the SA a whole page elsewhere to explain properly their values and connection to Steve's Auto Repair.

3. In its place, create a horizontal rectangle with three simple sections --
First section:
Check out our November promotions.
Second section:
Click Here for our November newsletter.
Third section:
Visit our AutoNet TV education center.

By grouping these three things together, you reduce clutter, and focus the reader's attention on three equivalent choices. This also unclutters the text section beneath "Welcome to Steve's Auto Repair."

4. The headlines "Shop Information" and "Why Choose Us?" are grouped together but they're really separate ideas and thus confusing in the same bar. Consider calling this section "Important Information" -- period. Then, space the items on the left and right sides of the picture so they occupy identical vertical length. The main phone number on the left should be bolder; and you might add an after-hours emergency phone number or towing service on the left, if you need more content on that side. Eliminate the "Contact Us" button as the identical function sits immediately to the right on this page. Then, remove the colored box around this area (probably a blockquote or similar) and instead move it to the next section.

5. Group all the logo badges together in a colored box or blockquote. This tidies up all the elements and makes the nine symbols "read" to the eye as one unit. Even better, place them immediately above the footer, so they can span the entire width of the page, just as the footer does. If you can, stagger the badges for better visual spacing, five on the upper line and four below, in a pattern something like this:

X - - - X - - - X - - - X - - - X
- - X - - - X - - - X - - - X - -

6. In the footer, add more space between each line so the many words there have some room to breathe. Also, color each of the vertical separators a very light blue -- this will keep the words distinct, but minimize clutter.

These suggestions leave your SEO in place. Hope this is helpful.

You have some great input above. Not much I can add to that.

I walked into a very similar situation as the one you describe a few years ago -- even in a closely-related business category -- so I understand what you're asking.

Based on my experience with that very cluttered site, though, let me ask another question: Is your current site working? Is it delivering against its objective? Is the objective great natural search ranking? Or is it clicks? Or is it conversions?

I ask all of this because it took me a while to realize, in my client's situation, that clutter wasn't the problem. He had first-page natural search ranking for virtually all his keywords. He had lots of clicks. But he had no idea whether he was converting any of those clicks.

It turned out that the real problem was a positioning and integrated marketing one. When we fixed those problems, everything started improving ... less clutter, same great natural search position, more clicks, greater conversion rate. Then we could "turn up the volume" and get a much better ROI on everything.

I'd be happy to discuss this one-on-one, if you like. Just contact me via email, using the info in my profile. We'll find a time to talk by phone. (We're in the same time zone.) Maybe some of the solutions we uncovered will work for you.