An online presence is vital to business success. The search for car service shops starts on the internet.
Today’s drivers begin their search for car maintenance services and repair shops on the internet before setting foot (or wheel) on the physical premises. You’re invisible to millions of potential customers if you don’t have a car repair website.
Many things make a website effective – attractive aesthetics, compelling content, intuitive navigation, and more. This article will focus on five elements auto repair websites must have to be successful.
5 must-have things for your auto repair website
Web visitors to car repair websites are looking for one thing – information. Where are you located? What services do you provide? Is your business trustworthy? Without these pieces of information, you won’t convert web traffic to foot traffic.
Keep in mind the following must-have components as you build a new website or revamp an existing one
1. Customer testimonial highlights
Maintaining and repairing vehicles is expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient. When you add horror stories of overcharging, unexpected fees, and bait-and-switch tactics, it’s no wonder customers are wary of visiting auto repair shops. Even scheduled maintenance becomes stressful.
Displaying positive reviews on your website helps ease the frustration associated with automotive repair.
People trust peer reviews more than claims of quality repairs and exceptional service. Social proof statistics show that 92% of consumers hesitate to buy products with no reviews, and 87% of shoppers don’t consider businesses with less than three-star ratings.
Customer testimonials are a form of social proof. They signal to target audiences that your brand is trustworthy. You can incorporate trust signals in various ways, such as client logos, social media comments, Google reviews, or video testimonials.
Auto Scope puts a face to reviews with videos of satisfied customers. The testimonial page also includes links to Google reviews of the brand’s three locations.
You can’t get positive feedback if you don’t ask. Encourage your customers to leave reviews. Review generation tools like Birdeye automate feedback collection by triggering review requests and showcasing new reviews on your website.
2. 3 landing pages
Every auto repair website should have the following web pages.
- Home Page
The homepage is a website’s default page, where visitors land after clicking a link or entering a URL. Homepages serve different purposes. They welcome, educate, convert, and direct visitors to other web pages.
There is no standard design for a homepage. However, to fulfill its multiple-purpose function, it must have a headline, subheading, relevant images, content copy, calls-to-action, and navigation bar/menu.
- Contact Page
The contact page details various ways web visitors can contact the business, including hours of operation and service areas.
Many auto repair websites display the shop’s address, phone number, and email address in the footer of every page. While this makes it easy for customers to find this information, it opens businesses to spam mail. Including a contact form enables businesses to differentiate between legitimate inquiries and spambots.
You can also use a local business schema markup here. This type of structured data helps provide Google with details on where your auto-repair shop is located, business hours, contact, and contact information. The information can then be displayed on Google, as shown below.
This can be useful in helping potential customers get more details about your business from the search results.
- Service Page
The service page lists the various car fix services you offer. It gives potential clients a clear understanding of the value you’re offering and your processes.
Website builders like GetResponse offer dynamic tools, such as industry-specific templates and a drag-and-drop editor, to help you build and customize a multi-page website. This allows you to showcase the specific auto-repair services you provide and what customers can expect from each service.
3. Optimized content
One reason you need a website is to share information. There’s no better way to do this than with content marketing. This strategy attracts target customers with tailored content that meets all their automotive needs.
Creating high-quality blog content helps establish your shop as an authority in your industry, drives more traffic to your website, and increases your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
You can create blog posts about optimizing gas mileage, videos showcasing the latest automotive technology in auto repairs, or social posts highlighting the ASE-certified technicians who work with you.
Not all content is equal. Simply posting well-written and informative blogs about engine repair won’t give you the desired visibility. You need to optimize your website for search engines.
How?
The simplest way is to incorporate relevant keywords in your content. Take the search query ‘My car is making a squeaking noise,’ for example. If you write an informative guide on this problem and include that phrase in the blog post, you increase the chances of your content appearing on the SERPs.
Other ways to optimize content include user-friendly webpage layouts, high-quality images, relevant links, and technical SEO. You can check out our guide on writing SEO content for more details.
4. Mobile-responsiveness
Over half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. So, your auto repairs site must be mobile-responsive to reach a large portion of your target audience. That’s not all.
Google uses the mobile versions of websites for indexing and crawling. That means mobile-friendly sites are more likely to appear in search results.
Mobile responsiveness refers to a website’s ability to adapt its content to a device. Traditional web design uses a horizontal layout. However, smartphones and tablets have a vertical orientation. Responsive design bridges this difference in viewing orientation and adapts content to fit the device screen.
Below is a homepage view on a desktop.
Now compare it to the mobile version.
The mobile version is less condensed. Eliminating the headline, sub-heading, and hero image reduces visual clutter, improves site speed, and enhances mobile user experience.
The most efficient way to build a mobile-responsive website is to use a responsive template. This allows you to create your website just once, and then the template will resize itself to fit perfectly on different screen sizes. And you’ll achieve that without writing any line of code.
You can check out some of the best responsive templates for car repair sites here.
5. FAQs
Frequently asked questions (FAQs) share information in a concise and easy-to-understand format. The primary benefit is improving customer service by providing answers to common questions. That way, your customer support team can focus on complex customer issues.
Other benefits of having an FAQ page include:
- Improved SEO with keyword-rich questions and answers and internal linking tactics
- Opportunity to rank on Google’s featured snippets
- Improved user experience by providing relevant answers in one place
If you can’t maintain a company blog, FAQs are effective alternatives to drive organic traffic to your auto repair website.
Best Auto Repair Websites Examples
You don’t have to be a big-name dealership or franchise to have an effective auto repair website. Here are two examples from independent car repair shop owners.
1. Sacramento
The Sacramento Auto Repair website uses the homepage to establish trust with a five-star review rating. Contact information is also prominent. And customers know that the shop specializes in American and Japanese cars.
The navigational menu contains links to the necessary information – type of service offered, location of shop, and customer testimonials. Customers can also schedule routine maintenance and repair online.
2. Miller
Similarly, the Miller Auto Repair Shop website highlights contact information and reviews but adds hours of operation. The appointment button features prominently in the navigation bar, along with links to the blog, a list of services, vehicles serviced, and review pages.
As a potential customer, this clean website tells you how the shop can solve all your automotive needs. You want to do something similar with your car fix website.
In closing
Modern customers research businesses online before committing to products and services. Without a website, you’re essentially invisible and can’t rev up new business.
When car owners visit auto repair websites, they seek information and proof that your business is trustworthy.
Customer testimonials, FAQs, blogs, and key landing pages (homepage, contact, and service pages) allow you to meet these customer needs. Mobile responsiveness ensures the information customers want is readable.
That makes them five must-haves for your car repair website.