Your website is your 24/7 sales representative, and if you put a poor amount of effort or money into developing and designing, it's going to perform as poorly as an untrained employee.
There's nothing better than getting a new website at an affordable price and saving money. Who needs an expensive website anyway? It's just a place to list your services, right? It doesn't need to be anything fancy.
Well, as much as we love a good deal when it comes to your website, we'd argue that bargains are the last thing you should be looking for.
Imagine if your brick-and-mortar location looked like a crappy junk yard on the outside and you got an awesome referral from a past customer, what’s the possibility of that referral driving by instead of coming in to see what you have to offer?
The same goes for your website. If your website design and content doesn't align with the amazing high quality badass work that you do then your potential clients aren’t going to stick around very long to see what you have to offer. Remember that your website is your online headquarters.
Never settle for less than perfection when it comes to your website as you wouldn't for your shop and your clients definitely will not when deciding to bring you their baby and spending money with you. A cheap low-budget website made by an untrained developer or an old outdated website will do your company more harm than good. It could even end up costing you more money in the long run.
With your website, you have to put in the time, money and effort. You have to build it so it speaks to your audience and captures leads regularly. Your website is your 24/7 sales representative, and if you put a poor amount of effort or money into developing and designing, it's going to perform as poorly as an untrained employee.
You wouldn't let a random person restore a classic car just because he has a tool box full of expensive tools, so don't leave a poorly-created website to sell your products and services.
Having an old, outdated or low-budget website could also be ruining your company's reputation and costing you money. Today, we'll show you how a bad website can hurt your business and why you should start by build an amazing website.
6 Ways an old, outdated or low-budget website can damage your company
Cheap websites are as bad as we say they are. Sometimes on the surface they look great but over the years we’ve found that short cuts have been taken that can affect the user experience or even how you show up in search. They also make you look like a company that cuts corners and doesn't care about their own business or the work they do for their clients.
Putting yourself out there as a company that doesn't put the time and effort into their business will ultimately scare away any potential clients, which will result in no leads and no conversions.
However, having an updated, modern website that’s always kept up to date with the latest about your company and your work is an assured way to attract clients to your business and encourage them to invest in your automotive aftermarket restoration, performance, race or restyling services.
Don't believe us? Here are six ways having an old, out of date, poorly designed or hard-to-navigate website damages your company.
1. They create bad first impressions
When your visitors land on your website, data shows that it only takes them
2.6 seconds to make up their minds about your company based on what they see on your home page.
First impressions are vital to the success of your automotive aftermarket shop. To increase your conversions, you have to create a positive first impression on every visitor that lands on your website. And we’re not just talking about having a great home page, every page needs to be amazing as with the search people don’t always land on your homepage first when visiting your website.
94% of users' first impressions are purely based on the looks of your website. So if you have an unattractive or user unfriendly website design, your visitors aren't going to stick around for long. Plus,
38% of website visitors don't engage with an ugly website at all and 75% of your website credibility comes from the design alone.
If your website looks unprofessional, tired or missing what they’re looking for, they'll leave and head straight to your competitors.
Having a low-budget or old outdated website usually means:
- Slow load time
- Poor navigation
- It may not work properly on a mobile device
- Bad or uninteresting content
- Confusing layouts
- Missing information
Don't lose out on sales and give your visitors what they want - a well-designed, easy to navigate, fast-loading website full of relevant and valuable information.
2. They reduce your traffic
If users leave your website as soon as they land on your home page, Google will see this as a huge red flag. Having a high bounce rate will push your website further down the search results and away from the top of search results - and nobody ever goes as far as page two.
88% of website consumers never return to a page they've had a bad experience on and
57% of consumers won't recommend poorly designed websites at all. So, not only will you end up with a ridiculously high bounce rate, but you'll also find it hard to get any referrals or repeat customers.
It's time to stop losing out on potential new customers by updating your website which will lead to improved traffic, longer page view times and more leads.
3. They make you invisible to your audience
You're on the internet to reach out to people and encourage them to check out your extraordinary auto restoration, performance, race or restyling product and services. If you have a poorly built website, your audience won't notice you. You'll be invisible!
Google won't list you so your audience won't be able to find you as they search for your products and services potential clients just won't even know you even exist. If your audience can’t find you, then they can’t hire you!
A poorly designed or old outdated website usually has very little or no SEO improvement work done, which is precisely what your company's website needs to become visible on Google. Without a decent SEO strategy in place, you're not going to get noticed by Google, which means your audience won't see you.
We can’t tell you how many times that we’ve taken in a new customer and learned that Google Analytics and Google Search Console was never set up. Search Console is one of the key ways you can tell Google that you exist and keep Google automatically updated as to the pages on your website and any updates you make.
If you want to reach more of your potential customers, you'll have to update your website and optimize the heck out of it for the search engines. The more SEO work you get done for your shop's site, the more likely you'll show up on the first page of Google for relevant keywords.
There are key things regarding on-site SEO that have to be done when a new site is built as well as maintained as long as the site is live.
4. They waste time & money
In this day and age having a website for your shop is a must, but if you're thinking of going for the affordable option to save a bit of money, then you could be setting yourself up for disaster and added expense and stress.
Going with the affordable option for your company might save you a couple of thousand dollars at the moment, but down the line, that budget site is going to start costing you more.
Let's say you were presented with an excellent, simple site for under $1,500. It'll probably look and perform alright for a couple of months or so, but eventually, you're going to notice it's not bringing in any new sales, it’s missing key elements about your business, it's not loading or working correctly, and you may be constantly getting hacked.
This budget website will need to be fixed or possibly even rebuilt by a professional developer, or you run the risk of turning your company into a business that’s untrustworthy or doesn't pay attention to detail.
So that site that was $1,200 will possibly end up costing you more money to get fixed! Plus, your bargain basement website probably doesn't even represent your company well. If a novice designer/developer made it, they more than likely built it using a template with little changes from the original templates design. This means it'll possibly look like every other website built on that template instead of a site customized for your company.
Please note we’re not saying templates are bad, as some quality templates offer a ton of features, we’re just saying that if a template is used the end result should not look the same as the core template once the site is built. Grabbing a template and just dropping in images and content is not a great solution. This is one of the things you’ll get with a low budget site build.
Think of it this way. You wouldn't buy a low-budget, second-hand or no name part for a build project just because it was a few bucks cheaper. It'll just break quicker, might not fit properly or even damage your reputation as the customer may come back for further repairs that could have been avoided. Instead, you'd get the best quality part that would last.
Here’s a simple website investment guide that you can use for the cost of a net new website build:
$4,495 - $5,495 is the average baseline range if you have a great 8-12 page site with great images and content that just needs a new look and feel.
Need a larger site that's above the baseline? These are some numbers you can use:
Not only will going with a bargain website cost you more in the long run, but you'll also be wasting a lot of precious time trying to get it fixed.
It takes time to get traffic to your site, and if you've been using a poorly designed site for years, then you've lost time where you could be attracting new clients.
Avoid going for cheap websites - you'll only have to spend more time and money fixing it later.
5. They’re not mobile-friendly
Smartphones alone generate
54.4% of global website traffic. That's over half of the world's online traffic! And 83% of the U.S. population access the web through their phones, tables, or other mobile devices. Are you missing out?
Another key data point to keep in mind is that as time goes by more and more people are using mobile devices in their everyday lives, especially 95% of younger people as you can see in the chart below. If your core target audience is utlizing mobile devices you better make your website mobile ready.
From our research, we’ve discovered that 40% of aftermarket auto shop websites aren’t mobile-ready. If your website isn't optimized for mobile devices, you might run into a few issues. Most old or cheaply made websites aren't mobile responsive, or may not work correctly meaning they're unreadable on phones or tablets.
Being mobile-ready is so important for shops because if somebody’s at a car event and they see your builds they’re not going to wait till they get home to Google your business. They’re going to take out their phone at that second and put your business into the search engine. If they don’t get the results they’re hoping for or struggle to even find or use your site then they’re probably going to forget about you.
Your audience expects to scroll through any website, view your info and project galleries on their phones without any issues. Not only does this stop interested parties from viewing your website but it also drives away any potential clients.
Your old, outdated, and mobile-unfriendly website will only create frustration for your users because it'll
- Load slowly
- Be unreadable thanks to small text
- Have blurred images or images that are too big
- Be hard to navigate
- Have buggy functionality
- Will not rank well in search engines
It's time to update your old outdated or 'affordable' website for something new and more mobile-friendly, so your users can learn more about what you have to offer.
As noted above when researching sites in the automotive aftermarket industry, we discovered that 40% of websites weren't mobile-ready. Is your site one of the 40%?
6. They have poor security
The internet is a fantastic place, but it's also a dangerous place full of malicious hackers. Hackers work around the clock to gain access to websites and mine data to sell online. If your website hasn't been updated in a few years or it's a budget site, your security probably isn't the best.
Over 40% of websites in the industry don’t have an SSL certificate which is incredibly dangerous for your website.
Google wants people to feel comfortable on your website and if you don’t have an SSL certificate your website isn’t going to be anywhere near the top of the first page of search.
Having high-quality security protocols in place is vital for your safety and the safety of your clients - especially if you keep their data stored on your site.
If you're responsible for any personal customer or sensitive data and your security isn't the best, you might as well just hand the data straight to the hackers.
Plus, losing customer or employee data could put you in serious trouble and might even get you stuck in the middle of a lawsuit.
Some shops think they're safe because they're small, and no hacker will go through the hassle of hacking their site. But getting hacked is a huge deal and can seriously damage your reputation.
Why should you keep your website’s content updated?
As an auto restoration, performance, race or restyling shop you should always keep your website updated with your latest projects and any awards you’ve won. You should also be on top of any new trend that’s happening in the industry including new equipment, products, techniques, events, and industry news.
If you’re not keeping your website up to date with the latest and greatest from your shop then you’re going to fall behind.
A lack of new projects, project galleries and products on your website might make your audience think you’re inactive. So, post every update you can to show your potential clients that you’re constantly creating amazing work and building fantastic restorations.
Posting your awards will give you awesome proof points that you can use to demonstrate you’re a reliable Badass shop to work with. Not showing off your achievements or that SEMA Show award from 15 years ago is just a lost opportunity.
It’s vital that, as a member of the automotive aftermarket industry, you also keep up to date with the latest news and trends in the industry. If you don’t you’re going to fall behind your competitors and possibly lose out on the perfect clients for your business.
We hope our blog post has helped you understand why going for a budget website can damage your reputation and end up costing you more money.
Avoid going for the bargain basement option as much as possible and get your website built by a website design and development professional.
