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#11
AutoArchitech said:
right now when I first land I see 0, 0, 0, 0 if I put in some numbers I see $9,000 per month profit, what would jump out at you?
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The calculator is based on moving your phone-up closing rate by 5 percentage points. So if your store was averaging a 10% close rate, were looking to get you at 15%. For Internet leads it's 2.5%. These are very obtainable numbers.

I tried the calculator with and without numbers when I first built it. I was given prior feedback to start it off blank. Glad to know there's more than one opinion.

Thank you very much for your feedback.
 
#12
Mitch Gallant said:
It's a fun name so to have a fairly serious and business-y site isn't putting it to work as much as it could. I think car guys love to have fun and it would help your angle.
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Please remember I am selling to DP's and GM's, they tend to be a little more serious, and I would rather deliver a serious message than something that might come across as funny. That's not to say I can't put some humor on another page. I am going to consider this.

Mitch Gallant said:
I subscribe to the function before aesthetics school of thought so I want to give you props for an easy enough to navigate site with some great info. I got tripped up with testimonials, going back and forth to get to the different categories... not a biggie.
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I've got two types of testimonials, those that come from the salesperson in the form of a survey sheet upon completion of training and those that come from DP's & GM's after I've been working with their store for a bit. Since those surveys are scanned in, it's easy for me to put them in as a blog. But I hear you on the navigation part. I realized that early on. For know it's going to have to do unless somebody else has a better suggestion.

Mitch Gallant said:
The only thing I didn't like was that the home page video was a cartoon rather then you saying the same thing "in person". I friggen hate those videos and think there ugly in general (just my opinion of course) and think it would be easier and better to simply record yourself and post it to youtube or a video site to embed. Like I'd said earlier, and if theres some kind of statistical data that reasons why your using the cartoons in the first place why not have it be a crazy ninja killing the phone illustrating your intro... figuratively and literally. That would be make a great tv commercial! Hope that helps... I didn't use the calculator but I wasn't on your site to buy the product, just to snoop.
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I agree with you and at some point here in the next 30 days I'll be changing up my home page.

Thanks for the advice it's really been appreciated.
 
#14
I thought your site was very informative about the services you offer. I did not get the warm and cozy feeling that I was looking for but I did get the information. As I was navigating through the site some of the links would open new windows and I'm not sure if you want to that because you have to close the window to get back to the site to keep navigating through it. Another thing that I noticed was your links on some of the pages were a different color (blue). Have you heard of or used joomla? It's pretty cool and the most important thing is it's open source (FREE). It has a bigger learning curve than wordpress but the overall results are better plus you have alot more functions with it I think. It's a great content management system and there are hundreds of free extentions and modules that you can add to it. Over all I think you have a very informative site about your services. I would definitely look at joomla when you decide to redo you site.
 
#15
Thoughts from your Ol' Uncle Joe.

Jerry,
We talked about this a few months ago, my mind hasn't changed. Your home page should hammer home 2 things. You offer a proven system and It generates MORE PROFITS.

IMO, Your home page should should be totally free of clutter (text). Simple clean graphics need to "speak" to the 2 engines that drive your business.

#1). MORE PROFITS from existing traffic.
#2). Your system produces MORE PROFITS.
(you got to speak to the buyers wallet!)

IMO, Simple strong home page graphics/text lead the user to 2 landing pages, More Profits or Your System. These landing pages hammer home strong headlines of each. Headlines are linkable to more content. Simple, condensed Menus on Landing pages allow user to drill deeper into fact finding.

The idea is that deeper your visitor goes, the more time they "give" you. Each click is a vote of approval. The home page they give you 5 seconds to "pass or fail". The next page they'll give you 10 seconds. The 3rd page you get 20 seconds, and on and on. My make over for my site will be based on this design concept. For SEO and repeat visitors, you place text and more content below the fold.

Business layout models I LOVE:
http://diythemes.com/
Email Marketing and Email List Manager | MailChimp .
DIYthemes is a fantastic model for you to benchmark. The affiliate industry is a great industry to look for ideas. It's littered with gurus to help people produce MORE PROFITS with "their system".

Here is a handy usability checklist FYI: http://www.usereffect.com/download/checklist.pdf
You have problems. You need to work on #8. I gave you #9 & #19. Regarding #10& #11, IMO, you gotta dump that 1990's talking avatar crap <-- just my opinion, maybe the decision makes LOVE it and that's all that matters!). Fix #15.

Lastly... It's NEVER DONE Mine's not done, yours is not done even ALEX's is not done ;-) hahahaha. Site design is always evolving. Your repeat visitors will expect it to evolve. You may find gems from Useability Gurus like Steve "Don't Make me Think" Krug (video Steve Krug on the least you can do about usability - Business of Software) . Or take a look at UK's User experience and web design consultants | Clearleft Ltd | Design Agency of the Year A we regarded usability peeps.

Just my $0.02
 
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#18
Looking good Jerry! Here's a couple things from a straight B2B marketing perspective.

1. on your Take the Tour, Take the Test, Boost your Sales boxes, they look so related it was hard for me to read. It took me a couple minutes to realize they were different calls to action. I get that you're going with the black and white theme, but is there something you could do to make them look slightly different? A great stock image on each?

2. Back to Joe's comment above, is there a dealer you can reference right off the bat and say, "Improve your sales by X %?"

Overall, I like that you didn't try to put a ton of copy on the page and your navigation is straight forward.

Speak soon,

Shellie Pierce
DealerSocket
www.dealersocket.com
spierce@dealersocket.com
 
#20
Your site is coming along really good. Just had a thought when I just looked at it. Have you thought about going with the karate belt theme with the different training levels you offer? Green belt training pkg, brown belt pkg, black belt pkg, ect...? Just wondering.
 
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