UK Driving School Shop

[motion]

Hi shopkeepers

 

This is my first attempt at a store. I have enjoyed putting this together (so far). got some more ideas on other shops and now i know how easy it is to put one together, i might do some more.

 

Anyway, any feedback is most welcome. Please critic the site from the point of view of a customer.

 

Many thanks

 

http://www.motion-som.co.uk/shop/osc

[sdrio]

Hi shopkeepers

 

This is my first attempt at a store. I have enjoyed putting this together (so far). got some more ideas on other shops and now i know how easy it is to put one together, i might do some more.

 

Anyway, any feedback is most welcome. Please critic the site from the point of view of a customer.

 

Many thanks

 

http://www.motion-som.co.uk/shop/osc

 

I think it look great. can't find anything to complain about, which is unusual :D

[♥FWR Media]

Well I'm pretty "gobsmacked" to be honest.

 

Most sites we see here are trying to sell goods which is obviously the norm for internet sales and those sites, in their thousands, generally, tend to look like they have been built by a 4 year old.

 

Here we have a driving school putting up a quite neat looking first time site.

 

Very impressed.

 

Now some critique ..

 

1) The grey on black text works fine until it is true info/text imo where it begins to hurt my eyes .. the text opposite categories should have a near white backgound to make it easily readable.

 

2) You are a driving school .. which areas do you cover? it's no good being found on search engines for "Driving school Dartford" when you are in Manchester. (and at the moment you will get found for nothing .. read on)

 

3) Search engines .. you need to install ..

 

Ultimate SEO URLs contribution ..

 

A Header tags contribution "Each page must have a unique page title etc."

 

4) As your business is area based it is very important to have your full address on the home page and all pages not just in "contact us".

 

I'll leave it there for now but I feel that these points are a must.

 

Regards

 

Rob

[motion]

Well I'm pretty "gobsmacked" to be honest.

 

Most sites we see here are trying to sell goods which is obviously the norm for internet sales and those sites, in their thousands, generally, tend to look like they have been built by a 4 year old.

 

Here we have a driving school putting up a quite neat looking first time site.

 

Very impressed.

 

Now some critique ..

 

1) The grey on black text works fine until it is true info/text imo where it begins to hurt my eyes .. the text opposite categories should have a near white backgound to make it easily readable.

 

2) You are a driving school .. which areas do you cover? it's no good being found on search engines for "Driving school Dartford" when you are in Manchester. (and at the moment you will get found for nothing .. read on)

 

3) Search engines .. you need to install ..

 

Ultimate SEO URLs contribution ..

 

A Header tags contribution "Each page must have a unique page title etc."

 

4) As your business is area based it is very important to have your full address on the home page and all pages not just in "contact us".

 

I'll leave it there for now but I feel that these points are a must.

 

Regards

 

Rob

 

 

Huge thanks rob

 

I agree with all these points. I'll address them over the next few days.

[nerd1234]

Wow that is one impressive site, congratulations! I will be bookmarking it toward getting some ideas to improve my own site.

[spax]

It's a nice looking template, although for me, it doesn't necessarily have a driving school feel to it. You should make sure it is up to date, however. Template Monster templates have a habit of breaking, when a host upgrades to PHP5 and/or MySQL5.

 

I don't think the pink text sits very well against the overall design but that is just a personal opinion. Apart from how I think it looks, having links text and general text the same colour, could be confusing to the user.

 

I very much doubt you will get many (if any at all) lesson sales through the site so unless you intend on pushing the accessories, I would have used a static web site or a dedicated CMS, rather than a shopping cart app. Incidentally, why are your intensive courses more expensive than a normal lesson price? Even dearer again than block bookings. Your gift boxes are more expensive too!

 

Good luck with it!

[motion]

Hi Peter

 

Thanks for your comments, all are welcome.

 

I want to move away from the usual static site that most driving schools have, i find them tacky, unoriginal and usually made by people with no foresight. I say this because, we offer a service, just like any other service, that charges a fee for its time, and one that can be bought online. Why should driving school services NOT be bought online? In fact, why should anything be NOT available to be bought online? is the world still a globe, or has it gone flat again???

 

Intensive courses are much more expensive than single lessons or block bookings because they take a large amount of diary space in a short time period. This means that other lessons will need to be moved to make way for an intensive course. If you buy printing, and want your job completed in double time, you pay the extra, usually double the price. So, in comparison, we offer a good deal.

 

cheap really does mean cheap, and i believe that you get what you pay for.

 

I do agree about the pink. this is because our old colours were pink to purple and i wanted to show a little consistency to our regular customers (the ones that buy lessons online) that we are still the same company, just having a colour change. The pink will go soon.

[spax]

Nick,

 

I will give you reasons why I think what I said is valid but let me qualify my opinions - and when all is said and done, they are just that, my opinions - by telling you I was an ADI for some 15 years and during that time, I have run a driving school. I know a thing or two about what I say.

 

Why should driving school services NOT be bought online? In fact, why should anything be NOT available to be bought online? is the world still a globe, or has it gone flat again???

 

Well first off, I totally agree that is the rule. However, there are always exceptions to the rule and, in my opinion, selling driving lessons is the exception, as I will do my best to explain.

The world is indeed still a globe, not that I see that as relevant to this, other than it is the first reason why I don't think this is a good idea.

The concept of the world wide web and more to this point, e-commerce on the www, is one of a global market place. Unless you are as big as BSM or The AA, your business is pretty much a local catchment so even if your web site reached a would be learner driver in Cheshire, you're not going to get a joiner out of it because the distance is too far.

 

The way a lot of new joiners arrive at a school are through recommendations. When I was teaching, I could pretty much average one recommendation per pupil. Some, the older learners, you didn't get any, while the younger ones, you can get sometimes two or three. The rest usually come by the phone and I think this is your biggest problem.

 

When someone phones to inquire about driving lessons, they want to buy a driving lesson. Now, they don't necessarily want to buy from you, not unless they are recommended but then if that is the case, you have them anyway. Most people, a vast majority, will be phoning around to see who is the best, based on whatever strange criteria they may have.

What I am saying is, in my experience, although just about everyone who phones an inquiry wants to book a driving lesson, most won't want to do it there and then. They will make notes next to the various yellow pages or local paper adverts they phone and eventually, they will get back to the school they decided on. That could be because the price is best, they like the car that school uses, they want a female instructor, they liked the person they talked to, no piggy backing, blah blah. A whole range of reasons why they wouldn't choose a particular school but reasons, if you are any good, you can close out and get them signed up while you have them on the phone. After all, they want a driving lesson so you don't let them off the phone until you have them booked.

 

You see, this is the biggest issue I can see with your web site. You have no personal contact with them so you can't sell them a driving lesson.

Imagine the day your site starts to get lots of hits, which is obviously what you want or there'd be no point in having it. Just plucking some figures out of the ether, lets say you get 100 unique hits a day. Out of those 100 hits, 10 are from potential new joiners. Now, based on what I have experienced and all 10 are "shopping around", if you don't have something on the site that ticks all their boxes, they will be gone forever. If you had those 10 people on the phone instead, I would expect to sign up at least 5 of them - probably more.

We must take into consideration, people are still reluctant to buy things online. Under normal circumstances they need a good reason to do it. A product they can't get elsewhere, a fantastic price, etc. The way I see it with your site, not only is that incentive missing, there are only reasons not to buy online. And the problem there is, once they have the info they need from you, as I said before, if it doesn't tick the boxes, they are gone.

I asked you why your intensive courses are so much dearer than a normal lesson price. Let me tell you, this will lose you customers through the web site. You explain that it is because of rearranging other lessons and while I think that is a load of cobblers, it is a reason and one you could sell on the phone.

Admittedly, I haven't been in the loop for a few years but your's is the first school I have known to charge more for an intensive course. If I was to just see that online, I would take it as a way of getting more money out of me. Now I have left your site, never to be seen or heard from again.

Even if you do get people to buy online, they can't actually book a lesson as yet. They would still need to phone you or you phone them, to actually book a day and time.

 

Given all that, I think a driving school needs to have an information web site but it should be just that. I would only put the good things about the school on it - We teach in brand new BMW 1 Series cars, 100% first time pass rate, male and female grade 6 instructors - with a phone number and contact form.

 

I want to move away from the usual static site that most driving schools have, i find them tacky, unoriginal and usually made by people with no foresight.

 

I don't understand your logic that because a web site is static, it has to be "tacky, unoriginal and usually made by people with no foresight." Any web site can look that way, even an e-commerce site. You have a template for your store, you can just as easily get a professional looking static template.

 

In summary, people shop around for driving lessons/schools so I think you are disadvantaging yourself by giving them the info they need on the web site, which allows them to go away without speaking to you, thereby losing a phone call to one of your competitors, who will possibly book them up.

 

For what it is worth, this is what I think and even if you totally disagree, it is worth consideration. I wish you well with it and I hope I am wrong.

[motion]

Hi Peter

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

 

I agree with some of your points and these may be addressed.

 

I think that if the internet was our only source of advertising, i would agree with all of your points.

 

Perhaps i should have said in my first post 'look at what i have done to this template, and it still works!'

 

 

regards

 

Nick

[nimz]

looks good. would be better with some nice images or flash that emphasizes more on "driving school"

[georgec]

A quick one

 

- Add

HTML { overflow: scroll; }

to your css, so the page doesnt jump left and right whenever the scrollbar needs to appear

- Change "Categories" to "Services" ?? Just a common sense

- "Currencies:" dont see you giving the visitor much choice there but UK GBS. If that's the only currency, you might want to remove it matie...

 

Cheers

George

 

 

Hi shopkeepers

 

This is my first attempt at a store. I have enjoyed putting this together (so far). got some more ideas on other shops and now i know how easy it is to put one together, i might do some more.

 

Anyway, any feedback is most welcome. Please critic the site from the point of view of a customer.

 

Many thanks

 

http://www.motion-som.co.uk/shop/osc