WE CARE Women's Excellence in Auto Repair Equality

Marketing to Women with Your Auto Shop Website

in Digital Marketing / Web Content / Web Design  by October 15, 2014 81 comments

Female-friendly websites bring in business.

At the Management Success! Fall Convention, female automotive professionals from around the country launched WE CARE—Women’s Excellence, Careers in Auto Repair Equality—an advisory board that will work to raise awareness of the auto repair industry as a viable career path for women as well as men. Another goal is to show how the auto repair industry has changed and continues to evolve. More and more often, women are running things behind and in front of the shop counter.


According to member and shop co-owner Lacee Cunningham, “we are dedicated to helping others by offering up [our] resources for career opportunity, training, and ideas.” One way the group can help you—as a shop owner—is by providing tips for marketing to women. And they’ll tell you, an important way to attract female customers is through your auto shop website.


Find out what women want—and then deliver it.

The auto repair shop is generally perceived as a male domain, but in fact, women request 65% of the service work done on cars and spend over $200 billion on new cars and servicing each year. Women also buy more than half of the new cars in the U.S. and influence up to 80% of all car purchases. Accordingly, it pays to find out what female customers want and need—and then deliver it.


When it comes to your website and your online presence, women are more likely to engage in social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and check review sites, such as Google and Yelp, before choosing an auto shop. Therefore, it’s important to respond to your reviews and engage your customers on social networking sites. Your happy female customers are likely to tell their friends and family members about your shop online.


In addition to having a fresh and attractive looking website, it’s helpful to include personal information about yourself and your employees. This makes you “real” to potential customers. Pictures and education points also establish your authenticity.


Make your mama happy.

It does take a little effort, but marketing to women pays off in the long run—with repeat business, future referrals, and an increased viable customer base. What a huge return! And all you have to do is “make your mama happy.”


Here are some websites we’ve designed for WE CARE members:


Aardvark Automotive

2nd-to-None Service

Knight’s Automotive Repair

Ultimate Truck Service

Equipment Experts, Inc.

Browsing the Web on a Smartphone

So What’s the Deal with Responsive Sites?

in Responsive Web Design / Vertical Scrolling / Web Design  by August 18, 2014 115 comments

Your customers are on the go. With a responsive site, so are you.

At MS Web Pros, we continuously strive to optimize our clients’ websites for mobile devices. Here’s why.


People use their phones and tablets to browse the web everywhere they go. That means your website doesn’t just sit on a desk. It needs to look sharp and be functional in every context, regardless of screen size. In other words, it must be “responsive.” Responsive web design is the concept of developing a website in a manner that allows the layout to change according to the user’s computer screen size and resolution.


The best responsive web designs simultaneously attract mobile web users while maintaining a website’s aesthetics. You can count on perfect readability regardless of the device displaying your website, along with a well-structured appearance that beautifully conveys your brand and your message.


In order to understand and appreciate responsive web design, it helps to think about how people use their phones and tablets for web browsing, and also to visualize the most popular sites on the web (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr). These sites are minimal, and they are easy to use on mobile devices. It’s also important to note that people vertically scroll these sites, moving down the page to see content rather than going to a different page and waiting for it to load.


Wait…Long scrolling pages are a good thing?

In the old days, web designers often tried to cram a lot of content “above the fold” on a website’s home page. (In web design parlance, “above the fold” refers to the portions of a webpage that are visible without scrolling.) This strategy is based on the presumption that people are unlikely to scroll down when they come across a web page; rather, they only read what’s right in front of them.


But that’s just not the case—at least not anymore. People are used to scrolling through websites. A big part of that is the ascendancy of smartphones and tablets, which people now use to browse the web more often than they use a desktop or laptop. So while the area “above the fold” on your home page is still your website’s most valuable real estate, it’s not really necessary to overload the space with content.


Instead, the current trend—and more effective approach—is to grab the viewer’s attention with engaging text and images. And if people are intrigued by what they read and see, they are likely to scroll down to find out more about your shop and your services.


Sometimes it’s best to go with the flow.

People are creatures of habit. And right now most internet users are in the habit of browsing the web on the go. A responsive design means that your new and existing customers will feel at home on your website even when they’re out of the house.