Alex

This has been completed.

AutoShopOwner will be offline at 7 PM EST on Wednesday 8/16 for a short period of time to perform website updates. These updates will bring in some new features and stage for future enhancements to this website.

Today we changed the name of our Advertising Membership to Sponsor Membership, in an effort to more closely align with our membership strategy and to bring attention to our members who support the AutoShopOwner community. We also want our members to know that Sponsors also help support the AutoShopOwner community with their membership and are welcome to interact with our members in our forums and engage as representatives of their respective companies. We've launched a new a page to showcase our Sponsors with their company logos and website links located from a link in our header and also here: https://www.autoshopowner.com/members/2-sponsors/ AutoShopOwner thanks all of our Sponsors for taking part in our community. We encourage our members to visit their websites to learn more about their products and services.

AutoShopOwner has been updated as of today and you should see our enhanced header live. If you have any issues, please post a reply in this topic. 😁

Glad to see you OK and back Gonzo. 😁

In an effort to ease some of the searching and navigation, I've been working on an enhanced header for ASO where the search bar and the user bar will stay on the top of your screen when you scroll through pages. The main menu us placed into a link on the right side which borrows from our mobile layout and search is always always top and center. Take a look at the attached quick video link and let me know what you think. 😎 Browsers currently working: Chrome, Internet Explorer, & Firefox. Working on an issue with search in Edge.

My thoughts and prayers are with you @Gonzo for a successful procedure and quick recovery. Get well soon and we'll miss you here at ASO for a short bit and will be waiting for your return! @xrac thanks for posting this.

I've added back the chat menu counter that shows how many people are in chat. Please test out and if you get a blank page, refresh the page and try clearing your browser cache/cookies. Chat is located here https://www.autoshopowner.com/chatroom/

Lately our traffic and participation in the forums has been rising but the chat room, especially Sunday chat is not being utilized as much. The question came up whether we still even need a chat section or Sunday night chat. Please take a moment to vote, so we can poll our community on this topic. Our chat room is located here: https://www.autoshopowner.com/chatroom/ (if you don't see it, please clear your cookies/cache) Please feel free to comment on this topic.

I am currently testing a chat integration using a service from Chatwee for our chat page https://www.autoshopowner.com/chatroom/ Please test it out. Resizes on mobile as well.

We have a chat room back up, which you can navigate to by clicking on the CHAT link in the main menu. This is a temporary chat room while we look over permanent solutions for AutoShopOwner. We made an announcement last week that the old chat is no longer available due to the company who provides the server, shutting down.

Our chat room is currently unavailable as our provider as taken the chat server offline. The server was not supposed to go offline until tomorrow, but the provider has taken it down earlier than expected. We did not anticipate an interruption for this week's chat. We apologize for the inconvenience if you visited this evening to take part in Sunday Chat. We should have more details and a chat room back up soon.

Good topic, gonna chime in. I agree with @Autoshop Solutions and also agree with @RobMax on the work behind quality SEO. The techniques used today are enhanced and not the same as we could get away with 5-10 years ago. I have a few sites that dropped off in rankings and required a new SEO strategy to adapt to Google's algorithm changes over the years. The right content is very important as is domain age/relevance, keywords in page titles/content (not so much meta keywords anymore), quality back-links, screen rendering/responsive designs, coding with the right markups behind the scenes, SSL, etc. Designing a local site is a bit different than designing a site meant to target a broader geography. It's true that in busier metro areas with many competitors, it's that much more difficult to beat them within the organic search results, so it can take time and creativity (this is where adwords can make up for that). Think about what your customers are typing into Google and use those words and phrases in your content and page titles and make sure your site is user friendly and encourages time on the site and page clicks. I find that many shop owners don't really check their site that often, it's a good exercise to see if you can find yourself...looking for a specific service. 😁

For anyone getting additional services with their website, is it paying off? What marketing services do you feel are providing the most ROI for you? What do you feel may be missing as a service? Would you recommend what you are getting now (Feel free to plug the company if you like)?

We have implemented a new message system around member account information. If your account profile required fields are incomplete, you will now see a popup on the screen until you visit your account settings and update your profile. We attempt to capture this information upon registration but with the added ability to quickly login/register via social networks like Linkedin, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, members are not going through the normal registration process. Starting today, these and any other members with incomplete info will receive a quick message to remind them to update their profiles. Should you encounter any issues or need assistance, please post in this topic or send me a quick private message.

I agree.

So you have a domain name that redirects to the corporate site where they have a location based page for you it looks like. Cool. That's good that you have the time to manage it and I agree that you can then just edit as need. Wordpress is so widely used and does a good job. There are many website companies that use Wordpress and just customize it, add SEO plugins and such. Thanks for sharing.

I've started a topic to better understand what costs everyone is incurring with their business websites. Please feel free to comment and answer the poll questions.

There are many different website services, packages, and programs available when choosing the right company/webmaster for your auto repair business. You can sign up to a service that provides a robust website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), analytics, marketing services, social network management, integrations, etc. You can also sign up for much simpler solutions which usually only include a website and some SEO. You can also try to use an online website builder to get yourself online with something very basic, which is better than nothing. So many different option and they all have their associated costs. In some cases there are initial startup costs as well. In most cases however, there are monthly costs associated with operating a business website. Please take a moment and share, if you would like, about your website costs and associated services. Please also take a moment to answer a few quick question in the attached poll. Thank you.

Links section has been updated. https://www.autoshopowner.com/links/

If I remember correctly, Johnson Controls manufactures Interstate and I thought NAPA batteries were manufactured by East Penn. 🤔

* Topic moved to Marketing, Advertising, and Promoting forum.