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A&L Scrap Car Dealers, the new addition to A&L Vehicle Recycling, is a family-run scrap car dealership located in the heart of Barry, South Wales. With more than 10 years’ experience within the scrap car and recycling industry, A&L provides professional and reliable services that their customers within the local and surrounding areas can trust. A&L’s business has been developed throughout the years on the excellent recommendations of their loyal customers in both scrap car and scrap metal services. However, without an established online presence apart from a few listings in local directories, A&L weren’t fully able to reach a wide range of customers that could elevate their business to the next level. That’s where we came in!
How did we help?
A&L approached the team here at Designer Websites as they were looking to build the online presence that the company desperately needed. Having been without a website, potential customers were having to find information on the company and the services that they provided via directory listings or through the business’ Facebook page, both of which contained scarce details. We were tasked with creating a functional website that delivered the important information about the company and the services that they offered as well as integrating a quote system that potential customers could use to discover the value of their car if they were looking to scrap it.
As A&L had no previous website, our design, SEO and development team had to work from scratch to deliver what was needed. As a result, comprehensive keyword research was conducted in order to identify industry-specific search terms, so that pages could be designed and created to include optimised copy and SEO. This enabled A&L to better capture online searchers and rank highly within search engine results. Once the design and copywriting were complete, we created the unique quote system that allowed users to input their car’s registration number and receive a free, no-obligation quote for the value of their car. This was developed in-house with every step of the process carefully curated, including a postcode lookup, which helps populate address fields. The quote system has been integrated with https://ukvehicledata.co.uk/pricing in order for accurate and reliable vehicle data to be pulled and displayed to the user.
We are proud to announce that the new A&L Scrap Car Dealers website is now live and can be viewed here!
If you are interested in having an existing site re-designed or having a new, bespoke site developed for your business, then please feel free to get in touch with the Designer Websites team below.
Contact Us >
Here at Designer Websites, we've created online booking systems for a wide variety of clients. Examples of the solutions we've developed include:
💊 Appointment booking systems for health clinics
🔧 Boiler installation booking systems for plumbers / heating engineers
😊 Visitor booking systems for leisure centres
⛷️ Equipment booking systems for ski holiday providers
⚖️ Consultation booking systems for legal practitioners
With all of these projects and more under our belt, we have a very strong understanding of what makes a good online booking system. Here are the five things that we consider to be most important:
A smooth, speedy user interface
Like any online application, an e-booking system should make the user's experience as pleasant and as painless as possible by loading quickly and functioning flawlessly. Your customers don't want to sit around twiddling their thumbs as they wait for a list of available timeslots to appear; nor will they enjoy trying to work out what to do next when your date selector doesn't load properly and the day they want to book isn't visible. Aim to get both your booking system and your website as a whole operating smoothly, with no glitches, no hiccups, and minimal load times.
A user-friendly date selection system
Make it as easy as possible for users to identify and select their preferred date and time. Many online booking systems utilise a month-by-month calendar layout, which is great because it's a format with which most people are familiar. However, whether you use the calendar style or not, you need to ensure that your customers can easily specify:
- Their preferred date (or date range if, for instance, they're booking a holiday)
- Their preferred time (if applicable)
- The duration of their appointment
- The type of appointment they're booking (if you offer a range of different services)
If users find it difficult to make these selections, they may well abandon your website and take their business elsewhere.
A clear breakdown of charges
Before asking for any payment details, you should provide each user with a cost summary that clarifies:
- How much is owed
- When this amount must be paid
In some cases, the full amount will need to be paid up front in order to confirm the booking; in other cases, the user may have to put down a deposit or booking fee to reserve their timeslot, with the remainder of the cost to be paid in person on the day of the appointment. Some hotels take credit card details upon reservation, but do not collect any money at all until check-in. However you have chosen to do it, it's important to make things crystal-clear to each customer before asking them to enter their payment information.
A simple and secure payment system
When your booking system includes an online payment step, the rules are just the same as on an
ecommerce website: make the payment process as straightforward and as secure as possible. Consider using a popular online payment system like PayPal, as this will allow many of your customers to simply enter an email address and password instead of typing in their entire credit card number. Don't demand any personal information that you don't actually need - the longer the form, the more likely that a customer will give up before completing it. And, most importantly of all, make ABSOLUTELY sure that all payments are processed securely (under HTTPS rather than HTTP).
A detailed confirmation email
Once a customer has completed a booking on your website, you should immediately dispatch a confirmation email containing all the key details of their appointment (e.g. date, time, location, outstanding costs that you're expecting them to settle on the day). You should also endeavour to make it nice and easy to change appointment details in the event of an error; for example, if somebody requested a 2pm appointment when they actually wanted a 4pm appointment, you now need to give them an easy way of correcting their booking, whether by contacting a member of your team or by manually editing their appointment details online.
So, what makes a good online booking system? In short: clarity, simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use. If your business needs a new website with a fully-integrated online booking system,
get in touch with Designer Websites now to request a quotation!
A few years ago, we were asked the following question:
"Hey, can you guys integrate Infusionsoft into my website?"
Our answer was
"Yes, of course we can!" We at Designer Websites are experts when it comes to
API integrations, and we had the i
nitial integration - which used the standard Infusionsoft API - working in no time.
However, we did notice that there were certain drawbacks to using Infusionsoft's standard API functions. The biggest disadvantage? The integration of the enquiries/sales forms were slowing down the site dramatically, and this affected page speed (a critical SEO factor) as well as the overall user experience.
To overcome this problem, we developed a custom integration solution the provided full Infusionsoft integration as required without having a detrimental effect on site speed or usability.
Over the years, we've integrated Infusionsoft forms into websites for a number of clients, and we would thoroughly recommend using a custom integration for this if your are focused on delivering a responsive service to customers who use your website.
If you'd like to speak to the Designer Websites team about a custom Infusionsoft integration, please get in touch today.
