Building a Detailing Business Website
Summary: Make your website look professional and easy to navigate for clients.
If your business doesn’t have a website, it’ll be very difficult to market yourself and many clients will search online to find local businesses.
Pick a Domain Name
It all starts with a domain name. If possible, get the name of your business as your domain so it’s easy to remember and search. Avoid super long domain names and names with a lot of letters and hyphens. Always go with a “.com” for a business.
Check Domain Availability
You register a domain name through a company called a domain registrar. Many of them like Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy, and DreamHost will have free domain checkers to see if the domain name you want is available to register, so try out different names to see what’s available.
Domains are registered on a yearly basis and will expire (unregister) if not renewed. We recommend setting up an auto-renew on your domain registration just in case!
Buying a Website Package
Many sites that offer domain registration also offer packages that include web hosting, emails, and other cool features like drag-n-drop website editors. You pay for a domain and hosting on a yearly basis up-front, but prices are sometimes shown as monthly values if there’s a discount.
You can register a domain with one company and buy hosting from another, but it’s easier for website newbies to keep it all under one roof.
Recommended Web Hosts
The following popular sites offer domain registration, web hosting, website builders, and a professional email option.
- GoDaddy
- DreamHost
- Check out the “Shared Unlimited” plan here to get access to their WP website builder.
- Wix
- Professional email is an add-on but the domain registration is discounted for the first year.
- SquareSpace
Client Info Questions
We’ve made a list of questions that anyone looking at your website should be able to answer in less than a minute with very little clicking around. If your business site doesn’t have the info they need, they’ll bounce to a competitor that does!
- What's the name of the business and where is it located? If it's mobile, what's the service area?
- How can I contact this business via phone or email? Is there a contact form?
- When is this business open?
- What service packages are offered, and what's in each?
- What's the price for each service or what does each package start at? Does it vary by vehicle size?
- How do I book a service or schedule a consultation? Is there an online form or do I call/email?
Website Design Tips
We have a lot of folks on the HTAD Discord who review websites and offer design improvement help for newbies. These are the most common fixes that come up when a new website is posted for us to review.
- Use contrast with photo backgrounds. Darken the photo if your text on top of it is white, or lighten the photo if the text is black.
- Use consistent capitalization in headings. If you're going to commit to ALL CAPS then do it in ALL THE HEADERS.
- Check spelling and grammar. Now check it again.
- Use static features. Animations often don't look good on mobile and make your website slow.
- Test view on mobile to make sure your text and images scale and align properly. Over half of web traffic is via mobile devices.
Website Grading
Use this rubric to judge your website to keep on track regardless of what you’re using to build it. These are the first things we look for when doing website reviews on the HTAD Discord.
Site Sins: Your Website Sucks
- There is an auto-playing video or music
- Text takes up the entire view on mobile
- Business name is not visible at the top of the home page
- Text is difficult to read due to background vs font color clashing
- Images are cut-off or fail to load
- Links are broken
- A single typo or misspelling anywhere
Basic Design Checklist
- Contains no Site Sins
- The website has a distinct header, body, and footer area
- The business name is visible on every page.
- +1 point for having it on every page in either the header or footer
- The location and hours are listed on at least one page.
- +1 point for having it in the footer on every page
- Some form of pricing is listed on at least one page.
- A phone number or email is listed on at least one page
- The home page has a description of the business
- At least one photo on the site
Standard Design Checklist
- Completed Basic Design Checklist
- Each page of the site is in a navigation bar or menu
- Not applicable to single-page sites
- Each service/package includes a photo
- At least one before/after photo on the site
- Professional logo in the header
- Effective use of colors to coordinate with header/body/footer and logo
- Email posted as contact info matches website domain (no gmail, hotmail, etc)
Professional Design Checklist
- Completed Standard Design Checklist
- Website is tied to Google Business entry 🙂
- Social media links such as Instagram or Facebook are listed on at least one page
- Multiple portfolio photos are on the site
- Navigation bar on mobile is collapsed
- Not applicable to single-page sites
- Online contact form or tel/mailto links to send an email or call directly
- Ad copy and descriptions include targeted keywords such as “detailing” “mobile detailing” etc.
- Meta description for each page is written and displays properly in search results. Use Hey Meta to check your home page and other pages https://www.heymeta.com/
