TopFuel - Featuring Mickey's Automotive -

Featured Client
Mickey’s Automotive

Website: http://mickeys-automotive.com
Designer: Justin
Client: Mike “Mickey” Keegan
Part of the AutoVitals Family since: 2016
Location: Sleepy Hollow, NY

http://mickeys-automotive.com/ Home page

“Transitioning my website from Kukui to you guys was one of the easiest things I’ve done this year.”
– Mike “Mickey” Keegan, Owner
Mickey’s Automotive

If you read our last article featuring Asian Auto Tech of Ventura, you will have noticed we made mention of the idea of “hitting the easy button” when building your next website. For J.R. Luna from Asian Auto Tech, granted it was a fairly smooth process since he has been our customer since 2013 and was upgrading to TopFuel from one of our existing website packages. In this case, our web team was already armed with a wealth of knowledge for how to best transition from one website to another. Still, what happens if you’re a Kukui customer or have a website with any other company?

Home Page (iPad Air2)

No matter who your current website company is, we can help in the transition.

Migrating from one web company to another can be a little daunting. There are a lot of questions to be asked, and chances are your current company will be a little “hurt” that you’re leaving and might not help in the transition. Since our web services are growing more popular and we’ve helped transition quite a few customers, here are the top three points to watch out for in the transition, with which we’re fully equipped to assist:

Getting complete control of your domain
Do you remember purchasing your domain name? Do you remember where to login and access it? Do you know your domain credentials? These are all critical questions that need to be answered to migrate successfully.

Migrating your reviews
You’ve been collecting reviews for months, or even years, and you’re wondering, “Where the heck do these go when I switch to Autovitals?” Thankfully we have a variety of solutions to migrate your reviews; you’ll have them appearing on your new website with little to no fuss.

Migrating your tracking phone numbers (I have tracking phone numbers??)
In the early days, we ran into a few instances where our clients had been with providers who set them up with tracking phone numbers and didn’t tell them. For those of you who aren’t familiar with tracking phone numbers, they’re telephone numbers for purchase that forward to your regular shop phone when someone calls. The benefit is that you can measure performance by tracking how many people call directly from your website. However, if these phone numbers are saved by customers or become known beyond your website, you run the risk of customers calling a phone number THAT NO LONGER WORKS. AutoVitals can identify if you have tracking phone #s and can even help migrate them over.

Landing page – Honda Repair (Desktop on Windows 10 – Chrome)

“You guys were very professional and I’m very happy with your services so far. I’m looking forward to my first performance review.”
– Mike “Mickey” Keegan, Owner
Mickey’s Automotive

So how did the Web Team get to know Mickey and help with the transition from Kukui?

As soon as you’re finished working out the details for how AutoVitals can best help your business and the contract is signed… that’s when the Web Team gets down to business. We want to know as much about you as possible so we can best represent both you and your staff accurately and facilitate with the transition — placing as little stress on you as possible.

Step 1: We’ll Call You to Schedule Your “Kick-Off” Meeting

In this first phone call, Mickey was introduced to his TopFuel onboarding specialist, Paul. Think of him or her like a service advisor… they’re the one at the front counter, the face of your organization, and the one you trust to coordinate the details and execution when the rubber hits the road.

During this call, we went over the following topics:

Introduced Mickey to the onboarding process
Scheduled a time to kick-off the project
“First meeting” agenda and how best to prepare.

Please note, your first meeting is very important to us so be sure to pick a time you know you can commit to. Whether you prefer mornings or afternoons, or virtually any day of the week… our team will be sure to schedule a time that works best for you.

Step 2: The Kick-off Meeting

During this meeting, Mickey got to know us while we introduced him to the program. We typically ask a series of questions to pick-up on the “little things” to make Mickey’s experience a great one. As we like to say, “No two shops are ever alike” and there are often some hidden gems we can leverage during the build process. It’s also important for you to express any shortcomings or grievances you may have had with your previous provider, so do be sure to express any concerns you have.

In this meeting, Mickey went over the following with his onboard specialist:

Goals for the project
Milestones
Timelines and “how we get it done”
Cancellation timeframe with Kukui (We didn’t want Mickey paying for duplicate or overlapping services).
Tracking phone# transfers (Avoid phone service disruption)
Transferring reviews
Obtaining domain credentials for a smooth launch
Setting up the next meeting to review our promotion strategy with our SEO team

Step 3: Promotion Strategy (SEO)

This is the second meeting Mickey had with our team in which we discussed our promotion strategy. We clarified how Mickey was being promoted by Kukui, what our approach was by comparison and readily identified/shared observational “gaps” in his current website’s performance. Likewise, we reviewed unique opportunities to obtain the customer-base he was looking to target and as a result, promoted Mickey for mix-blend of preferred services, makes and in some VERY specific areas (which had previously gone un-addressed).

Step 4: The “Look and Feel”

When I sat down with Mickey, it was important to clarify “the vision” for what’s to come. Most customers who come from Kukui typically express a common sentiment, which is something along the lines of, “Well… it’s a website” or might say, “It does the trick, but isn’t anything special.” Mickey also fell into this camp, which left plenty of room for exploration and flexible designs. Moving forward we agreed to:

Keep the colors and branding consistent
Make the website more “personal”
Use more images of the shop and staff
De-clutter the home page
Make the content “easy to scan and read”

The overall end-product was one we both very much enjoyed and I’d personally like to thank Mickey for giving us a try–especially since working with him was truly a pleasure. Now let’s take a quick tour through the website and how some of his other areas came out.