Driving new business with a “best in class driving instructor website.” 

This week as part of our “Business in Focus” Series, we are looking at Driving Schools and their need for a website and how a website can be used to grow their business to be a leading driving school in your area.

Why you need a website as a driving instructor.

You need a website for your driving school because 81% of consumers now research products before buying. Think about that stat for a moment, it really is amazing how internet savvy todays consumers actually are.

There are many ways present and grow your business online but a website is the only platform that you actually own. Building a strong website will lead you new customers every month.

Facebook is important but it can be difficult to present your business with all the updates. Some are not really relevant to what you are doing or trying to promote.

With a website for your driving school, you can ensure that the most important information is readily available  for your customers to take action quickly.

You own your website unlike the range of social media platforms. If they decide to change something it can negatively effect your business. Social media platforms should primarily be used to promote your business and drive traffic to your own platform where you own the customer.

Types of Driving Instructor Websites

The type of website you choose for your driving school will depend on the type of business you have and where you hope to bring your business in the future. Do you plan on building the team into the future. Do you want to eliminate the phone queries for your driving lessons allowing you to put in more billable hours with clients behind the wheels.

Here are a few types of Driving School website you can use to promote your business.

Brochure Driving School Website

A Brochure website is the simplest type of website you can have for your business. It generally contains 5-10 pages of static content that you use to tell people a out your business. The 5 most common pages for this type of website for a driving school are.

• Home
• About
• Services
• Contact Us

For correctly configure Brochure expect to pay anywhere between €499 and €4999. Prices vary depending on the designer that you choose.

eCommerce Website.

An ecommerce driving school website is a great way to sell online and is the first step in automating your business. With an ecommerce website your current clients and future clients can pay for their lessons online.

Benefits of eCommerce to your Driving School.

• Less time selling, more time giving lessons.
• You can display your packages 24/7/365 to your clients.
• Reduces the need for admin people in your business.
• You can increase the Average Order Value for your clients. This is proven technique to grow your annual revenue without have to acquire new customers.

For correctly configured eCommerce website expect to pay anything from €1,200 and up, depending on your requriements.

Driving Academy Website.  

With a driving academy you are going the extra mile to help you clients. This extra help creates a stronger bond between you and your clients. This stronger bond is an ideal way to build customer loyalty that will allow your clients to speak more and more about your business to their family and friends.

When building a driving academy website you can give away valuable information in a locked area of your website.

This information can be for your students only or it could be for users who are willing to pay a subscription for access to the information.

Benefits of Driving Academy.

• Increased customer loyalty.
• Larger offering than your competitors.
• Possibly increased/alternative revenue model.

Driving academy websites vary in cost depending on your business needs. Please contact your web developer about a driving academy website.

Build Driving Lesson Packages.

Building packages for your services makes it easier for your customers to buy from you. Presenting them in different ways allows you to appeal to different customers depending on their specific needs.

EG:

• offering FREE or discounted car hire for the test can appeal to people who don’t have a car.
• Allow you customer buy extra lessons at a reduced rate can build brand loyalty.

Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are a very popular gift for people who are just learning to drive. Also as well for people who are turning 18.

The cost of learning to drive has gone up on the past give vouchers can help reduce the cost of learning.

While Gift vouchers are a great Idea. They do require admin on your behave. We recommend that if offering gift vouchers for your customers that this service should be offered via your website. This will ensure that you don’t have to take phone calls and you can admin them in your own time.

Voucher can be either x number of lessons or you can offer a

Using WordPress Plugins to administer your vouchers to a great way to improve the efficiency of your driving school.

We recommend advertising driving lesson vouchers to friend of people who are celebrating the birthday this month. This is easily achieved using Facebook ads.

Success Stories

Success stories are a great way to get traffic to your website. They also endorse that you are good at what you do. We recommend that you have a section of success stories on your website.

This section if updated regularly will act as great content for the search engines and also offer your material for your social media pages.

We recommend that all success stories come with a picture if at all possible. These pictures of happy people who have used your services can motivate potential customers to choose your service over a competitor. This can be increased significantly if a potential customer recognised someone that they know.

Reviews for your business.

In addition to collecting success stories we also recommend collecting reviews for your social media channels and online review channels.

After a client passes their test we recommend sending out the following email to get those reviews documented.

**Download this email template to get even more reviews***

Search Engine Optimisation.

When you invest in a website you want as many people to know about it as possible. Having a high rank in Google will insure that as many people as possible are visiting your site and know about your business.

• The top position of Google get 33% of all the traffic.
• Position 2 gets 18% of the traffic.
• Positon 3 gets 11%
• The rest of the traffic is spread out among the lower positions.

Source: Search Engine Watch: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2276184/no-1-position-in-google-gets-33-of-search-traffic-study

If you are serious abut growing your business into the future you need to ensure you have a top position on google.

Paid Advertising.

The great thing about online advertising for Google is that it can place you at the top of search engines in front of people who are actively looking for your product or service.

Paid ads sit above the natural listing and can be turn on almost instantly if you need new traffic for your business.

It’s important when running online ads that you make it as easy as possible for people to buy. It they don’t buy from their initial visit it is important to grab the their contact info as you can encourage them to buy in the future either through email marketing on via Google Retargeting social media remarketing.

It’s is important to remember that offer people are researching before they buy, give them the info that they require. Giving them what they want is the first step in during a researcher into a customer.

Online Booking

Many of your users will buy a bunch of vouchers in advance. For those that buy vouchers in advance it is a good idea to give them a way to book their lessons online.

We recommend Calendy or Simplybookme to handle the booking of instructors. This give your team a way to books lessons while they are focusing on the job of giving lessons. This is great for instructions who operate by themselves and don’t have someone to handle bookings.

Website Maintenance.

If developing a WordPress Website for your Driving School it is important to remember Website Maintenance. Just like a car, it needs to be service regularly. Doing so will ensure that your site is secure, lightning fast. A fast website will convert more customers and good security will protect your customers data.

Coupon Codes

A great function of a driving school website is the option to develop coupons for previous clients and also local organisations.

• Offering coupons to clients for extra lessons can increase customer loyalty. When giving a customer a coupon it is important to ensure the coupon is single use coupon.
• Coupons can increase the lifetime value of a customer.
• Offering coupons to local groups can help raise the profile of your school to larger groups of people.
• We also recommend giving success coupons to those that pass their test. These coupons can be passed to people who passed their test to give to their friends. When deciding on these type of coupons it is important to limit the number available.