Onwards and Upwards!
The 2007 Website of the Year winner steps up his game and goes one step further...
Dan Cawley, owner of Style Limousines in Cheshire and winner of the 2007 Website of the Year for www.stylelimousines.co.uk, is going for gold once again this year with a brand new website look and a whole new world of online functionality. Not being one to rest on his laurels, Dan treats his website the same way that he treats his cars - keep improving them until they're the best they can be. Problem is, when you're already Website of the Year winner, can you really improve upon that? Dan thinks so.
 “When I heard that I could actually have realtime bookings on my website, I was both excited and sceptical. I was excited because it meant less time on paperwork and more time developing new limousine ideas like our world famous Ferrari Limousine, and expanding the Style Limousines name, but I was sceptical because I'd heard it all before and the promise of realtime bookings was never what it seemed”.
So what changed Dan's mind and prompted him to take the plunge with a complete change of direction with his website, knowing that other companies had promised realtime bookings in the past, and failed to deliver?
“A good friend of mine, and the owner of Clyde Valley Limousines in Glasgow, David Morely, was the first limo company to have live bookings from LimoPlanner and had been singing the praises of his new website and how they were now able to take realtime bookings live over the internet, and that immediately made my ears prick up. David showed me his new website at www.clydevalleylimos.co.uk and walked me through how simple it was for his customers to place a booking, such as how they no longer had to fill out a huge form and wait for someone from the office to get back to them with a quote. Straight away I thought, ‘this is definitely the way to go’, so I got the LimoPlanner.com contact details from David and gave them a call. The rest is history”
What would you say is the best feature on your LimoPlanner website?
“Obviously, the best thing about it is that our customers don't have to wait for us to get back to them with a quote. They enter their pickup and destination, then the website calculates the distance and how long the limo will be needed, and they're immediately given a live quotation and the option to go ahead and book. They get to see which cars are available at that time, and get to see any extra costs before they go any further. We can either take a deposit or the full amount right there and then. By the time the customer has clicked the last button, the booking is made and our diaries have been updated instantly. Another benefit is that when the new limo hire search engine launches at fetchastretch.com this summer, it’ll tie in to my booking diary so people can book direct from FetchAStretch. You can't really ask for more than that!”
With realtime bookings, live quotations and even instant payments, surely you're giving away some of your control in order to have this facility on your website? Would you not rather stick with manual bookings and have full control over your website and content?
“We still have it! In fact, we've got more control now than we had before to tell you the truth. If I want something changed, I don't have to bother the web designer with my list of changes or news updates, I just type them in through the admin area and they're all done for me automatically. Much more control now. We've even got a gallery feature that we didn't have before, and we can add all the photos from a customer's night out within minutes without having to do anything fancy. Enter a name for the gallery, upload the images and the website does the rest... we don't even need to resize the images as it's all done for us. We've got full control over content, we can add pages very easily, add galleries, realtime bookings and we're spending less time on admin and paperwork and more time on expanding the business - what more could we want?”
With the signature black and red look, the new Style Limousines website looks set to push Dan's business to yet another level. The brains behind the Ferrari Limousine understands all too well that you can't progress from standing still, and the striking website at www.stylelimousines.co.uk proves that, once again, Dan Cawley is racing towards the finish line.
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