On the horizon

We are in the middle of finishing up two of our core products. We have released our Beta for MechanixLoop.com and have generated some good interest around the product. Our next two products which will be coming out Dec 1, and sometime Q1 09 are our real buzz generating businesses products.
The technology which drives MechanixLoop.com we are finishing up as we speak and adding more reviews and locations every day. We expect to reach over 200,000 consumer reviews by the first of 2009.

On Dec 1 we will release our Pay Per Lead marketing solution for the industry. This product will be revolutionizing how businesses generate leads and pay for marketing online. We have built a technology around a telephony system which allows us to notify business owners the instant they pick up a phone call if the call is a lead and where it came from and then bill them for the lead after they have received it. The power of this is huge, and I won’t waste time explaining it.

Our second product which will be released in the early part of 09 will be a white label solution for insurance agencies and other partners. We will be able to allow agencies to offer their  customers a easy search portal to their DRP shops with full reviews and ratings for those business, and offer them a solution for a nation wide auto repair service search. Helping them to provide more benefit to their customers and have better connections with their DRP shops. As a part of this we will be implementing an on line hosted CSI solution for the shops to handle CSI with the click of a mouse and have the information available for both the insurance agencies, the business itself, and consumers. Bringing transparency to the auto repair industry.

The real goal for MechanixLoop and the future is offer more effectively technology to solve current problems for the automotive industry and remove the disparity of information about the auto repair indusrty for consumers so they can make better decisions regarding where to have their cars serviced.

Vegas Baby!

So we are in the middle of the C.A.R.S trade show (C.A.R.S trade show happens to be a sponsor of our product and website). Yesterday was our first day of the show and we did very well. We held a press conference, and released our ORM solution to the industry with a national launch. We signed up our first customer at the booth with in a matter of 1 hour of having the booth open. So we are off and running.

The response from our customers is amazing. Many people walk up to our booth with no real idea of what we do or why they need us and then leave wanting to sign up for the product. We have over 100 people interested in seeing more from the first day alone.

So well see how day 2 and 3 go for us, but it looks promising.

Were getting ready for National Launch

Our website MechanixLoop.com is up and running, and we will be releasing our first product to automotive repair centers on Thursday. Online repuation management will be released to the public and we will see how sales go over the course of the C.A.R.S event. By the way if you have not noticed they are a sponsor of MechanixLoop. So make sure you are planning on going to the C.A.R.S tradeshow if you are in the industry.

Google frustrations, No more!

So the frustrations we underwent to get the sitemap up is over. This has been a huge learning curve for us. Some of you reading this are thinking, shouldn’t they have this thing down pat. I mean its a freakin site map! Well let me explain why we went the way we did. First off part of our marketing, plan with thanks to Google changing the way they rank subdomains and /URL structures, was to use a subdomain structure for every city in the country. We did this and created a very useable URL strucutre however our sitemap for this got a little to big and combersome to create and maintaine so we had to ditch the subdoain and go with a /URL structure with is just as good now in the eyes of the almighty Google. So we finally got the bugs out of the sitemap which is broken down into an indexed file becuse we have over 200K URL’s. So now we are given the OK by Google and should be up and running in organic searches very soon.

Grass Roots marketing

So this is how serious we are about  our marketing. Our CEO goes off and gets in to an accident on Saturday to promote the company. Yeah, that serious. So the accident wasn’t his fault, nor did he try to get in to it, however it happened. It was the perfect opportunity to tell someone about MechanixLoop.com and how it can help.

“I was tell the guy who just hit me about MechanixLoop, and he was so excited. He said you know, I was trying to find all of the reviews and ratings for a local shop the other day, and I said there needs to be something like this.” – Mathew Sweezey Founder of MechaixLoop.com

A large part of our marketing is grass roots, where people are trying to help each other out. If I know of this site which can help, I will tell others about it. It works in our favor because the pain associated with Auto Repair is so high, that a solution is very welcomed, and appreciated.

Sitemaps and our Frustrations with Google

So just like everyone else we have to have a sitemap for our site. We have over 235K URLs and have to have some way for old miss Google to find them all. We are experimenting with different sitemaps configurations to get the best results. This has turned into a process, rather than a point and click submit as it should have been.
Honing down our Sitemap is a crucial part of our marketing and finding out the best optimization for it is a large part of our success. So not to worried about the map and getting it done, but frustrated that Google is such a machine.

Time is a real frustration with this process. It takes about 24hrs to have Google say “Yeah” or “Nay” to your sitemap. Then you get to go back and try it again, and hope that your getting it just right. This is a simple task for most companies, however due to our structure it is a little more complicated with our URL structure.

The other frustration is durring this time we are losing valueable marketing and eyeballs of car owners across the nation. So a doubble frustration for us right now.

Going to the Press

So now that Mechanixloop.com is up we have a couple of final touches to do to it and then we will have the whole company out the door. THere are some minor cosmetic fixes like, adding a press page, connecting this blog to the page, and some others but the main thing we have to do is get the word out. So now we are heading into our launch season. I am calling it a season becasue we are just going to be pressing this thing out over the next 3 monts to try to get the word out to all of the savvy car owners who we are and what we are doing. So feel free to join in and if you have a blog, give us a little link love and a quick review.

Pitching in the parking lot

Yesterday night was an event held by AWE which is a monthly meet up for web entrepreneurs. We always attend these events because of the exposure and the information which they provide. So last nights topic was a Little below our radar so we decided to step outside. Low and behold there were others who were feeling the same way. So I decided to ask for some help. YES, we love to help each other out.

The back story: I was supposed to give an investor presentation Wednesday, however due to illness it was postponed. I was reved up and ready to go, and by God someone was going to hear that pitch.

So in the parking lot of the LITKitchen I pitched. I got feedback, and they said some very useful things. However the point here is the community is amazing, we can get things done anywhere we need to, and business never stops just becasue were in a parking lot.

So the next time I give our pitch, you better believe its gonna be a killer because of the help I have gotten from some friends in the parking lot one night.

First Review

We have just been added to Killerstartups.com. They have given us our first official review of our site mechanixloop.com. With in the first 14 hours we have 13 positive votes for our site. Pretty exciting. Now in full disclosure we had to submit to them a form so they would review us, which is perfectly cool, and we did not buy this review either. So go check it out and give us a positive vote.

Heading to Vegas!

So we have a partnership with the largest indusrty trade show called C.A.R.S. We will be going out there to lanch our new products to the industry. We currently have Mechanixloop.com up and running, however we have not released it to our consumers yet. We are waiting for Nov 6th where we can release at the trade show. So if you need auto repair check us out, and find the service your car deserves.