LaVere’s VW & Audi Only
rebuilt from the ground up.
A 39-year-old Audi & Volkswagen specialist in Concord, California with a genuinely exceptional reputation — and a website actively working against it. Here's what we found, and what we changed.
The site was losing customers before the page even loaded.
These aren't opinions about taste. Every finding below is measurable, and we measured it.
Browsers were blocking the site outright
The SSL certificate expired on 31 May 2022 and was never renewed. Anyone reaching the secure address gets a full-screen browser security warning instead of the site. Search engines demote unencrypted sites, and customers who see that warning don't proceed — they call the next shop.
31 May 2022
Expired 4 years ago
No mobile support whatsoever
The page carried no viewport declaration, which means phones were never considered. Mobile browsers render the full desktop layout and crop it, forcing customers to pinch and drag to read a phone number. For a local service business, where most searches happen on a phone at the roadside, this is the single most expensive defect on the site.
Absent
Layout is fixed-width
A platform seven years past its update
WordPress 5.1 with jQuery 1.x, jQuery Migrate and jQuery UI — a stack from 2019, long past end of life, loaded across fourteen additional blocking requests. Every unpatched plugin on a site like this is an open door, and every extra request is time a customer spends looking at nothing.
WordPress 5.1.19
jQuery 1.x · 14 requests
The visual identity contradicted the product
Canary yellow, periwinkle panels, clip-art car cutouts and a scanned paper coupon with a scissors icon. LaVere's services Audis and Volkswagens to factory standard — the design said discount muffler shop. A customer weighing this against the dealership's website has already made a judgement before reading a word.
#FFD400 / #C5CAE9
No relation to the marques
No path to actually booking anything
The phone number appeared once, in the footer. "Schedule a Service Appointment" was a plain text link in a navigation row, styled identically to everything around it — no button, no emphasis, nothing above the fold. Meanwhile Facebook and Twitter share buttons sat in the prime content position, asking visitors to promote the shop before it had earned anything.
0 above the fold
Phone: footer only
The best material was buried
This shop restored and shipped roughly 2,000 vintage Volkswagens to Japanese collectors before opening to the public. Its reviews describe a dealership quoting $600 for a repair that turned out to be a $40 gasket. The owner puts his name and personal phone behind every job. All of it sat in walls of unformatted text on secondary pages nobody clicks.
None
Buried 2 clicks deep
Build the shop a brand, not a brochure.
The strategic bet: stop competing with other repair shops on price signals, and start competing with the dealership on credibility. Everything below serves that.
A German-automotive visual system
Near-black ground, warm white type, and a single restrained signal red used only where it means something — a label, a live link, a number that matters. Generous negative space and asymmetric layouts do the work that decoration was doing before.
Editorial typography with a real hierarchy
One variable typeface across an expanded display cut for headlines and a monospace for technical labels. It reads like a marque's own communications, and it lets a visitor scan the entire page in about four seconds.
Proof moved to the front
39 years. 2,000 vintage restorations. Two marques, nothing else. The evidence that was buried on inner pages now anchors the homepage as animated counters, and the strongest customer reviews lead with the number the dealer quoted versus what LaVere's charged.
An interactive model selector
Five vehicle families — A/S series, Q SUVs, RS & R8, VW daily drivers, and the air-cooled classics — each with its own photography, service specifics and booking link, transitioning smoothly between them. It answers "do they work on my car?" in one click.
Booking within reach at every scroll position
A sticky navigation that fades from transparent to blurred dark carries "Schedule Service" and the phone number permanently. The number is a tap-to-call link, the address opens directions, and a structured appointment form captures make, model and symptoms up front.
Motion that communicates engineering
Cinematic load reveals, image mask wipes, staggered entrances, subtle parallax and animated counters — all fast, all subtle, none decorative. The motion exists to say precision and craftsmanship, and it disables itself entirely for anyone who prefers reduced motion.
Accessible and genuinely responsive
Semantic landmarks, a skip link, visible focus rings, keyboard-navigable tabs with arrow-key support, labelled form fields and alt text throughout. Verified from 390px phones to wide desktop with no horizontal overflow at any width.
A foundation that won't rot
The entire site — layout, type system, motion and interaction — is one self-contained file of about 17 KB gzipped, with no framework, no build step and no plugins to patch. Local business structured data ships with it so search engines read the address, hours and phone number correctly.
| Dimension | Original | Redesign |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption | Certificate expired May 2022; browser security warning | Valid HTTPS on Cloudflare's edge |
| Mobile | No viewport tag; desktop layout cropped on phones | Responsive 390px → wide desktop, verified |
| Platform | WordPress 5.1.19, jQuery 1.x, 14 blocking requests | One static file, no framework, no build step |
| Primary action | Plain text nav link; phone in footer only | Persistent sticky CTA plus tap-to-call |
| Credibility signals | Buried two clicks deep in unformatted text | Counters, reviews and heritage on the homepage |
| Vehicle coverage | Unstated; a VW/Audi dropdown inside a form | Interactive selector across five model families |
| Search legibility | No structured data; unencrypted origin | AutoRepair schema with address, hours, phone |
| Accessibility | Not addressed | Landmarks, focus states, keyboard tabs, reduced-motion |
Two things still open, stated plainly
- Photography is licensed stock, standing in for a real shoot. The imagery is Audi and Volkswagen and it sets the right tone, but the strongest version of this site is shot in LaVere's own bays — Gary, Jason, the technicians, the actual cars on the actual lifts. That's the single highest-value upgrade remaining.
- The appointment form is front-end only. It validates and confirms, but nothing is delivered yet. Wiring it to email or a booking system is a short task once the client picks a destination.
Same shop. Same reputation.
A website that finally says so.
Walk the live redesign, or talk to us about the same treatment for your own site.