Tag Archives: update

Featuring Listing Banners in More Places

Last week we started showing Listing Banners in more place on 4RoadService.com. Banners have been shown with listings in search results for a long time, but we are now showing relevant banners at the top of search results in some cases, and on Bronze listing pages.

This should give some more visibility to our service providers who have opted for the Listing Banner upgrade for their listings. The price of the Listing Banner upgrade has not changed.

A screenshot showing search results near San Antonio, Texas with listing banners above the search results.
Listing Banners are now in the Search Results and across the top of the site on some pages.

Search Banners are now Listing Banners

If you’re confused about what “Listing Banners” are, we have simply renamed the “Search Banner” upgrade, because the banners are no longer restricted to search results.

Clickable Call-to-Actions for Listings

Call-to-Action buttons are available on Gold and Platinum listings. These highly-visible tappable and clickable links are great for sending customers to online booking services or contact forms, or even your company website.

CTAs In Action

This is what the Call-to-Actions look like in real listings:

How to Add a Call to Action to your Gold or Platinum Listing

When creating a new listing or editing an existing listing, there is a section on the form called “Call-to-Action” with 2 fields:

  • Call-to-Action Label: This is the text that you want to appear on the call to action. In the demos above, the client entered “Click here to submit service request” into the Label field.
  • Call-to-Action URL: This is the URL, (website address), that customers should be sent to when they click or tap the CTA.

Once you have updated these two fields don’t forget to save your listing by clicking the “Create my Listing” or “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the form.

Tune-Up + a New Provider Center

4RoadService just completed a major under-the-hood upgrade. Most of the changes aren’t visible but will help 4RoadService improve quickly, but there are some exiting visible changes, especially for Providers.

Brand New Provider Center

After more than six years the Provider Center has been upgraded and fully integrated into the current website design. The new Provider Center faster and fully responsive so it works on computers, phones, and everything in between. There’s a new way to access the Provider Center too. You can still choose “Provider” when logging in, or the Provider Center link in your tool drawer, and now there’s a “Provider Center” link on your dashboard.

A screenshot of the new Provider Center, where road service providers can update their information on 4RoadService.com
The new 4RoadService Provider Center

Member Dashboards for All

Yes, you have a dashboard, and if you’re a provider there’s a “Provider Center” link on your dashboard. Our login systems are now unified so everyone – Members and Providers – have a member dashboard for quick access to your recent searches and favourite Providers. If you’re a provider and think you don’t need a dashboard, try adding your listings to your favourites & save a couple of clicks when you need to update them.

Fewer, Better-Looking, E-mails

The days of plain-text E-mails from 4RoadService.com are gone. Our E-mails now look great:

If you manage multiple listings there’s even better news for you: your renewal E-mails are combined for listings that expire on the same day. No more opening your E-mail in the morning and finding a bunch of E-mails from us, there will be just one, (good-looking), E-mail when needed.

A screenshot of a new password reset E-mail from 4RoadService.com.
A new Password Reset E-mail.

It’s Easier to Edit & Perfect Listings

For Providers, there’s an “Edit Listing” link right on your listing when you’re logged in on 4RoadService.com, and you can see your own listings while they’re under review so you can tweak them to perfection.

Upgraded Account Security

In alignment with modern password best practices we now require passwords to be at least 8 characters long – but don’t restrict yourself to eight, passwords can be as long as you want! Remember, a password is best if it’s a passphrase. Go ahead and use a whole sentence, (maybe not all of Moby Dick, though). Sentences are easier to remember, (if you’re even trying to remember them. We recommend not bothering to remember and using a password manager).

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or feedback. Enjoy the new Provider Center and your cleaner inbox!

New Design, New Logo, New Possibilities

Regular visitors to 4RoadService will have noticed that we’re sporting an entirely new design – and even a new logo! Besides improving our looks the new design is a responsive one – which means that 4RoadService.com works great to find truck repair on phones and tablets, as well as computers, and it’s fast.

Mobile-First

Our old design dated from 2008. At that point the iPhone was less than a year old and there were no Android phones yet. The mobile web was very different, the few smartphones out there were Blackberries, and if you were using the web on your phone it was probably a WAP site.

Since 2008 smartphones have saturated the world. Today over half of the people who visit 4RoadService.com do so on mobile devices so we built our new design for mobile devices first, and use Responsive Web Design to provide a desktop layout when the website is viewed on a computer. We want everyone, from the dispatcher at a desk with a 24-inch monitor to the co-driver in the sleeper with a laptop to the driver stuck at the side of the road with looking up the closest truck repair company on his phone, to find the service they are looking for quickly and easily.

Fast

Part of designing for all screen sizes is designing for all network connections. If you’re in a mountain pass with a patchy cell connection making you wait while your phone downloads images 10 times the size of the screen doesn’t help you get back on the road quickly, it’s just frustrating and possibly expensive. We’re proud that the new design is incredibly fast-loading. It’s so fast that we’ll be writing a whole separate blog post about it in a few days, so stay tuned.

Evolving

The great thing about the web is that anything can change at anytime, so 4 Road Service will keep being tuned to be faster and easier to use. If you run into problems or have suggestions please let us know with our contact form, or hit us up on Facebook or @4RoadService on Twitter.

iPhone App, Mobile Site, and Updated Homepage

With a new mobile website, an iPhone App, and an updated, easier to use, homepage you won’t be stuck for long with winter.

The Preview Edition of the 4RoadService iPhone App has been available for a while now in the App Store, but we are looking for even more feedback. If you’ve got an iPhone try it out, then tell us what would make you use it every time you break down.

We recently launched our mobile website at 4RS.mobi. It uses the latest HTML5 technology to bring the power of 4RoadService.com to your phone or tablet. Even better, phones where the technology is available it can use the phone’s GPS and search for service providers who are close to your actual location. You no longer have to guess what city you are in. Just choose what you need, how far away you want it, and tap the “My Location” button. If your phone doesn’t have a GPS, or doesn’t support accessing it from a web page, you can use 4RS.mobi by selecting your city & state just like on 4RoadService.com, but with a design optimized for use on a phone.

Our updated home page has been designed to make searching faster and easier. We noticed that many people were clicking the “Find Road Service” tab at the top of the site to go to the search page, so we brought a bigger, faster, search page to the homepage of the site, (of course, you can still use search page if you want). Since we put the made the update live last week the new search form has been a hit – it’s now the most clicked-on item on our home page.

As always, please let us know what we can do to make it even easier to get service on the road. We know what it’s like to be broken down in the winter and want to help.