Wheelchair Taxi Site

clusk007

Hey Guys,

Posted here a few months ago about a wheelchair taxi site I was developing. Thanks for the Feedback Then which has led me to this stage. Launched on Wednesday and the response has been great.

Have a Look and Let Me Know What You Think,
http://wheelchairtaxi.ie/

Stephen

RATM

The site itself looks pretty good. I'm not too sure about the demand for such a service though. I only say that because a relative is in a wheelchair and needs to use a taxi twice a week. She has a driver she's been using for years and knows well at this stage. This works well because she always takes those trips on the same day every week and the driver is always working those times too.

Maybe other wheelchair bound people just call taxi companies on spec, I don't know for certain. But my gut feeling is that wheelchair users have to plan their trips in advance and many might already have a regular driver they use who doesn't let them down.

You should look into doing a tie in with the Irish Wheelchair Association- Oliver Murphy in Drogheda founded the IWA and has been campaigning tirelessly for them for over 50 years now and I've no doubt he would welcome such an initiative. If they issue newsletters/bulletins it would be a great way to get the word out to your target market.

MOH

A few years ago I needed a wheelchair taxi to take a relative out of a nursing home for an appointment. Booked one 24 hours before with a major Dublin taxi firm. Rang them when he wasn't there to be told first that he was on his way, and later that he was stuck in traffic halfway across the city, would a regular taxi do? Never used that firm again.

But I'd say there's a lot of people who might be in a similar situation, who wouldn't need a wheelchair taxi on a regular basis so wouldn't have a working relationship with a driver, so could be demand for it there.

Couple of points on the website:
The 'select town' box never gets populated for me;
The 'other transport' section is never finds any results - if there's none there yet might be best to remove that page until you have some;
The highlighting on the currently select item looks off in a few places - on the menu items it's overflowing the top of the menu bar, and for the select county/town items it would look better if the highlighting rectangle also had rounded corners. (I'm looking at it in Chrome)
Finally, you've got a bit of duplication going on which will hurt your SEO.- all the menu links put a val parameter on the end of the url, while the homepage link from the logo doesn't, and all the pages work with/without the val.
Be consistent with your internal links. If you don't need the val parameter lose it, or if you do, then 301 redirect the non-val versions (Hope that makes sense, I'm a bit hungover today!)

Like the site idea, best of luck with it!

clusk007

Thanks for the Great Feedback. I have no clue what you're on about with the val thing but I'm glad you pointed it out because I would have never known. I'll send it on to my designer to get it changed.

Other transport does not have any listings yet as that part of the site is not functioning properly but it is being worked on and should be ready in the next couple of weeks.

I am a wheelchair user myself and have struggled many times getting a wheelchair taxi. I know many wheelchair users have regular drivers, including myself but if I ever want to go out and he's not working then we have a problem! As well as that, if I ever venture outside of the capital I come across the same problem. I was in Carlingford three weeks ago and didn't have a clue where to look or who was reliable. On top of that, I think it's a great resource for any tourists coming to the country who are in a wheelchair.

anyway, thanks for the great feedback and I will definitely follow up on it.