What a Springfield auto shop website needs.What a Springfield auto shop website needs.

Most people with car trouble want to talk to someone. Put your phone number at the top of every page as a button that dials with one tap. Type it as text, never inside a picture, and use the same number on your site, your Google profile and every directory.

If you cannot pick up while you are under a car, say when you call back, and offer a request form as the second choice.

Put your hours on the home page and keep them the same as your Google profile. Set holiday hours on Google ahead of time, so nobody drives to a locked door. Then add:

• Your address and a map, since customers bring the car to you.
• Where to park, and where to leave the keys if you take drop-offs after hours.
• Whether you take walk-ins, and how long a wait usually runs.

Give each main service its own page: brakes, tires, engine work and diagnostics. A driver who needs brakes wants a page about brakes, and a page for each service is easier to find than one long list. Smaller jobs, like oil changes and alignments, can share a page.

Prices are hard in auto repair, because the same job costs different amounts on different cars. Show a price where you can, like a set price for an oil change or for mounting and balancing tires. Where the price depends on the car, say what it depends on and offer an estimate.

Say which makes you work on, and which you do not. It saves calls about cars you would turn away.

A repair request form should ask for the year, make, model and the problem, and let the customer add photos: a warning light, a leak under the car, a worn tire or a dent. You see the problem before the car arrives, and the customer gets a real answer sooner.

We built this for Collision One and Sales, a one-man body shop in Springfield. Customers add up to six photos from their phone, and the browser shrinks them before they upload. The owner builds a line-item estimate and emails it as a PDF in one click. We built it and we run it.

A repair shop needs different questions than a body shop, but the idea is the same: the photos arrive with the request, not in a separate text a week later.

Many drivers see your Google profile before they ever open your website. Keep it as complete as your site:

• Pick the main category that says what you are, such as Auto repair shop, and add only the few extra ones that are true.
• Match your business name, phone, hours and address to your website, word for word.
• Add your services, with prices where you have them.
• Add your own photos: the shop, the bays, your team and finished work.
• Point the website button at your own site, and check it from your phone.

Many drivers read reviews before they trust a new shop with their car. The way to get more is plain: ask every customer, every time.

Send your review link by email or text after pickup, to every customer, not only the ones who seemed happy. Google's rules forbid asking only happy customers, and they forbid paying for a review or giving a discount for one.

Reply to every review within a day or two, good or bad, in your own words. A calm, helpful reply to a bad review tells the next driver more than the stars do. A printed card with a QR code at the counter helps too.

Some shops book every job and some work first come, first served. Either way, let people ask for a time from the website: the day that suits them, the car and the problem. You confirm by phone or email, so nothing gets promised that your bays cannot do.

Once the car is in, the calls start: is it done yet? A job board that emails the customer each time the car moves, from checked in to ready for pickup, answers that call before it happens. Extra work found on the lift goes out as a new estimate the customer approves first.

Tap to call, your hours, a page for each main service, a repair request form, your Google profile and a review link with a QR card for the counter fit in our Website package, from $2,000. The package is 5 to 8 pages, so your quote lists which services get a page of their own.

Photos with each request, the job board with its emails, PDF estimates approved online and a review email after pickup are Business tools, from $5,000. Both start on hosting and upkeep at $150 a month, and every quote offers three ways to pay.

See the full list on our auto repair shop page, read how we built Collision One, or see what a website costs in Springfield.