Free checklist
Auto repair shop website checklist
Twenty-one things a repair shop’s website needs, ordered the way a driver with a warning light meets them: the phone and the hours, then the certifications, the warranty and the diagnostic fee, then the pages Google reads. Tick each one off and the page remembers your progress in this browser. Every item says why it matters and, where one exists, links to the free tool that handles it.
0 of 21 checked
What a driver sees first
Trust, before the keys change hands
Services, symptoms and vehicles
Getting the car booked in
Found on Google
Kept in this browser. Nothing is uploaded.
How to work through this list
- Open your own site on a phone and work down the list in order — several of these items only fail on a small screen.
- Your ticks live in this browser. Nothing reaches us, and clearing site data clears the list.
- Linked items lead to a free tool here: the AutoRepair schema generator, the hours markup generator, a review link maker, the Google Business Profile checklist. None of them needs an account. The appointment item explains how booking requests work on a Naratake site.
- The sequence follows the driver. A car that will not start is a phone call, so the number and the hours come first. The middle section is what most shop sites skip: certifications, warranty, diagnostic fee — the three things that decide whether a stranger hands over the keys. Search comes last, because it only pays once the page is worth landing on.
The auto repair starting point in the gallery opens with a quote form that already asks for year, make and model, a repair-status lookup page, and five common jobs with prices on them — a few boxes here are ticked before you type anything. Building and previewing are free, no card. Storefront at $49 a month publishes the site on your own web address with hosting and HTTPS; online appointment booking sits on Storefront Pro, $79 a month.
Open the auto repair starting pointCommon questions
What belongs at the top of an auto repair shop’s home page?
The phone number, the town, the hours, and one sentence about the vehicles you work on. Right under that, the diagnostic fee and the warranty, high enough that nobody has to scroll twice. Everything else — the founding year, the awards, the photo of the owner — sits below. The first screen answers one question: can these people look at my car, and what does finding the fault cost.
Are symptom pages really better than a list of services?
They match what people type. “Check engine light on” and “brakes grinding” are searches; “diagnostic services” is a heading. Write three or four symptom pages covering the work you want more of, each with the likely causes, the order you check things in, and the price band. Do not stamp out thirty of them from one template — thin, near-identical pages are exactly what Google’s spam guidance warns about.
Should the diagnostic fee go on the website?
Yes. It is the number people phone to ask for, and the shop that publishes it takes the call. Give the figure, what it covers, and whether it comes off the repair. If certain electrical faults run longer, put that in the same paragraph. Holding the number back does not protect the price, it just moves the conversation to the shop down the road.
Do drivers book online, or is the phone still better?
Both, for different cars. A no-start is a phone call. A service, a pre-inspection check or a brake job is the sort of thing someone sends late at night, and you get to choose the shape it arrives in. An enquiry form lands unread in the site’s own back office and waits for you. Appointment booking, part of Storefront Pro at $79 a month, does the opposite: the slot is confirmed as the driver picks it, so nobody is left wondering overnight whether the shop got the message.