What we are building
One form, six fields, camera-first, that works on mobile data in a supermarket car park and drops a job record with photographs into Jobber, ServiceM8, Housecall Pro or Autoflow. Everything below is in build order.
1. Fix the field list before you touch the form builder
Photograph of the damage. Second photograph, optional. Registration. Postcode. Are you claiming on insurance, with yes, no and not sure. Mobile number.
That is the list. Every additional field you add costs completions, and the ones people want to add — name, email, address, preferred date, vehicle make, description of the damage — are all answerable from the six above or in your reply.
2. Put the camera first
On a phone, the first field should open the camera. Use a file input that accepts images and hints at capture, label it "Photograph the damage", and show a small example image beside it of a chip with a coin next to it.
The example image does more work than instructions. Drivers copy what they see.
3. Resize in the browser before upload
This is the step that decides whether the form works outdoors. A phone photograph is five to ten megabytes. On a weak signal that upload will stall, and a stalled upload is a lost enquiry.
Before sending, draw the image to a canvas at around 1600 pixels on the long edge and export it as a JPEG at about 0.8 quality. You end up with a file of a few hundred kilobytes that is still easily good enough to judge repair or replace. Do it client-side so the driver never waits on your server.
Then show progress, and on failure show a real message with your phone number beside it, not a silent reset.
4. Make the registration field forgiving
Uppercase it automatically, strip spaces on submit, and do not reject anything. Registrations vary by country and format, personalised plates break patterns, and a validation rule that says "invalid registration" to a real registration ends the enquiry.
If you use a lookup service to pull the glass specification, run it after submission rather than in the form. A slow lookup in the middle of the form loses people.
5. Ask the insurance question as three options
Yes, no, not sure. "Not sure" will be the most common answer and it tells you the reply needs to include the excess arithmetic. Without that option people guess, and you plan around a wrong answer.
6. Use the postcode to route, not to gate
Take the postcode, then decide in the reply whether the job is mobile or in-shop. Do not build a live coverage checker that turns people away before you have seen the damage: a car can be driven to you, and a job just outside the area may be worth the trip.
State the mobile coverage above the form instead, in a sentence.
7. Connect it to where work actually lives
Post the submission into your job management tool as a request or lead, with the photographs attached to the record. Jobber, ServiceM8 and Housecall Pro all accept this, either natively or through a webhook.
Send yourself a notification by text as well as email, because a windscreen enquiry is time-sensitive and email is checked hourly at best.
8. Set expectations in two sentences
Above the submit button: the chip repair price, and how fast a quote comes back. Below it: what happens if the photograph is not enough, and that looking costs nothing.
9. Confirm properly
The thank-you page should repeat what happens next, restate the response time, and give the phone number. Send a text confirmation immediately. A driver who has just submitted photographs of a crack wants evidence that it arrived.
10. Test it the way it will be used
Outside, on mobile data, on an old Android and a current iPhone, in bright sun, in an in-app browser opened from Facebook. Submit a real job. Check the photograph is legible in your job system, not just that the email arrived.
Then break it deliberately: submit with no photograph, with a ten-megabyte photograph, with a personalised plate, with no signal halfway through. Fix what fails quietly.
Where this sits
Our auto glass websites ship with this form built, resized client-side and wired into your system, at a fixed price. The wider trade version is on the automotive page. One form, six fields, and it has to survive a car park.