What we are building
A gallery of before-and-after pairs, filterable by damage type, with a close-up per job, that loads in under two seconds and that you can add to from your phone in two minutes. Everything in this order.
1. Decide the shot standard before you photograph anything
Four images per job, and the standard is the whole point.
Before, from the angle where the damage reads worst. Not flattering.
After, from exactly the same angle, distance and light where you can manage it. The pairing carries the argument; a different angle destroys it.
Close-up under raking light. Light across the panel at a shallow angle so texture and match are visible. This is the photograph competitors will not publish.
The panel gap or the blend edge. Where new work meets old, which is what an owner inspects on collection.
Print the standard and pin it in the booth. Consistency beats camera quality.
2. Build a shooting habit, not a project
The gallery does not fail at launch. It fails in month four, when nobody has added anything.
Make it one person's job on collection day: four photographs before the customer arrives, uploaded from the phone. Four jobs a week is two hundred a year, and a gallery like that is a genuine asset.
3. Model it as records, not as a page
Each job is a record with fields: damage type, panel, vehicle make and model, before image, after image, close-up, blend or gap image, and one line of description.
Then the gallery page is generated from the records. Filtering works, related jobs appear on the relevant service page automatically, and adding a job never requires touching the design.
If it is a hand-built page of images, you will stop updating it. Every shop does.
4. Group by damage type, not by date
The visitor is looking for their own damage. Bumper scuff, door dent, wing damage, alloy refurbishment, panel replacement, full respray, PDR. Six or seven categories.
Chronological order is a diary. Categories are a search.
5. Write one honest line per job
"Rear quarter crease, aluminium panel, repaired and blended into the door. Three days." Not "another happy customer".
The specifics are what convince. Name the panel, say whether it was repaired or replaced, and give the duration. Duration matters more to customers than shops expect.
6. Get the images fast, or the gallery hurts you
Body shop sites are slow for exactly one reason: full-size photographs. So:
- Resize to what the layout actually shows, at most about 1600 pixels wide for the large view.
- Serve modern formats with a fallback.
- Lazy-load everything below the fold, and never lazy-load the first row.
- Generate a small thumbnail per job rather than scaling the full image in the browser.
- Set explicit dimensions so the page does not jump as images arrive.
Under two seconds on mobile data is achievable with a hundred jobs in the gallery. It is not achievable if you upload straight from the camera.
7. Put pairs beside each other, not in a lightbox
The before and after should be visible together without a tap. A slider control is nice but optional; two images side by side is enough, and it works on a phone if they stack in the right order — before above, after below, labelled.
8. Link jobs to the service pages
A bumper scuff job should appear on the smart repair page. A panel replacement should appear on the accident repair page. Because the gallery is records, this is automatic, and it is what turns the gallery from decoration into a conversion tool.
9. Get permission, and be careful with plates
A customer's car and registration are identifiable. Ask permission as part of the job — a line on the authorisation form is enough — and blur or crop registrations by default. In the EU and UK this is not optional; a plate plus a location is personal data.
10. Put the estimate button in the gallery
Every job page and the gallery itself should carry the same call to action: photograph yours and send it. The visitor is at their most convinced immediately after looking at a good close-up, and that is where the button belongs.
Where this sits
Our body shop websites include the records-based gallery with filtering, compression and the service page links, at a fixed price. The wider trade version is on the automotive page. The photographs are the product. Shoot them like it.