What the money is buying
Somebody has dented their car and wants two things before they will contact anybody: a sense of what it will cost, and confidence that the repair will be invisible. Underneath both sits a third question they cannot answer alone — should I claim on insurance or pay for this myself?
A body shop site that gives an estimate from photographs, explains the insurance choice honestly, and shows finished work close up earns the enquiry. The bands below are what the market charges to build one.
Band 1: a listing and a Facebook page
Cost: nothing.
You get: a phone number, opening hours, and an album of jobs in no particular order.
You do not get: a photo estimate form, an insurance-or-private explanation, before-and-after pairs organised by type of damage, anything about paint matching or the guarantee, or separate pages for smart repair and PDR.
Right for: a shop running entirely on dealer and insurer referral that does not want retail work. Almost nobody else.
Band 2: a template or builder site, $800 to $2,500 (roughly £650 to £2,000)
A theme with your logo, a gallery, and a contact form.
You get: something presentable that ranks for your own name.
Usually missing: photo upload that survives a phone camera, registration capture for the paint code, an honest page on claiming versus paying, close-ups of finish quality, a guarantee page, and prices for the small standardised jobs like a bumper scuff or a car park dent.
Right for: a new shop that needs a placeholder while it works out whether retail work is worth chasing.
Band 3: a purpose-built body shop site, $3,000 to $7,000 (roughly £2,400 to £5,600)
Built around the estimate. A form that takes photographs from two angles with something for scale, plus the registration for the paint code. An insurance-or-private page that explains excess honestly, including when paying directly is cheaper. A before-and-after gallery organised by damage type with close-ups of the paintwork, not thumbnails. A page on paint matching, materials and the guarantee. Separate pages with prices for smart repair and paintless dent removal, because a car park dent and a full panel respray are different customers. Courtesy car information. Google reviews pulled live.
You get: a site found for the searches drivers actually make, most estimates going out the same day, and the insurance conversation handled before the phone rings.
Not usually included: photography and copy, unless the quote says so. On a body shop site the photography is not optional; it is the product.
Right for: an established shop that wants retail and private work alongside the insurer book.
Band 4: larger builds, $9,000 and up
Several sites with different catchments, an estimate tool that prices standard panels automatically, a fleet or dealer portal, or integration with an estimating system so the site's submissions land as real jobs.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Workshop management: Autoflow, Garage Hive, Shopmonkey, Tekmetric or Workshop Software, per user per month.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a monthly fee, which is where the gallery, the prices and the courtesy car terms get kept current.
- Photography: a day at the outset and then a routine for shooting jobs as they finish, which is the part that matters.
Where the band 3 money goes
- The photo estimate form, with browser-side image resizing, two-angle guidance and registration capture.
- The insurance-or-private page, which is the most-read page on a site like this and the one that decides whether you are trusted.
- A gallery built as records, filterable by damage type, so adding a job takes two minutes rather than a call to a developer.
- Close-up finish photography, compressed properly, because it is what the customer is actually buying.
- Smart repair and PDR pages with prices, since those are the searches with the clearest intent.
- Speed, local search foundations and tracking, so you know which page produced the enquiry.
Reading a quote
Ask five things. Does the estimate form take multiple photographs, and where do they land. Is there a page explaining claiming versus paying privately. Can I add gallery jobs myself. Are smart repair and PDR separate pages with prices. Whose name is the domain and hosting in. A quote that cannot answer those is a template quote whatever the figure at the bottom.
Where this sits
Our body shop websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with the photo estimate form, the insurance page, the before-and-after gallery and the guarantee page included. The wider approach across the trade is on the automotive page. The work in your bays is better than your website says it is, and that gap is what the money closes.