Six tests, ten minutes
A tyre shop competes against an online seller with a warehouse and no fitters. The site's job is to make the fitted price and the slot beat a cheap price with no appointment. Run these on a phone.
1. Search a tyre by registration
The test: put in a plate and find a fitted price.
Pass: search by registration or by size, returning what you stock with the fitted price — not the tyre price plus a fitting charge discovered later.
Fail: a phone number and "call for sizes". Size enquiries by phone are the single biggest time drain in a tyre shop and the easiest to remove.
The fix: a tyre search on the site, priced as fitted. The online-only seller wins on headline price and loses on the total once fitting is added — so show the total.
2. Take the fitting slot in the same flow
The test: having found a tyre, book Thursday morning.
Pass: the slot lands in your diary in the same journey as the tyre choice, with the duration right for the job.
Fail: "we will call you to arrange fitting", which reintroduces the phone call the search just removed.
The fix: one flow, tyre to slot. Autoflow, Garage Hive, Shopmonkey, Tekmetric and Workshop Software all handle the diary side.
3. Be honest about mobile fitting
The test: look for whether you come out to a driveway.
Pass: a mobile fitting page with the areas covered, address capture at booking, and the surcharge stated.
Fail: offering it but not saying where or what it costs, so every enquiry becomes a conversation.
The fix: state areas and surcharge. Mobile fitting is a premium service and pricing it openly sells it.
4. Show the work nobody knows you do
The test: search your own site for alignment, puncture repair and TPMS.
Pass: a page each for punctures, alignment, balancing, TPMS and brakes, with prices and booking.
Fail: a services list with six words per item. These are the higher-margin jobs and they are invisible.
The fix: one page per service, priced. A driver searching "wheel alignment near me" is a customer you currently cannot be found by.
5. Say what you stock
The test: look for the brands you carry.
Pass: brand pages for what you actually stock, budget through premium, so a driver searching a brand name lands on you.
Fail: logos in a footer strip, which rank for nothing.
The fix: a page per brand you genuinely stock, with the ranges and rough fitted prices. Brand-plus-town is a real search with low competition.
6. Appear in under two seconds
The test: on mobile data, count until the tyre search is usable.
Pass: under two seconds.
Fail: a hero video, a slider, or a search widget that loads a full catalogue before the page paints.
The fix: one compressed image, no slider, and the search loaded on interaction. Pull Google reviews in live — a fitter with recent reviews beats a warehouse with none.
Scoring
Six passes and you are competing properly. Four or five, fix in order. Three or fewer and the site is a brochure while the customer is shopping — the tyre search and the fitted price are what turn it into a shop.
Where this sits
Our tyre shop websites are built to pass all six at a fixed price. The wider trade version is on the automotive page. Tyre labelling and consumer rules differ by country, which the country pages cover.