The MOT comes round every year. Whoever asks first gets it.
Your customer already knows the date is coming and has not thought about it since last time. The garage that puts a message in front of them in the right week books the work. It is rarely the one with the best website. We build the site, and the thing that watches the dates.
MOT, servicing, diagnostics, repairs, tyres and fleet work. Suffolk and north Essex.
Why is the MOT date the most valuable thing you own?
Because it repeats, it is in the customer's head already, and it is the only work in your bay that books itself if somebody asks at the right time.
- Everything else in the trade is a fault that has to happen first. This one is a date.
- It is a year away the day they drive off, and by the time it comes round they have forgotten which garage they used.
That is not a website problem. A website sits there and waits to be found. What wins the work is a message in the right week, from your name, to somebody who was going to have to sort it out anyway, and nothing on a normal garage site does that.
What does somebody want to know before they book?
Four things, fast, and they will ring the next garage on the list if the page makes them hunt. A garage site usually answers the fourth one and none of the first three.
What will it cost
A figure, or the thing that changes the figure. "Contact us for a quote" on a job with a standard price loses to whoever put a number up, and the number does not have to be the lowest one.
When can you take it
One of the commonest reasons a caller goes elsewhere. Not your opening hours, the first slot you actually have. If the page can show it, that is the whole conversation done.
How do I get to work
Courtesy car, lift, while you wait, drop the keys the night before. It decides whether somebody can use you at all, and it is the thing garage sites leave out.
How long will you have it
An hour, a morning, or all day changes what they arrange around it. Say which, per job, and say what happens if it turns into something bigger.
How does somebody describe a noise they have no words for?
Most people cannot, which is why so many of your enquiries tell you nothing.“It is making a funny noise when I turn left” costs you a long phone call and still leaves you guessing.
So the page asks for a video instead:
- A button that says send us a video, straight off their phone, twenty seconds of the noise with the car moving.
- You hear it once and you know whether it is a five minute look or a day. That is the difference between a diary full of unknowns and a diary you can plan.
- The same route takes a photograph of a warning light, a tyre, or a bill from somewhere else that they want checking.
And it costs the customer less effort than typing the sentence they were struggling with.
What has to be on the page about price?
Every standard job that has a standard price, in text, where nobody has to ring for it. That is the MOT, the service grades, the common tests, and whatever else you do the same way every time.
- Publishing those does not make you the cheapest. It makes you the one who answered, and the caller who was only ever going to shop on price rings somebody else without wasting twenty minutes of your morning.
- For the work that genuinely varies, say what moves it, say that nothing gets done without a price first, and say who has to say yes before you go past it.
Surprise on a bill is what turns a customer into a review you did not want, and it is almost never the amount that does it.
What happens between the keys and the bill?
A garage makes or loses its day in the hours between those two things, and it is the part a web designer has never once been asked about.
The job sheet is on a screen in the bay
Registration, customer, what they said, what was agreed. Filled in where the car is, not copied off a greasy sheet of paper into a computer at half past five.
The fault is photographed and sent
A picture of the worn pad, with a line saying what it is. Somebody looking at a photograph of their own car argues about the price far less than somebody being told about it.
Customers approve it on their phone
Yes or no, in writing, with the price beside it and the time it was pressed. No message left on a voicemail and no argument later about what was agreed.
The bill matches what they already saw
Because every line on it was approved before it happened. That is the whole of the complaint your trade gets, answered by the order things are done in.
How do I stop a car sitting on the ramp waiting for a phone call back?
By asking in a way that does not need them to be free. A car up in the air with extra work found and the owner not answering is the most expensive thing in your workshop: the ramp is stopped, the next job is stopped, and the technician is standing there.
- Ringing is the worst possible way to ask. They are at work, in a meeting, or driving, and the call goes to voicemail.
- A photograph and a price sent as a message gets answered in the gap between two things, usually within minutes, and it comes back as a yes in writing rather than a maybe on a voicemail.
Same information, same decision, and the ramp is moving again before lunch.
What happens after they drive away?
A web designer builds you a page. This is the half that decides whether they come back next year, and five agency sites were measured on 11 August 2026 with not one of them selling any of it.
The MOT reminder goes on its own
The date is known the day it passes. A message in the right week, from your name, to somebody who has to sort it out anyway. This one thing pays for the rest of the list.
The service is a date as well
Mileage or months, whichever they run on, held against the vehicle rather than in somebody's head. This work goes to a franchise for no reason except a letter.
Advisories come back round
Work you flagged and they deferred is a list, not a lost cause. Six months later it is a message saying the tyre you mentioned is due, which is honest and it is money.
The history is against the registration
Every job, every part, every photograph, on the vehicle. So when it comes back you already know what you did last time and what you warned them about.
The bay sees the day on a screen
What is in, what is waiting on a part, what is waiting on a customer. One board rather than a whiteboard, and it is the same board the front desk is looking at.
The review is asked for the same day
Once, in your words, with a link, while they are still pleased the car is fixed. A person presses send and reads it first.
What does a garage website cost?
Ours are on the home page and they do not change depending on who is asking. Three of the five agencies measured make you request a quote first.
One payment to build it, then a monthly to run it
The build is the site, the words, your standard prices laid out, your Google listing set up and the whole thing live on your own name. The monthly is hosting, changes and keeping it working.
The job sheet and the reminders are the step up
Every plan starts with a site that takes a booking. Above it is where the bay screen, the approval on a phone and the dates that come round again all live.
Anything passed through, we say so
Your domain, and your advertising budget if you run ads, are yours and go straight to whoever provides them. Our fee is our fee and it is never quoted as though it covered your spend.
Yours to keep
The site is yours, in your name, and so is every vehicle record in it. One month's notice, and that month is when we hand it all over.
Where your money goes
- A page for every town your bay actually draws from. Google filters out the ones aimed at villages you never see a car from, so those win you nothing.
- Listings on the registers a driver checking a garage actually uses. Earned entries, never bought links.
- A page written when there is something real to say, rather than the winter car care post a hundred other sites already have.
- The phone and the text, which are the channels you can actually answer. You are under a car all day, so the money goes into those rather than into a chat window nobody is watching from the workshop.
- Your MOT number and the approvals you really hold, in text a customer can look up in seconds. A manufacturer's logo only goes on if that manufacturer gave it to you.
Every price we charge is on one page, with exactly what each tier covers.
What garages ask us
Questions about the bay, the bookings and the dates that come round again.
What actually gets us found for “MOT near me”?
The map results, which for a garage with a door on a street matter far more than the ordinary blue links. So that is where the work goes.
- Your Google and Bing listings set up properly, with your hours and your standard prices on them as text rather than in a picture, because a picture of a price list cannot be read by anything.
- Reviews, asked for at the end of the job rather than when somebody remembers. They matter more in your trade than in most. The fear a customer brings to a garage they have not used is being overcharged. A wall of people saying they were not is the only thing that answers it.
- Pages that genuinely answer what somebody typed, rather than pages built to contain the words.
Do the AI answers know the garage is here?
Drivers ask an assistant why the car failed and who can put it right, in one sentence. The reply names places rather than listing them. Google has started writing that answer above the blue links too.
- An assistant matches what the page says you do. So the classes you test, the makes you work on and whether you do air conditioning have to be written down rather than assumed.
- Your prices and your opening hours go on as real text, never inside a picture. A photograph of a price list cannot be read by any of this.
- None of it is a fourth service. Google's own guide says its AI answers are rooted in ordinary search ranking, so one page done properly covers both.
What catches garages out when they change website?
The bookings already taken, and the email. A customer who turns up to a bay that is not expecting them does not come back, and half your enquiries arrive as an email with a photograph attached.
- Everything in the old system for next Tuesday comes out and is checked against the new one, name by name and registration by registration, before anything is switched.
- The email is the quieter one. The settings that point your website at where it lives sit right beside the ones that point your mail at your mailbox, and the commonest way this goes wrong is somebody moving the first and taking the second down with it. That is a day of work gone and no way to know what you missed.
How many of last year's MOTs came back to you?
Where your bookings come from now, what happens to a call that comes in while you are under a car, and whether anything tells you who is due. Nothing to pay for the conversation.
Nothing to pay, and nothing to sign. We come out to twenty towns across Suffolk and north Essex, and the home page has the prices and what is in each tier.
What else is worth reading?
Every page here answers one question properly rather than skimming five. These are the others, and each one says what it is before you click it.
Websites for physios and driving instructors
You are not selling one appointment, you are selling a block that has to be finished. A site that fills the first one and keeps the rest booked.
Websites for joiners that fill the workshop
A joinery website that shows the pieces you have made, says how far ahead you are booked, and collects the room and the sizes with the message.
Foothold AI: websites and AI for local service businesses
A website that gets found, a back office that runs the day, and an app for your team. From £295 to set up and £99 a month. Suffolk based, UK wide.
Where we work: Suffolk and north Essex
Twenty towns across Suffolk and north Essex, from Sudbury. Most are twenty or thirty minutes away, and the person who builds your site comes out.