Car dealers and garages
Car dealer website design with stock that updates itself
Stock from your dealer system, bookings without a phone call and requests with photos, a different site for each kind of business.
Why most dealer sites look the same
Car dealer website design comes down to three modules: stock that updates itself from your dealer system, online booking for the workshop, and a request form that takes photos. Which one earns the most depends on the business: a dealer sells cars, a service garage sells workshop hours, a body shop sells repairs after damage.
Most dealer sites are built from the same template: a showroom photo, the brands, opening hours and a phone number. The stock often lives only on the portals. A visitor who wants a car, a service or a repair has to call, and outside opening hours they call the next garage.
Up front: we have no car dealer as a client. We did build a site for a car care business, a platform with vehicle files for a haulier and booking systems with live availability. This page covers what a site needs for each kind of business, how your stock gets onto your own site, and what it is worth.
Dealer, service garage and body shop side by side
Dealer
Used and new cars
- Search by make, budget and fuel
- Part exchange valuation
- Finance and warranty
- Contact
Earns the mostFed straight from your stock system, a page per car that Google can read
Service garage
Servicing and repairs
- Makes you service
- Service and MOT reminders
- Prices per service
- Contact
Earns the mostA free slot per day and per ramp, without a phone call
Body shop
Accident repair
- How you work with insurers
- Courtesy car
- Recent work
- Contact
Earns the mostA request with photos and registration, ready for a first estimate
Sketches of what we would build for a car business; not an existing client.
Your stock on your own site, not only on the portals
Dealers list their cars on the big portals, such as AutoTrader in the UK or mobile.de and AutoScout24 in Germany and the Netherlands. Those portals bring buyers, and they charge for it. Your own site can carry the same stock without extra entry, if it reads from the same source.
| Route | How the stock arrives | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Your dealer system's feed | The export your system already sends to the portals is read by your site as well | Most dealers: no new entry, sold cars disappear by themselves |
| An integration with your dealer system | The site reads stock, prices and photos through the system's API | Dealers with several sites or locations, or custom fields |
| A portal widget | The portal's own listing embedded on your site | A quick start, but the pages belong to the portal, not to you |
With the first two routes each car gets its own page with structured data for Google, so a search on make, model and town can land on your site rather than on a portal. How such a link is built and what it costs is on API integration services.
A car page on your own site can also carry what a portal leaves out: the service history you know, the warranty you give, the part exchange you offer and a direct line to the salesperson. That is what turns a visitor who compared ten listings into one who calls you. Add a clear route to a test drive or a viewing, with a slot the visitor picks, and the page does the first step of the sale on its own, also on a Sunday evening when the showroom is closed.
What each kind of business needs
| Part | Dealer | Service garage | Body shop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock with a page per car | The core, from your dealer system | Only if you also sell | Not needed |
| Online booking | Test drive or viewing | The core: per day and per ramp, by type of service | A slot for an estimate |
| Request with photos | Part exchange valuation | Describe a warning light or a noise | The core: damage, registration, insurer |
| Reminders | Service after the sale | Service and MOT | Not needed |
| Prices on the site | Per car | From-prices per service | How you work, no prices |
| Found on | Make, model and budget in your area | Garage and make in your town | Body shop and accident repair in your town |
What a site must show by law differs per country. In the UK a consumer has 30 days to reject a faulty car under the Consumer Rights Act, and offering finance requires authorisation from the financial regulator; in the Netherlands a used car comes with its mileage record. Check the rules with your trade body; we make sure the site shows them per car, from the same data.
Our configurator and booking work, applied to a dealership
For DA Logistics, a haulier, we built a platform with a file per vehicle: inspection and insurance with their dates, documents, damage reports from drivers, and an alert before something lapses. That is the back office a garage needs for its customers' cars; how it works for a fleet is on fleet management software.
For Park & Wash, a mobile car care business in Ghent, we built a site with two routes: private customers through WhatsApp, companies with a fleet through a form. A small business, but the same question as a garage's: how do requests come in without the phone ringing all day.
A workshop that wants job cards and planning in software finds the rest on work order app, and booking slots per ramp work like any booking system for your website.
A worked example for a service garage
For a dealer the gain is in the stock. A car with its own page on your own site can be found on make, model and town, and a sale through your own site carries no portal lead fee. For a body shop it is the request: a damage form with photos and the registration gives you a first estimate without the customer driving over.
A website with us starts from 1,500 euro; a stock link or a booking module comes on top, quoted as a fixed price per project after a first call. How we work is on website design, and a first estimate for your own site comes from the website cost calculator; the wider price ranges are on website cost. A smaller garage can start with the basics of a small business website.
Six things every dealer or garage site needs
- Opening hours for showroom and workshop, separately, and what happens outside them
- The makes you sell or service, each with its own page
- A booking or request in a few fields, on a phone too
- Prices where possible: per car, or from-prices per service
- Customer reviews through your Google Business Profile
- Your company details and the warranty you give
Found in your town
Nearly every search for a garage or body shop is local: a garage near me, a body shop in your town, servicing for a make in your area. So being found starts with your Google Business Profile, with reviews (get more Google reviews) and a site with a page per make and per service. How that works in your area is on local SEO.
Advertising works too, with a campaign per make or season, from tyre changes to an air conditioning check before summer: see Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram ads. And if customers should pick a service package with a price themselves, that is a small product configurator.
Website design
How VBS helps you with this
We build your site from design to copy, imagery and code, in one team, so that Google and your buyers find it and get in touch.
- Design and copy built on your buyers' questions
- Fast, multilingual when you need it, at a fixed price
- Forms, cookieless analytics and hosting on AWS
How we approach it is on our page about Website design.
A site that fills your stock pages or your workshop?
Send us your current site, the kind of business and where your stock or planning lives today. After a call you get a proposal and a fixed price.
Rather get in touch right away?