What a car detailing website actually needs

Put your prices on it

The most common mistake is hiding prices behind “contact for a quote”. Detailing prices vary by the size and state of the car, which is a real reason to be cautious — but from the customer's side it reads as “this will be expensive and I'll have to haggle”. Most people quietly close the tab.

The fix isn't one price, it's a price for their car. Small, medium, large, XL — a Fiesta and a Discovery are different jobs, and everyone understands that. Show the four and let them pick. You keep the accuracy, they get the answer they came for.

Let them book at 11pm

Half of all enquiries to a trade business arrive outside working hours, when you're either on a car or asleep. A phone number collects the ones who are happy to ring tomorrow. A booking form collects the rest, including the ones who'd otherwise have carried on down the list.

Taking a deposit at the same time does two jobs: it filters out the people who were never going to turn up, and it means a no-show costs you something less than the whole morning.

One page per town

Nobody searches for “car detailing”. They search for “car detailing Wakefield”, or “mobile valeting near me” while standing in Wakefield. A single homepage listing twelve towns competes badly for all of them; a page for each, with a genuine line or two about that town, competes properly for one.

This is the single highest-return thing on a detailing website, and it's also the most skipped, because writing twelve slightly different pages is dull. Do it anyway, or use something that does it for you.

Proof, in the order people want it

• Before and afters — the same car, same angle, filthy and finished. Nothing else sells detailing as fast.
• Google reviews, shown on the page rather than linked to.
• What's included, in plain words: a “full valet” means different things to different detailers.
• Whether you come to them or they come to you, and how far you'll travel.

What doesn't matter as much as you think

A video header. A clever logo. An “about us” paragraph about your passion for cars. None of these lose you work, but none of them win it either. A visitor decides in about ten seconds whether you do their job, near them, at a price they'll accept — everything else is decoration on top of that answer.

How long it should take

An agency will quote two to three weeks and £200–£1,300 for a detailing site, and you'll be sending them photos and copy for most of it. That's fair work at a fair price, but it's a slow start and every change afterwards is another email.

DetailerHQ is the other approach: build it yourself in an afternoon, with prices by vehicle size, online booking with deposits and a page for every town already built in. It's free to build, so you can see your own site finished before deciding whether it's worth paying for.