The challenge
The Wheelhouse Auto needed one site for two businesses under one name, a car dealership and a mechanical workshop, with each side one tap away and workshop jobs booked online.
Where they started
- A car dealership already selling through its own Facebook page, with a new mechanical workshop alongside it.
- A logo on that Facebook page: a wheel and car mark over the business name in a classic serif.
- Four workshop services: servicing and oil changes, general mechanical repairs, pre-purchase inspections and WOF repair work.
- Two phone lines, one for the workshop and one for the dealership.
The research
We studied five real businesses in two rounds. On 16 September 2026 we looked at three New Zealand workshops that take bookings. On 14 October 2026 we looked at businesses that both sell and service cars, and went back to one of the workshops to study its colour.
Sites we studied
What we tookA headline that names the service in plain words.
What we leftSeveral equal buttons in the first screen. We kept one main action per screen.
What we tookOne booking verb, repeated in the menu and as the main button.
What we leftWe chose a booking that shows real free times online, not a request passed on to the phone.
What we tookOnline booking given its own reason to win over the phone, and red on black with the red kept for the one main action.
What we leftOffers and discounts. No prices appear on this site.
What we tookA separate phone number for each department, so a caller reaches the right person.
What we leftA large drop-down menu. Three tabs do not need one.
What we tookSelling your car to the business given its own entry point, not a footer link.
What we leftPromotional banners and a stock search box.
What we found
- All three workshops put WOFs in the first screen, ahead of servicing and repairs, and all three lead with a booking.
- The category's trust signals are membership badges, years trading and named reviews.
- Businesses that sell and service cars separate the two at the top of the site and give each its own phone number.
The strategy
Treat it as two businesses under one name: two front doors, two phone lines, and a workshop customers can book online.
A photo banner above the cards pushed both doors below the fold on a 390 px phone. With the doors first, the first one is in view straight away.
Leading on WOFs would bring the wrong enquiry. As the Mechanics page puts it, better you hear it here than find out at the counter.
A car buyer and a customer with a broken car need different people. Every number lives in one file, so no page can show the wrong one.
It matches their brand, and red kept to one action reads as a button rather than a sale flyer.
We do not draw logos for clients. A script turns their artwork into the banner, header and favicon, and is run again when new artwork arrives.
The build
A React and TypeScript site with its own booking and enquiry back end on Cloudflare: home, mechanics, car dealership, sell your car, booking, contact, an owner admin page and two legal pages, plus a not-found page. It went live on thewheelhouseauto.co.nz on 1 November 2026.
The signature moment
The booking flow: four steps (the job, a drop-off time, the car, your details), with free times read live from the database and taken times greyed out. The registration field is drawn as a white NZ number plate that capitalises as you type, a job card fills in beside the form on wider screens, and the booking ends on that job card with its reference. Each service on the home page jumps straight into the flow with the job already picked.
A password-protected page with today's jobs, what is coming up and past jobs. One tap confirms, finishes or cancels a job, a cancelled job frees its time, and days can be blocked out so nobody books them. It is kept out of search.
Each booking and its claim on the time are written together, and the database refuses a second claim on the same time, so two customers can never take the same slot.
Every booking and sell enquiry is saved first, then emailed to the owners through C.E.A Forms in the background, so a slow alert never holds up the customer.
A form for make, model, year and kilometres, with the registration and hoped-for price optional. Enquiries are stored and listed on the owner screen, with a hidden trap field and a rate limit against spam.
The owners add, edit and mark cars sold in their C.E.A Smith client portal, and the dealership page reads that list live, sold cars after the ones for sale, with a full-screen photo viewer. When the list is empty it points to their Facebook page.
The closing band on the Mechanics page shows their own workshop. The other photos are licensed stock with the source and licence of each one recorded, and none is AI generated.
Search
- Home page title 'The Wheelhouse Auto | Vehicle dealership and mechanics', with a description naming cars for sale, selling your car, and servicing and repairs booked online.
- Two schema records: AutoRepair for the workshop, with its opening hours, and AutoDealer for the dealership, linked to its Facebook page.
- A robots file that allows everything except the owner page, and a sitemap of the eight public pages.
- Each page sets its own title and description when it loads, for example 'Book a service | The Wheelhouse Auto'.
- A canonical link to the real domain and a 1200 by 630 image for link previews.
Results
The site went live on 1 November 2026, too recently to measure bookings or enquiries, so this study makes no results claim.
Study last updated November 2026