This is the biggest decision on your website and most shops never actually make it — they just end up with “call for a quote” because that is what the last site had. It is worth deciding on purpose, because it changes who walks in.
Do this first
Count the calls you took last week that ended with somebody saying “okay, thanks” and hanging up.
Every one of those was a price conversation you paid for with your time and lost. The question on this page is whether a number on a page would have saved you the call, or lost you the customer.
The argument for it is real and I am not going to pretend otherwise: get them on the phone and you can sell. You can explain why your ceramic is not the $99 ceramic. You can hear what the car is. Some shops genuinely close better in a conversation.
Here is the other half. Most people will not ring you to find out a price. They will open three tabs, and the two shops that published a number get considered while you get skipped. You never see those people, so it feels like the phone approach is working — you only ever meet the ones who were willing to ring.
You are not choosing between more customers and fewer. You are choosing which kind: a smaller number of people who will pick up a phone, or a larger number who have already accepted your price before they contact you.
Some of it does. A full wrap depends on the panels and the paint. Hail depends on how many dents. Nobody is asking you to invent a number you cannot honour.
But almost every shop in this trade has something that does not vary, and publishes nothing at all. Two fronts. A windshield on a common truck. A standard detail. Start there. A floor is a price. “Full wraps start at $2,400 and depend on the vehicle — send me a photo and I’ll be exact” is infinitely better than silence, because it tells the person whether they are in the right shop at all.
And say what it depends on. “It depends” sounds like evasion. “It depends on how many complex panels — a bumper is not a bonnet” sounds like somebody who knows what he is doing.
Publishing the cheapest possible number to win on price. You will get the customers who chose you for the cheapest number, and they are the hardest work in the business, and the moment somebody undercuts you they are gone.
Publish the real price and put the reason next to it. “$289, ceramic, lifetime warranty against bubbling, about two hours” competes on something other than being cheap. A price with a reason attached is a different object from a price on its own.
Pick the three jobs you do most often, put a real number on each, and put them on a page a stranger can find from his phone in under thirty seconds. You can change them next month. The shops that publish do not do it because they are certain — they do it because being findable beats being flexible.
Written for independent auto repair and auto glass shops. If you read this and fix it yourself, that is a good outcome and I would rather that than sell you something you do not need.