Bosch garage Walker Cutting gets online boost from GSO

1 August 2024  

Walker Cutting, a Bosch car service centre in Rotherham, has made significant cost savings by partnering with specialist garage website provider, Garage Services Online (GSO), for a new website.

Co-owner Gary Cutting said since the site went live six months ago, the garage has reduced its monthly subscription costs by a huge 75%.

The business has also been able to stop advertising elsewhere, meaning the savings are two-fold and going straight onto the bottom line.

“We’re making huge savings now,” Cutting said. “The new website is a quarter of the cost we were paying previously, and the changeover was quick and easy.

“Bosch recommended GSO to us, and I can’t fault them.

“We got our first website over 24 years ago so we know how important they are, even for a busy garage. I wasn’t unhappy with the look of the previous site, but we needed to rethink the type of work it was attracting.

Lucrative jobs

“Our lead time had crept up to four weeks which wasn’t great for customers. The website was attracting too much low-profit work, things like time-consuming engine problems. We were struggling to fit in the quick turnaround work such as a basic service or MOT, so something needed to change.”

GSO built the website following its established process, starting with a briefing call that minimised the time and input required from Cutting. The new website was then built to organically target high-profit work — the lucrative jobs that make up an ideal day’s work for Walker Cutting.

GSO managing director Jim Lang said it is tempting to set up a website to attract every single service you offer, but that doesn’t address the problem of creating a new channel of enquiries that only generates profitable work.

“Most garages who approach us are already busy. They come to a point where they realise they need a way to attract and filter the work they really want. We approach all our builds with this mindset, working with customers to ensure they’re getting the ideal work.

“Many garages shy away from investing in and improving their online presence. They think a website will bring in more work than they can cope with, when in fact, the opposite is true. It’s a gatekeeper and can become invaluable to their business.”

Cutting added: “We still get a few calls for the jobs we don’t want, but that’ll take time because we’re such an established garage. The difference is we now have the confidence to say no.”