From a WhatsApp message to a full car dealer website

Trusted Motors MCR is a family run used car dealer and MOT workshop (Central MOT) on Clay Street in Oldham. They had a great logo, a loyal set of customers and a handful of 5 star Google reviews. What they did not have was a website.

The whole project started with one WhatsApp message: the logo, and a bunch of photos of the cars the owner wanted to sell. No brief document, no meetings, no forms to fill in. This is the story of how that message turned into a full dealership website with its own back office.

You can see the finished site at trustedmotorsmcr.co.uk.

Step one: the logo set the design

The logo does a lot of work. Chrome lettering, racing red, a pair of cars and chequered flags. Rather than invent a look, I built the whole site out of it: a dark “night garage” background, chrome gradient headings, condensed motorsport style type, a chequered divider between sections and a yellow UK number plate style badge on every car.

The home page shows the three newest cars, the dealer’s promises, their Google reviews, a banner for the Central MOT workshop and a map.

Step two: AI turned the photos into listings

This is where AI saved the most time. From the photos alone, AI identified each car’s make and model and read the number plates. I then pulled each car’s details from the government’s official vehicle records, so the colour, fuel type, engine size and year on every listing come from real records rather than from guesswork.

From there AI helped me write and build every page: the stock list, a page for each car, the About page, the MOT and repairs page and the contact page. I checked everything, but I did not have to type out a single spec sheet by hand.

What customers see

Every car, easy to filter

The stock page lists every car for sale, with filters for make, maximum price, fuel type and gearbox, and sorting by price, mileage or newest first.

A proper page for each car

Each car gets a swipeable photo gallery, a full spec panel with the price and one tap call and email buttons, a description, a features list and an enquiry form. Cars can be marked Reserved or Sold without deleting the page.

Opening hours that know if you are open

The contact page shows whether the dealership is open right now (worked out in UK time), the week’s hours with today highlighted, a map with directions and an enquiry form where customers pick a topic and a car.

The workshop gets its own page

The business also runs an MOT and repair workshop, so it has its own page with its own phone number and a “Book your car in” section. Its contact button opens the form with “MOT, service or repair” already picked.

The About page tells the family’s story in their own words, with their promise of honesty, transparency and fair prices.

Built for phones first

Most people browse cars on their phone. On a small screen the header becomes a Call button and a full screen menu that shows the address and opening hours, and on the contact page the form comes first so nobody has to scroll to get in touch.

The back office: selling cars without calling a developer

A car dealer’s stock changes every week, so a website that needs a developer for every new car is no use. Trusted Motors got a private admin area, built to be easy for someone who would not call themselves “good with computers”.

Adding and selling cars

The dashboard shows every car with its photo, price and status. Moving a car from Draft to For sale, Reserved or Sold is one dropdown.

Photos go straight up from a phone. They are shrunk in the browser before they upload, so big phone photos go up quickly, and they can be reordered or deleted with one tap. The first photo becomes the main image.

Type a number plate, get the details

This is my favourite part. The admin panel is connected to the official DVSA MOT History service. The owner types a registration, taps Look up details, and the form fills itself in: make, model, colour, fuel type, engine size, year and MOT expiry.

It also writes a private summary into the car’s notes: the first registration date, any safety recalls, every MOT with its mileage, the advisories and failures from recent tests, and an automatic mileage check that warns if the reading ever went down between MOTs. That is a quick way to spot a clocked car before buying it. None of this is ever shown on the public site.

Answering enquiries

Every enquiry lands in an inbox with the customer’s details, the topic and the car they asked about, with one tap call and email buttons. Each one is also emailed to the business through their own mailbox, so hitting reply goes straight to the customer. Spam protection runs on every form.

Staff logins

The owner can add staff himself. The site creates a one time temporary password, new staff must choose their own on first login, and he can reset passwords or remove people when they leave. Repeated failed logins are blocked, and it all works on a phone too.

Getting found on Google

A dealer lives or dies by local search, so this was part of the build, not an afterthought:

• Structured data on every page tells Google this is a car dealer and MOT workshop in Oldham, with the phone number, location and opening hours. Each car is marked up as a vehicle for sale
• Page titles and descriptions target searches like “used cars for sale in Oldham”
• A sitemap updates itself as cars are added, and the admin area is kept out of search results
• The site links to the Google Business Profile, shows the rating and a map, and the opening hours match the profile exactly
• I audited the Google profile too, and flagged a mismatched phone number and a similarly named business nearby that could confuse customers searching by name

Moving the domain without losing email

The domain and the business email were both with 20i. Moving a domain can quietly break email if one record is missed, so before switching I checked every existing record, copied the mail settings across exactly (including one the automatic scan missed), and tested both the website and email after the move. The site went live on the real domain with a secure connection, and the email never skipped a beat.

£0 a month to host

The owner did not want monthly bills or a card on file anywhere, so everything runs on free plans. The site runs on Cloudflare’s global network, which keeps it fast and comfortably covers a local dealer’s traffic. The cars, enquiries and logins live in a Cloudflare database, and the photos are resized before they are stored so they stay well inside the free allowance.

The only yearly cost is the domain and email package they already had.

Tested before it went live

Before launch I tested the real journeys end to end: logging in, forced password changes, adding and publishing cars, uploading and reordering photos, sending enquiries (and making sure bots get ignored), and checking that private notes never appear on public pages. Every page was checked by eye on desktop and on a phone.

What the client got

• A custom website that looks like the brand, built from one WhatsApp message
• Every car identified from photos and filled in from official government records
• A back office the owner runs himself, from his phone
• Number plate lookups with MOT history and a mileage check built in
• An enquiries inbox, with every enquiry also emailed to the business
• Local SEO foundations and a Google profile that matches the site
• £0 a month in hosting

Want something similar?

Whether you need a simple website or something bigger, with a stock system and a back office like Trusted Motors, it can start the same way. If you have a logo and some photos on your phone, that is enough to start. Send them over on WhatsApp or get in touch.