$2,500 plus $750 a month: an auto tint and ceramic coating shop's real proposal

The client operates an automotive customization shop in the Atlanta, Georgia suburbs, in business since roughly 2020, offering window tinting in ceramic and color-shifting film options, paint protection film, ceramic coating, windshield protection film, paint correction, and commercial vehicle tinting. The shop's own inquiry described feeling flatlined after a period of real growth, asking specifically for search engine optimization, Google Ads help, and better lead capture, without requesting a new website.

A shop like this depends heavily on visible proof of finished work, since a customer is trusting an installer with an expensive vehicle's exterior, which is why the audit paid close attention to how the client's existing photography and reviews were, or were not, showing up where a prospective customer would actually see them.

A mobile performance test found the shop's homepage weighing over 16 megabytes and taking roughly 36 seconds to become visible, with a page-jump measurement showing the layout shifting noticeably while it loaded. The largest single cause was an autoplaying video embed that streamed several megabytes of video automatically during load, stacked on top of otherwise heavy imagery.

A second, unrelated technical issue was reviews: the homepage carried no structured review data at all for search engines to read, and the dedicated reviews page rendered its content through a script rather than in the page's own underlying code, meaning a real, strong review history was effectively invisible to search even though it was fully visible to a human visitor. A separate, standalone domain built specifically as a landing page for the shop's paid ad campaigns compounded this: it split the business's name and authority across two websites, and was itself built as a script-rendered page that search engines could see almost nothing of.

The offer that was sent split into two separate pieces rather than one flat monthly number: $2,500 USD, one time, for a new website, plus $750 USD a month for ongoing SEO work, month to month with no long-term contract and nothing charged upfront. Google Ads management was deliberately left unpriced in this version, with a note on the proposal itself that it would be quoted separately if the client wanted it.

An earlier internal draft had considered a single flat $750 a month, all-inclusive number that would have folded Google Ads management into that same fee, following a pricing shape the agency had used for another client around the same time. That all-inclusive version was set aside before sending in favor of splitting the website out as its own one-time cost and leaving ads unpriced, since the client's own inquiry had not checked a box requesting a new site.

A nine-page sample website was built to show the client a possible direction even though a rebuild was not priced as a committed line item in the sent offer. It included the shop's real film color options, a dedicated paint protection film page, a paint correction page with the shop's real tiered service levels, and a projects gallery built entirely from the shop's own named, real finished vehicles and its own real tint before-and-after comparison.

Every review quote used across the sample was pulled directly, verbatim, from the shop's own real customer reviews, and every project photo came from the shop's own uploaded work rather than a stock substitute, since a customization shop's credibility rests almost entirely on showing its own actual finished cars.

Google Ads management pricing was left out of the sent offer entirely and marked as quoted separately, rather than being estimated or bundled in without the client's input on budget. A full paid rebuild of the website was similarly not included as a committed, priced line item, since the client's own inquiry had specifically not requested one; the sample instead served to show a possible direction without charging for it up front.

No price was shown anywhere on the sample site for any tint, film, or coating service, since the shop's own live site did not publish prices either, and a quote-request form was used in its place, matching the client's existing sales process rather than replacing it with invented numbers.

The proposal was sent to the client after the audit above was completed and a nine-page sample was built to accompany it, several days after the original inquiry came in. Two decisions were still marked open at the time of sending: whether the final shape should be the $750 flat monthly structure considered earlier instead, and whether the sample-site rebuild should later become its own priced line item.

The file this page is built from does not record what came after the send.