The first dry weekend in March, every bike that spent the winter under a cover comes out with a flat battery, a seized caliper or a chain like a rusty necklace, and its owner searches ‘motorbike mechanic near us’ from the shed. That weekend is when websites for motorbike repairs in Dublin pay for themselves. The rider checks three things before ringing: do you take our kind of bike, can we get it in this week, and roughly what will it cost.
What a rider checks before pushing the bike in
Riders are loyal once they find a mechanic they trust and suspicious until then. They want to know what you work on: Japanese fours, BMW boxers, Italian twins, scooters, the Chinese 125 a delivery rider depends on. They want to know whether you fit tyres on the bike or only loose wheels, whether you do chain and sprockets while they wait, whether you set up suspension, and whether you collect.
Then they want a sense of price. A labour rate and from prices for a service by engine size, a set of tyres fitted and a set of pads tell them you are straight. Turnaround matters nearly as much. A commuter without a bike is paying for the bus, so ‘most services done in a day’ is worth saying if it is true.
The page should sound like the workshop
Photos of your actual bench with a bike on it, the tyre machine, the shelves of oil, the wall of keys with tags. A photo of you. The bikes you are proud of, with a line on what was wrong and what you did. Riders read that the way other people read reviews.
Keep your Instagram if you have one, that is where the restoration photos live, but a search for ‘scooter repair Dublin 7’ does not find a grid, and the rider wants your hours and your number more than your reel. There is a longer piece on whether Instagram is enough on its own.
Spring, summer, and the quiet months
March to May is the queue out the door: batteries, tyres, brakes, carbs gummed with old fuel, the pre-season service. In those months the site says how long the wait is and takes the details so you can ring back in order.
Summer is tyres and touring prep. September is the new commuter wanting a pre-purchase check on a bike they found online. From November the trade is delivery riders keeping scooters alive, and the bigger jobs nobody wants done in April: engine rebuilds, restorations, the full strip-down. The page carries a winter line that says so, and the storage service if you have the space for it.
Hands in a clutch, phone ringing
A bike mechanic cannot pick up a phone with a gearbox in bits, and the rider who gets voicemail rings the next shop. The site takes the enquiry instead: make, model and year, the problem in their own words, a photo or a short video of the noise, and the best time to ring back. It lands in your email and your WhatsApp. On Complete, a booking calendar lets the rider pick a drop-off day for routine work, and a chat box answers ‘do you do Chinese 125s’ without you lifting your head.
The Google listing does most of the finding, and for a workshop in a lane behind the main road the pin and the directions have to be exactly right. Getting that set up properly is covered in how to set up a Google Business Profile in Ireland.
The handover from you
The makes and types of bike you take and the ones you refuse. Your labour rate and from prices for the ordinary jobs. Your hours, and whether you open Saturdays. Whether you collect, and from how far. A dozen phone photos of the workshop and the bikes. If you run a car workshop under the same roof, the mechanics page covers that side.
What it costs
Essentials is €499 to set up and then €50 a month, which gets the site, the domain, hosting, the Google listing and the monthly report of calls and direction requests. Complete adds service bookings, review texts and the chat box at €1,499 and €100 a month. The two are compared on the pricing page.