Industry playbook · published
Auto Body: Estimate Attribution
A practical estimate attribution playbook for auto body teams: page structure, evidence, measurement, QA, and implementation boundaries.
Reviewed 2026-07-20 · National guidance, Austin proofThe task and the failure mode
Built for: Auto body teams connecting calls and estimate requests to appointments, repair orders, completed work, and source quality.
Estimate volume overstates value when requests are out of area, unsupported, total losses, duplicates, or never become repair orders. Vehicle details also should not leak into analytics.
Workflow
- 01Define requested, contactable, serviceable, scheduled, estimated, repair-order, and completed stages.
- 02Capture landing route and campaign fields without names, VINs, plates, or damage notes.
- 03Pass a privacy-safe source token into the estimate or shop-management workflow.
- 04Reconcile web, call, estimate, and repair-order counts by aggregate cohort.
- 05Account for insurer, parts, and total-loss lag before evaluating source performance.
Evidence to retain
- A shared estimate-stage dictionary.
- Form and call tests proving allowed source context survives.
- A reconciliation sample ending at repair order or explicit disposition.
- A privacy review of attachments, URLs, event payloads, and access.
Release checklist
- Block VIN and plate fields from analytics.
- Separate tow-in and drivable inquiries.
- Record unsupported vehicle or repair types.
- Deduplicate photo and form resubmissions.
- Test after-hours routing.
- Report long-lag cohorts carefully.
Boundaries and caveats
An estimate is not a final repair scope or price.
Operational delays can make short-window attribution misleading.
Primary sources
- Google Analytics: About key eventssupport.google.com
- Google Analytics: Collect campaign data with custom URLssupport.google.com
- Google Search Console performance reportingsupport.google.com