Core Web Vitals

[BillKVMotorCo]

I'm told that CWB Vitals are important and will be of growing importance; especially with Google. I recently ran reports through Lighthouse on the sites of some of the best and brightest on here to see how my site compares to theirs since mine didn't perform well. Compared to these sites, it makes me "less" worried because no one's site really performed well. Is this just what it's like for car dealer's sites (that's the reason I've heard) or do we need to figure something out?

 

[jon.berna]

For those interested in reading more: Web Vitals | Articles | web.dev

INP or Interaction to Next Paint goes live in March which is their factors initial site rendering as well as UI rending. Google has already confirmed multiple times that vitals impacts SEO but relevancy still outweighs it. That means within a like for like competitive set aka dealers competing for 2023 Make Model for sale or Geo Make Dealers it will matter.

Not only will you rank better but your site will convert better if you optimize for this. So I don't really see a downside. Consider that dealership websites are bloated to the gills, see @Ryan Everson thread: How much is a slow website costing me? $$$.

This is a way to leverage the poor state of the field as a way to win.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

For those interested in reading more: Web Vitals | Articles | web.dev

INP or Interaction to Next Paint goes live in March which is their factors initial site rendering as well as UI rending. Google has already confirmed multiple times that vitals impacts SEO but relevancy still outweighs it. That means within a like for like competitive set aka dealers competing for 2023 Make Model for sale or Geo Make Dealers it will matter.

Not only will you rank better but your site will convert better if you optimize for this. So I don't really see a downside. Consider that dealership websites are bloated to the gills, see @Ryan Everson thread: How much is a slow website costing me? $$$.

This is a way to leverage the poor state of the field as a way to win.

I just wish I was smarter and actually knew how to improve any of this.

 

[jon.berna]

I just wish I was smarter and actually knew how to improve any of this.

You are paying people to be smart for you. You've given me an idea for LVL Up just now. Let me add this to the list.

Website providers need to protect their stats and start policing the 3rd party code. If I was the web site provider and the stats were bad because of another company's service I would be letting the dealer know it's not us and to force a change with the other party.

If it is the core website then they need to get it dialed in.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

You are paying people to be smart for you. You've given me an idea for LVL Up just now. Let me add this to the list.

I've dealt with web providers before on these kinds of details. They aren't used to handling these kinds of questions. I usually find no one at the web provider knows how to make it any better either. Those guys cost more. So why pay people more to be on staff when no one really asks for it? Maybe I'm being cynical. What's LVL Up?

 

[jon.berna]

Link in my signature regarding LVL Up.

Back to the topic here. I checked your home page out and there are some really obvious issues. The tool does point them out and the treemap and diagnostics. In your case Ansira is the main culprit, with a lot of design choices on the site impacting it followed by active engage then tradepending. The diagnostics will have more specific actions you can take. I would focus on these and start a conversion with Ansira. You have some low hanging fruit in here.

 

[Carsten]

Speed, HTML coding, SEO, and server trust help a lot for rankings.
However, age and content authority does seem to trump the big 4 in the sentence above.

So does it really matter for a dealer?

Not really.
So why wouldn't a car dealership really care if their webiste is slow and has bad stats.
Because the SEO is so simple, you don't have much competition and will likely always rank on the first page unless you live in LA.
Search: Kirksville Chevy
Gets me the best ranking you would want, the first link.

I checked out the big 3 marketplaces and for the amount of developers, it's embarrassing. I avoided applying for jobs at Cox even though I lived in Austin. I worked for Experian instead.

Should we care?

I think so. Do we buy the cheapest wiper blades? I wouldn't.

This site? %DEALER_NAME% is a %FRANCHISES% dealer selling new and used cars in %CITY%, %STATE%.

Your light house scores are hurting on the top page: They should be low 90's across the board.

It looks like some developer just kept layering paint and used bondo to fix things.
ie: You've got tons of calls to javascript files

That page is making tons of calls to somewhere else and those hits are hurting you.
And, the code isn't up to date for SEO ranking, it looks dated to around 2014 and code be why even though you support Accessibility the score isn't that high.

Going deeper would require dropping the oil pan and doing some real digging because I don't know what the previous mechanic did and what not.

If this is a ite powered by someone like AutoTrader, they need to be taken outside and whooped some.

What is Anisra?
I don't see a link in your signature regarding LVL Up.

 

[jon.berna]

What is Anisra?
I don't see a link in your signature regarding LVL Up.

Excellent perspective Carsten! Lighthouse results in laymen's terms would be a game changer for dealerships to understand and use with their web partners btw.

Ansira is the parent company that acquired Sincro which is the rebranding of CDK Digital which is the rebranding of the cobalt group which ADP acquired before they separated their dealership business and created CDK. CDK was acquired by the Brookfield Business Partners in 2022.

So that should clear that up. I may be missing a few phases in there but i don't feel like playing detective.

www.lvlupauto.com is my new vendor management platform

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Excellent perspective Carsten! Lighthouse results in laymen's terms would be a game changer for dealerships to understand and use with their web partners btw.

Yeah, I have no idea what I'm looking at. You both have provided great feedback, but I'm still not quite sure where to start. I don't even quite know what to ask. I'll get it figured out, though.

 

[Carsten]

Here is a basic format to follow:
Make sure all images are the lowest resolution before they become ugly. Also there is a new web image format that came out and I need to look that up.
Make sure your html markup matches the latest SEO friendly formating. H1, H2 tags have proper content. Think about how google shows the intro to your link.
Make sure the html code is formatted correctly. Like having alt tags for images and all tags are being closed.
Make sure your javascript files are limited. Bigger files are better than 100s of smaller ones.
Make sure your site isn't calling tons of 3rd party services that could be slow and make the page load slower because it is waiting waitng for something like autotrader to fill in that information.
Use old school html pages as much as possible. This means you really need to limit what is coming from a database for your CMS base pages.

The tricky part comes in for loading your vehicle listing pages. Many platforms and "ecommerce" shops use the database to build these pages. Depending on the programming language this can be fast but many developers will use an automatic transmission instead of a manual one. The automatic is obviously tuned to a certain degree but can't handle power shifting.

Many software companies will build an LS engine at first but then throw on Amazon parts as the years progress and barely will change the oil. This is called tech debt and companies don't want to pay for a rebuild. They want developers to make it work and depending on the level of the mechanic, you get what you pay for.

If you can give me an idea what the engine is like, I can give you some better feedback. I wish it was like looking at 2014 Ford Mustang where you can guess to what the power plant is. But many times it is not that easy. It also gets worse if you had a mechanic build you that engine without using a brand engine block.

Did you buy one of those built sites from a "autodealer" vendors? IF so, you might not have much ability to fix it and the company will likely not want to take on tech debt for a small company.