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Do you take your own photos?

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#32
Here is an idea that help my old dealership out. We got the Camera and inventory tool from Vin Solutions. Then hired a part time college marketing student or a photograph student. Paid them well and had them come out for a few hours everyday. They would do the window sticker/ photos/ options/ and video. It took about 15min per car. The were always checking with the used car manager and me on new stuff. It was like having a dealer specialties that we could control timing instead of waiting for them. We had the Homenet tool giving to us and it would of worked, however did not tie into the ILM/ CRM like Vinsolutions. It got so fast that the lot salesman were using our website to see if we had the vehicle yet. When the inventory is fast up we started to turn cars faster and more hits on the site. Matt is right about the delay with Autotrader and Cars.com especially noticed on removal.
Hope this helps.
 
#35
In regards to taking your own photos, I wanted to share a process PDF that our CEO, Len Critcher, put together. Len's previous dealership, eCarLink, was one of the pioneers in utilizing the web to sell cars and sold over 6,000 cars during his ownership. Len's degree and background in film provided him with the knowledge of taking the highest quality photos and video of your vehicles to market. Please enjoy, and remember leaving photo taking to a 3rd party limits your photo quality, quantity, and more importantly - time to market.

THE BASICS OF VEHICLE PHOTOGRAPHY
http://interactive.ecarlist.com/pdf/photography.pdf

Here are samples to dealers who know how to take pictures:
E-CarOne.com | Pre-owned Dealer | Carrollton, Texas
Straight Line Automotive Group | Pre-owned Dealer | Dallas, Texas

We've also licensed a photo editor, Picnic, which allows basic photoshop-style editing.

There is no reason not to take your own photos these days. Personnel is not an excuse.

On a side note - we sent a vehicle to AutoTrader today and it was in the Dealer account within 2 hours and on the website within 3.
 
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#37
AutoArchitech said:
What happens when you have a 3rd party that is there 3 times a week, does it for a living, and does not charge based on the number of photos? Not all 3rd parties are bad.
Click to expand...

You would have one of better 3rd party photo management companies. I have seen a few independents that operate this way and even provide post-production edits to the photos to improve the quality. So you are correct - not all bad.

I was referring more to the larger companies that come out once per week (weather permitting), take 15 pictures, charge for more and care little about how those photos are going to appear.

The importance of consistency and quality on your website in regards to photos continues to go underestimated.
 
#39
We take our photos in house. One thing we just reviewed was not the amount of photos, but the arrangement and order we take them. Different sites do not support the same amount of photos. We take 48 photos and what we found we had too many front loaded exterior and interior photo w/o showing the options (ie Nav system).

If the call came from Autotrader which max photos is 27, the Navigation photo was lost in the mix. We move our "best" 27 forward and this way it covers AT and Cars which loads 32. I did hear AT is going to 99 photos Q4 2010 or Q1 2011.
 
#40
FYI: Interior Shots are what they want.

I ran several studies where I tracked the number of views of exterior shots vs interior shots. Shoppers viewed interior shots more and spent more time looking at them.

:light: Its Logical.
Shoppers see the exterior of these cars all over the place, it's the interior they don't see.

If you believe the VDP is where you make your money, the Interior shots need your best efforts! (and they are the hardest to execute!!!)
 
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