Chris,
They are different. The "Ken Burns" Slide Show is annoying. Love the image size.

Speaking of image size...
Your camera flash is on too often on the interior shots.
Love your indoor photo area, very clean and bright.
Your camera may need some work, it's either set wrong, or it could uses an upgrade. It seems to wash out on very bright days and struggles with the bright white walls inside.

On the interior shots, made indoors, experiment with turning that flash off and swing thoses doors open. Indirect light is your friend, find it or make it when ever you can!

Love your work!
Joe

I've been hosting my site with Idealer Network since August 2007. Our site is awesome. What sold me on Idealer was the overall appearance of the inventory detail pages. The photo slideshow is top notch. The supposed new car configurator and vin decoder were also major selling points. HOWEVER, shortly after I signed up I found out there was some lawsuit and Idealer was no longer able to pull the graphics and information for their cofigurator or 07-08 decoder info. So, I got over it and waited patiently....then I was told it was almost done for several weeks and promised we would be the first to have it up...it's still not up! Now, when i call support i get voicemail. When I email Aaron I get no response. I'm starting to wonder if my website provider is still in business? If someone from Idealer Network reads this please give me a call or email me.
Thanks,
Chris Branum
www.KelleyGM.com

ahh... very nice Aaron.
I'll dig into your client list and see what you've got going on. While you're building out your new site, I HIGHLY reccomend that you add Video or Camtasia presentations to help explain your features and benefits.

You've caught my eye when I saw the "ken burns" effects (Photo Pan/Zoom Video) . I am manually building Still Photo Pan/Zoom Videos and doing voice overs, see www.breseechevrolet.com/ I've been hunting for an inventory host that could automatically build these on the fly. The digital voice reader is good, but May I suggest that you offer an option where a subscriber could add a voice over to the video.

Thnx, looking foward to digging into your platform.
Joe

Hi Joe;

Here are a few more samples for you... We are about to release our new platform which will include our new website. New features will include revised car config, a new version of our integrated click to call and call back system, enhanced new vehicle polling, and our new website platform with complete user interactive configuration...

Here are some of our unique features...
Custom Home Page Design (No Template)
Un-Matched Natural SEO Indexing
Mega-pixel Imaging (Industry First) Unlimited Images
Photo Pan/Zoom Video Effect (Industry First)
Auto Voice - Text to Speech
Integrated Click to Call - In house technology with call tracking
One Click Inventory Navigation
Enlarged Inventory List Photos
Interactive (Flash Based) Control Panel "RIA"

Site Samples:
www.dcmotorcars.com
www.deserteuropean.com
www.eurocaroc.com
www.carltonmotorcars.com
www.prestige-motors.com
www.hondasantaana.com
www.jstarmotors.com
www.townsendglobalimports.com
www.cartermotorcars.com
www.motorgroup.com
www.southernimports.com
www.newporteuropean.com
www.graigerhonda.com

We also have a very nice eBay Auction Manager w/ UI that matched our dealer sites.

If you have any questions feel free to give me a call 949-200-7199 x10 Aaron

Aaron,
Like what I see so far, looking for examples of your inventory platfom in use. All I saw was dc motors. May I suggest that you post a client list, because right now it looks as if you have just one client and your last update was ove 1 year ago.

I am looking at how your platform handles vin/option decoding (which is an industry wide SNAFU).

thnx,
Joe

Thanks for the plug Jeff. I see your new site is finally up, looks good!

Jeff,

I have to agree with you. Cobalt and Prospector and even ReyRey make my head hurt. I can make them all work well, but I could use the same amount of effort and use a Outlook based program.
These systems tend to get in their own way.

Most of these "lead management in a box" systems don't work for most dealers who are trying to get to that next level. Which is why they all ask for long term commitments, because once you know what you are doing, you have out grown their system.

Fully Customizable systems are becoming the only way to go in my opinion.

I always like to keep on-hand as many articles as possible that proclaim Vendor X as the "dealer's choice" or "#1 performer". I stockpile this stuff so that when a vendor or a GM comes to me touting Vendor X's superiority on some "unbiased" survey, I can just toss them the pile of articles and say, "according to these, everyone's a winner. I'm gonna go sell cars now if that's alright with you".

Jeff,

First of all, good job on winning the award... you certainly deserve it!

Second, are you saying that you used to use Prospector when it was still Cowboy? That's cool, I am friends with the 2 guys (Brad & Jordan) that created Cowboy and sold it to (and now are employed by) Cobalt.

From 2005 to 2007, I was a member Cobalt's Customer Advisory Board and was very sad to see that Cobalt's LMCC (Lead Manager Customer Central) is over taking Prospector as the main CRM offering from Cobalt. I've used Prospector and LMCC extensively & hands down Prospector is a much better product... as far as this award goes though, I think they are probably referring to LMCC (as this has many, many more users.)

-JoE Drosen
National Sales Director, CarSpot

Jeff,

You truly do have the best blog.

Todd,

Dealers are the masters at smoke and mirror marketing.

Finally, the topic I've been waiting to sink my teeth into!

First off, congrats on the award Jeff. I didn't vote for you though. I would have, but I wasn't asked. That brings me to the whole point of where these awards come from...where do they come from? Who decides? What are the standards? How were these vendors, dealers, etc. picked?

If there is anything I would like to see come out of the Dealer Refresh efforts, it would be a standard for judging the Automotive Internet Community. It is the same reason why I asked how other dealers count internet deals in a different topic.

I will continue to contribute to Dealer Refresh, AAISP-like organizations, and other venues in hopes that we will all agree to some sort of standard some day.

Jeff,

That’s why I love reading your stuff... You hold NO punches.
I always wondered myself on how certain companies won all of these awards. I guess it isn't hard if you spend a ton in advertisements. I was floored to find out recently that certain magazines sell the covers of their magazine to the highest bidder. Me personally, I rather let my skills and proven success of my clients speak for my company's talents... Besides $12,000 for a cover of a magazine is just way too pricey for me.

Hey, I guess if you got it like that...

Jeff,
I couldn't have said it better. This type of marketing has worked well in the pass, however, I believe (Hopefully) dealers will wise up and make theses companies produce the goods. No more smoke and mirror marketing, just solid applications and ROI's.

Congrats!

Yes about time for the separate department/coordinator to fade out. I have been on a quite a few website training calls where the coordinator just wants to hog the internet deparment, not share the leads and do the follow up's himself. Doesn't want anyone else to get the training on how to manage the inventory online or how the ILM works... Silly you... what will happen when you are on Vaction or Sick??

I have to agree with Alex.. you have to do proper follow-up and data-mine... but to mine that data you need the correct and up to date data. Amazing that most dealers DMS systems do not even have up-to-date inventory or customer information. Further to mine that data you must have full access to it... it is your data and you own it... not the DMS provider.

So please support Open Secure Access. www.opensecureaccess.com.

Regards,
Farooq

In the near-term, I think Alex is right about the issue of GM's effectively following-up and data-mining. We have been in this space for over 12 years and that has been a somewhat consistent issue.

There are certainly very successful exceptions and we are seeing more and more of them over time, yet they still represent a minority of the whole.

With the convergence of technologies, and a younger generation moving in, we may start to see a shift. The kids having txt-speed contests with their friends today (whom have grown up surrounded by these technologies) will eventually be representative of the majority of the workplace; unlike today.

Not only will there be a more tech-savvy workplace, but as the technologies themselves improve it will be easier to stay on top of things with less effort. That's where we try to help : )

It will be interesting to see how the future unfolds.
--
Andrew Salamone
carsgofaster.com

Our "Internet Department" (a non-BDC-like department) lasted from 1997 to July of 2006. In our larger stores we had a BDC-like Internet Department since late 2004. Up until that point, our BDC's were separate from the Internet Departments.

We had also been through 6 different department models ranging from a selling Internet Coordinator/Manager per store to a completely centralized Internet/BDC solution for our entire company (current model). If the idea that the traditional Internet Department is dead because those departments have been integrated into a BDC-like environment, then I have to agree.

Of course, this will not be as evident the case for single-point dealers, but I do believe a mixed phone/Internet department is the way to go.

I have heard people take things a step further by saying the BDC's will go away as CRM systems get better and better - it will once again become a salesperson's responsibility to follow and harvest the incoming analog and digital business. I think this will never happen. For the same reason the Internet Departments and BDC's exist today is the same reason why they will exist tomorrow: salespeople, salesmanagers, and GM's will not effectively follow-up and data-mine.

Will the BDC/Internet model change again? I don't know. Technology changes too often to make that prediction.

Our dealership has been with TKCarsites for over 3 years. When we first started with TK we were extremely happy. A company who knew who you were when you called and wanted to make and keep you happy. Since the merge with KPA we've had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS. Customer support is a joke, sometimes they get back to you the next day but not often! I just had a call on from support for a ticket I opened two weeks ago!! With the new IOL 2.0 platform that Homenet launched a couple of weeks ago we had several issue's with how our inventory was showing on our website. Homenet kept us up-to-date with fixes to their new platform. But...some of the issue's were TK. We couldn't get anyone to call us back...we sent emails to their infamous techsupport and no response at all!! We went with TKCarsites in the beginning because we were impressed with what other dealerships had to say about their support, follow-up and problem solving. We have hand none of that for quite sometime. Our contract is about up and we ARE going with someone else. TKCarsites if you want to be top dog you have to get out of the house!!

We are an 8 rooftop dealership in Indianapolis and launched with TK in January.  We have had nothing but problems with our sites since we launched!  TK is blaming it on HomeNet, but if our inventory is not online, we are not selling cars.  I am ready to find a new website vendor.  Any suggestions??

I have had nothing but issues with TK carsites.  Their customer service is lacking...they failed Toyota compliance checks 4 months in a row, and they still insisted they were doing their job.  I would highly recommend NOBODY use this company.

If you have questions I have pages of documentation about how they deal with dealerships.

My two dealerships will never recommend these guys...just the opposite, they have earned me telling others it is a mistake to consider them. 

Thanks for the support Greg. I have spoken with Ron personally this morning and we are back on track. Hopefully, we can right the wrongs here.

Richard Valenta

CEO

Ron,

Sorry things didn't work out for you with TK but after we got our bumps worked out, which happened in the first 90 days, we hit the ground running and never looked back. Being a client of TK over the past year I have seen allot of growth, production times are faster and faster, support handles most of my concerns with me on the phone, the site changes are almost same day or next day. it’s nice to see that they care about client concern and then create a plan keep them from happening again. The new support ticket program is great too, its so easy to track progress with the emails updates and the follow up phone calls from the tech guys.

Good luck to everyone. Now lets sell some cars!!

matt,

Thanks for the response, the custom webdesign was presented as an option but it seemed like they were all based on the same base themes, I must say that when I look at websites of other dealers across the web you can spot specific providers fairly easily. Its almost a game I play when I look at a new site because they are always so similar.

I am a chrysler jeep and dodge dealer so I have a factory site that is built by dealer.com

Hey Gregory,

I hate to jump in on TK's page here and apologize for that first.

My name is Matt Murray, Director of Digital Marketing at Dealer.com. I'm glad to hear that you are excited with the products and service you are receiving from TK Carsites.

I just wanted to point out that Dealer.com does provide custom web design services for the interested customer. It sounds like our team failed to let you know that this was the case and I apologize for that as well.

Have a great day!

Matt Murray

888.422.2006

@ Ron Barbosa,

I feel your pain, we had nothing but trouble with our websites from the time we signed the contract till about 1 1/2 years into the 2 year contract. We had tickets open that would get lost and the tickets that weren't lost would take a month sometimes 3 months to get completed.

I am so glad we are no longer with TK! We recently switched to BluSolutions and we love them. The entire process of having our sites built and putting finishing touches on them have been pleasant. Our sites where built from scratch and brought live before the deadline.

I hope things get better for you!