Ryan Everson said:

Even small things like not using Times New Roman, creating a style guide for consistent fonts, margins, and padding, and using more modern icons can make a big difference.

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I was going to say the same thing about the overlay on the photos, but then I realized that font is bolted to the side of the building

I will throw in my 2 cents here:

1. Agreed on page speed being important, but not all important - alot of the studies on this read to me as BS studies done to push people towards specific technologies or vendors. The actual end user on their phone (70% of your traffic?) is unlikely to get a sub 1-second load time given all the external conditions. Once on the site, things like caching and lazyloading make a much bigger difference than the initial page load of the homepage.
   
   
2. Agreed on trying to focus websites - I have a couple dealers that have similarly agreed to do the simple approach. We removed their giant promo sliders and replaced them with 3 simple call to action options:

We only went live just recently, but we will be watching the data closely to see if there is any changes in traffic patterns. One thing we've already seen is less people wandering around different service pages looking for the Book Service form. One of the other things I am interested to track is sending consumers to All inventory (rather than new or used) and letting them filter down as they see fit - I am very curious to see if every customer immediately chooses between New or Used if they don't have to.




It's been a while since I've had some fun with websites, but we're trying new things with a few dealers who turned down their classifieds spend and are replacing it with digital spend direct to the website.

Sorry I don't have a lot of time to go through each bullet point -- but page speed shouldn't be a talking point. It's a core expectation. With the navigation, the simplification is good but if that's core functionality -- why isn't that more prominent?

Anyways, I fed some of this info to a service (v0.dev) -> https://v0.dev/chat/clock-tower-website-redesign-bWhYAg16AoB

Do you see what I mean? An AI model can kick out quality work in seconds. As professionals, the baseline expectations are much higher now. Which means we can deliver at high quality, quicker, and hitting core objectives. Feel free to refine the prompt for what your customer is looking for. But I'm just trying to point out doing some of the design by hand isn't necessary anymore. I also think you may be too deep in the weeds on some of these stats and what not...zooming out and starting with the customer and working backwards, and using all the available tools to make it happen is what I think success looks like.

I think your post reads well but I think the execution misses the mark. I wouldn't get overly obsessed with page load times. Just try to be reasonable. If you think it takes too long to load, most other people will too.

There's no visual appeal to the homepage. It looks bland and lacks energy. There's no real order to the vehicles -- why not put them by category? Why scroll up and down and not left to right (on mobile)? I would take a look at some of the higher quality UX sites (Carvana, CarMax, etc) for inspiration. I realize this is a smaller store so certain things don't apply -- but I think the UX quality absolutely does.

I think once you get the visual and UX to a certain level, then tailor things to Clock Tower's target market and communicate how you could meet their needs.

DjSec said:

Appreciate any feedback you’ve got..

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Read. this. forum.

Yeah we are a vehicle listings partner as well and this is the Vehicle Impressions graph...not good. A couple of months ago they did a broad sweep of reviews too and wiped out a LOT of good reviews.



I'm wondering if this is along those same lines. They also just released the June Core update, maybe it was in preparation for that as well.

But yeah it's been a growing issue the past few months (as you can see) and they say "they are working on it"...

Someone submitted support ticket if you want to follow along there as well: https://support.google.com/business...earch-maps-gbp-business-manager-account?hl=en

Greg - I noticed our vehicles dropped off some of our Google business profiles about a month ago. The fix for us was just to go into the profile admin page, click on "Vehicle Listings", and then click a toggle switch that read "Display Vehicle Listings". We haven't had any problems since.

costco travel if your a member

@umer.autojini !!! A DealerRefresh OG!

Search google or kayak or other site and call the actual location and get someone from the location not the corp BDC. Confirm the vehicle you want is available, any discounts they are running. Most reward cards cover insurance on rental cars and your own insurance also covers rental cars. Unlimited mileage is what you are really after.

@DjSec what do you mean... by killed vehicle listings.

There are some known issues with vehicle listings. Screenshot form google Vehicle listings partner portal.

I would look at the products, may be a popular brand/model is no longer active and sold.
For the auction insights... sometime the details report under Insights and Report > Auction Insights shows zero data but Insights And Reports > Insights (Auction Insights) widget has data and compare 7 day vs 28 days.

And as #growdy suggested rebuilding or pausing/restarting the campaign could help with clicks and impression. However before that one should look at the actual conversions as you don't want to pay for clicks. When you start a new campaign or restart it will send traffic and get data so the the AI system (Performance Max CPA/ROAS) to be figured out... so by restarting you may be getting invalid clicks.

Alternative options be to update or set higher your Target CPA or Target ROAS (based on bidding strategy) and see if that helps.

Greg_Gifford said:

NO MATTER WHAT - don't go with Dealer.com - they still don't have responsive websites, so Google demotes a DDC site in search results.

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They aren't fully responsive, I agree. Can you share the data you have showing Google demotes a DDC site in their search simply because it's not fully responsive? Side question - why do you think they haven't gone fully responsive?

kylewilliam said:

The core issue is a lack of perceived value. If dealers don't believe membership brings them anything they can't already access, they won't pay. You need to shift the strategy from just advocating benefits to demonstrating tangible outcomes—things like exclusive access, direct business growth, or legal protections that only members receive. Create pressure points: member-only alerts, trainings, or even public acknowledgment of contributors. If you're protecting nonmembers too, you're removing their incentive to join. Make the value of membership visible, measurable, and unavailable elsewhere.

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Kyle, thanks for the reply.

We are working on a couple of "Member Only" things right now. One of them I believe will be a pretty good draw.

It is impossible to Protect Members without also protecting Non Members in the process. Most of the protections that I am referring to revolve around Legislative proposals and the like.

You make great points. I do not agree with your perception of the core issue. In my mind, the core issue is that dealers are perfectly happy to let someone else pay the bill. These dealers don't believe in pitching in for the greater good. They know that the few are forced to protect the masses and they are just fine with that. They don't believe in everyone pitching in. Rather than the Perceived Value and "what can you do for me", maybe the question should be "what can I do for others". When we all adopt that mentality, great things can happen.

Now, back to your point...I agree that we need to focus more on Tangible Outcomes. In 2026, we are going to really focus on the New Licensees rather than trying to figure out how to get the existing dealers to change their way of thinking. Again, you do make great points.

If you are going to the National Convention, let me know. I would really like to visit more with you!


Clint

Or a dealer could spend $1500/mo. on a better website vendor while still maintaining their OEM mandated site. There really is so much to be gained -- this is a several hundred million dollar industry we're talking about here. If I was a progressive dealer, I'd be investing in my web presence communicating to customers why I'm the dealer to choose and removing any friction on the path to sale.

BillVaughnAlWestNissan said:

Thanks, man. On to the next adventure! Ha.

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You will hit the ground running Bill.

I know that switching employers kind of sucks and all, but what a great learning opportunity you had with this Nissan store. That experience all translates to any other dealership be it big, small, or in the middle.

You are a better car guy for having gone through that.

BillVaughnAlWestNissan said:

Sad news.

My little adventure is over.

I found out that things that I was promised will not come to fruition.

Time to move on.

Thank you all so much for your support over the last few months.

Some might not have understood why I was so active online throughout this, but it has been cathartic for me. Your support and belief in me have been extremely valuable.

Thank you.

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Oh, man, that sucks. I feel awful for you. You'll most definitely land on your feet, and well. You're a beast @BillVaughnAlWestNissan

Ha! The travel industry is the absolute worst.

Probably the best I have found for Rental Cars is to go directly to the company website. Enterprise has a good website that will actually tell you what you are going to have to pay.

Anand Mahajan said:

Hello Brian, A new release just went live with the CPO / Non-CPO and Independent / Franchise filters. Applying these filters would refresh the MarketCheck Price for the selected combination. By default, these toggle buttons would be pre-selected based on information available with MarketCheck for the listing and the user can always override.

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Nice!!! I will compare a few and see what I find.

Jamieshap said:

Good morning Craig,

Every second Wednesday of the month, Wowza Dealership AI, hosts an auto dealer AI Study group. If you have time to come, it would be great to get your input. I'll drop a link and invite to you and anyone who is interested below. Thanks and have a great day.

To all my fellow dealer pros—this is a personal invite.

If you’ve been curious about AI but unsure where to start (or if it’s even worth your time), join us this Wednesday for something different: a down-to-earth, dealer-to-dealer AI Study Group. No sales pitches. No fluff. Just real conversations about how this tech is helping us understand, communicate with, and align with our customers in smarter ways.

We’ll talk use cases, share what’s actually working, and get honest about what’s not. I’d especially love to hear from you—what have you tried? What’s got your team stuck? And how do we get more of our colleagues off the sidelines?

Let’s make this tech work for us—not the other way around.

This Wednesday

2:00–3:30 PM CT

Online

LinkedIn

Hope to see you there.

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@Jamieshap , I just signed up. I believe our phone call would be better after I sit in on this.

Clint

BillVaughnAlWestNissan said:

Never thought I would be so excited about selling 1 or 2 cars a day.

But I'm pretty happy right now with the consistency that we are starting to see.

When I first got here, there were several days a week that we didn't sell a single car.

For the last 3 weeks now we've only had one day where we didn't deliver a vehicle.

I'll call that progress!

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That is more than progress! That is fantastic.

Chris Cachor said:

Yes. It's a little unconventional, but considering OEMs have both a approved website vendor list AND an approved advertising partner list, you could take a rip of ad spend and skirt the approved vendor rules, while still being able to use part of your co-op...

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Oh, I see what you are saying. Yes, it is a considerable amount of money to leave on the table with Ford by not participating with vendors. We MAKE money in advertising with Ford. Kia, on the other hand, we dropped the approved site and went back to our own because the co-op loss wasn't very painful vs having control of our price stacks and site for our Kia stores.

Yes. It's a little unconventional, but considering OEMs have both a approved website vendor list AND an approved advertising partner list, unapproved website vendors could take a rip of ad spend (ex: 20-25%) and skirt the approved vendor rules, while still being able to use part of your co-op to fund the website. That's what I'd do if I was trying to sell websites to dealers but I wasn't an approved vendor...