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Best dealership website you've seen?

It helps the car dealers in the UK are stuck in the stone age and many are subservient to AutoTrader which creates them "free" sites - a deadly mistake for them.


Ling :)


And the fire also came from overseas to Autotrader...


Ling all your points are very valid and despite the fact that Alex, Joe, and many others are baffled about how well your site works there are a few things to point out:

Because you are an independent you have 100% freedom of action as far as what you add to your website. All the dealers that have added their website here have a franchisor that tells them what do/not to do. My example, a Toyota website, as Joe and Alex know since they are also in the website building business, is a hard website to keep compliant. But the pressure of being complaint also comes from the customer, there is a certain expectation of colors, treatment, knowledge, even bathroom size when a customer goes to a Honda store VS an independent. I'm not saying it is better, but it exists just like we have a different expectation from Starbucks VS the local coffee shop.

Secondly but not less important is that while LingsCars is very successful and because that resides in its uniqueness that may be impossible to replicate. I can probably copy your site to the max for a local dealer in the US and it will fail miserable. There is a formula that works for a one time location/business and then there is the formula that allows companies like McDonalds duplicate itself all over the world. The danger in that is that the unique place may not give us good data as of what is that we can use to take away and implement in our dealership. 90+% of what makes LingsCars successful is Ling, how could we duplicate that?
 
...I had my highest ever sales day yesterday - I took £8000 ($12000) in commissions on sales yesterday. Things are going from strength to strength. Commissions this year (April 12 to March 13) will show $1m income (gross profit) from pure website sales (I don't even speak to customers on phone, it's all done online). I do not buy cars, hold stock or have a physical dealership. So, it works.


Ling,

In the USA, nearly all of our car buyers have a used car they want to trade-in. How is this handled on your side of the pond?

thnx
Joe
 
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Measurement systems are different, similar to Canada. Gallons aren't the same when measuring empirical vs metric.

Wikipedia
When I was a young DJ in Michigan, there was nothing better than scoring Canadian milk crates. We used records. Good old fashioned 12" records. And records didn't quite fit in US milk crates - but Canadian crates ROCKED! The bigger gallon was the reason.
 
Tom,

Your's looks pretty through. What needs improvement?
Antioch Illinois Ford Dealer | Kunes Country Ford of Antioch | New Ford, Used Cars, Trucks, SUVs in IL


Did you Heat Map it yet? MUST DO!
Suggest: Crazy Egg ? Visualize where your visitors click


Where's your chat?
I highly recommend it. I especially recommend managed chat. Your lead count will jump and the data you get back will be very helpful in design. See my chat homework here: Is Your Dealership Website Chat Used or Abused?


HTH
Joe

Thanks Joe! Part of the reason I started this convo is because within the next month we are (finally) switching from Reynolds & Reynolds to VinSolutions which will not only include new CRM but new website as well. While I like my current website and tried quite hard to make it clean and easy to use... To me, it's just a other car dealer website. I really want to key in on modeling some of the retail eCommerce sites in making the UI extremely easy to use and make I so the website leads the customer thru the process... For example, after a customer submits a quote request, I believe it should lead the customer prompt the customer whether they have a trade or not that they need a value on and then on to the credit app, ect.

I don't want nor think my site can actually sell a car but I want the customers to get more engaged, therefore creating a higher quality lead.

Maybe I'm just crazy and too hopeful... I just have yet to have ever been WOW'd be a dealer website yet.