Is Wordpress better than the rest?

[Alex Snyder]

Now that Wordpress is the backbone to over 1/3rd of the Internet I have to believe it is much more robust than what dealers get from the non-Wordpress CMS systems out there like: CDK, Reynolds, Dealer.com, DealerOn, etc.

I'm curious as to what Dealer Inspire and Dealer Venom clients think of having so much power and flexibility? Is it dangerous? Have you made significant mistakes? Do you utilize any plugins? How is life as a car dealer on Wordpress?

 

[Ryan Montville]

@Alex Snyder, I can't believe you left off Gary Stock!

DDC is a bit more user friendly imo with the drag and drop widgets (if they are working properly), but my creativity is limited by the widgets DDC has developed.

There is more of a learning curve with Wordpress. Once you get past that, it is more open, but not wide open. On my DI sites, I don't have the access you would find on a typical Wordpress site. I can't add my own plugins, access template files, etc. Because of this, I haven't crashed any of my DI sites...yet But the good far outweighs the bad. I can add raw code, scripts, and css to any of my pages, and there are far less calls to support for simple tasks with their inventory builder tool.

In the end, it all comes down to "how do you use the tool?" You can get quality content that drives traffic on any platform, but Wordpress gives me more of an opportunity to build pages the way I envision from the beginning.

 

[Ben Blanco]

I agree with @Ryan Montville. WordPress is all about what you make it. I had the pleasure of managing over 13 Dealer Inspire sites for the past 4 years. What DI/WordPress gave us was choice. It gave us the choice to make our own custom experiences. Finally the vendor got out of the way, and allowed our internal team of Digital Marketers to rapidly build, scale and repeat.

Cookie cutter doesn't win conversions, or help us sell more cars. As dealers, all of our digital dots have to sing and dance to the same beat. DI/WordPress enabled us to do this better than CDK Global, or Dealer.com.

I won't disparage a platform I've never used. I've heard great things about DealerOn. Will DealerOn allow you to bring in your own code? Are their themes based on Bootstrap or some other popular web framework? I'm interested in hearing from a fellow front-end developer that has pushed their platform.

I recently had the pleasure of taking a sneak peak at @Joud Mansour Dealer Venom platform. I really like what his team is building over there. He's paid a lot of attention to detail behind the scenes. Speed is king or queen in my opinion. These platforms have to get faster! No, wait....third-party vendor scripts need to get faster!!! LOL (time for another thread???)

Lastly, are any of these platforms leveraging AMP yet?

 

[Alex Snyder]

I recently had the pleasure of taking a sneak peak at @Joud Mansour Dealer Venom platform. I really like what his team is building over there.

Thanks for sharing Ben and @Ryan Montville.

I sent a note to the Dealer Venom team asking them to speak up. @Joud Mansour gave Jeff and me a demo a few months ago and we were impressed too. I'm certainly finding the Wordpress applications to be a source of creative freedom as well; especially since we've been using Wordpress as DealerRefresh's backbone for over a decade.

I also bet @joe.chura might know a dealer or two that could chime in. He's out of the country right now, but mentioned he'd reach out from afar.... that dude is always working.

 

[Chris Leslie]

Open source is always a better way to go. There is always going to be more options to do the things you want to do on an individual basis.

Platforms with old funky code that weren't ready for all types of screen sizes or things like retina.

Which is why those legacy platforms tried forever to sell the idea of adaptive over responsive.

The stability of proprietary code does not outweigh the need/want of new technology.

 

[Ryan Montville]

Lastly, are any of these platforms leveraging AMP yet?

The only one I'm aware of is Jazel. The ones that don't offer it have similar reasons on why we don't need it as automotive websites. I've definitely been intrigued though.

 

[Jason@nabthat]

Firstly, WordPress is only as good as the team behind it. It is a free CSS platform that has limitation around SEO, customization and plug-ins.

My on WordPress is:

1. Security of WordPress sites is an issue
2. There are limitations to the CSS
3. Code is bulky
4. Built in PHP (a dying coding language)

The backend (code) and build of a site is an important piece to SEO and the ability for Google to crawl a site and reference it in it's SERP.

This is why we have been building automotive sites using Google's own coding framework called Angular, it is faster, less code and provides the flexibility for us to develop, design and implement anything we want, it is limitless. And, if you believe, Google is bias toward its products then Angular coded sites have a leg up on the competition. Angular also has the ability to build pages using PWA (Progressive Web Applications) and we can now allow a consumer to utilize the site while being completely offline (including submitting a lead). With our 2.0 Website coming out built on Agular as well (releasing in July) there is literally no load time.

Again, just my opinion. At the end of the day, if you are happy with the UI/UX and performance of the site then :thumbup:.

Here is an example of Bounce Rate on a WordPress site versus our Angular build site:

 

[AWNick]

I feel like the bounce rate is sort of a weird comparison as it has a ton of moving parts working on it. What are you guys attributing that sharp decline to? Page speeds? Was site structure changed?

I'm not trying to bash or pick at your setup. I'm just very curious!

 

[Alex Snyder]

I feel like the bounce rate is sort of a weird comparison as it has a ton of moving parts working on it.

and I sure do love a good bounce rate debate. So much so that I gave this oldie a https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/threads/whats-your-dealership-website-bounce-rate.4896/

 

[Jason@nabthat]

I feel like the bounce rate is sort of a weird comparison as it has a ton of moving parts working on it. What are you guys attributing that sharp decline to? Page speeds? Was site structure changed?

I'm not trying to bash or pick at your setup. I'm just very curious!

You are right, there are a ton of moving parts, so there is no "magic sauce" that can do this. The attribution of a decreased bounce rate has a lot to do with page speed, user experience (especially mobile) and navigation menu.

My overall point, is that WordPress as a CSS is not a well positioned coding language and with it comes the limitations around structure and UI/UX. All of this needs to be accounted for within a site, especially with regard to this topic of conversation. Just wanted to stir the pot

We have seen dealers go from 100 leads a month to over 900+ leads a month from their website without changing anything but their site (every piece matters, backend, code structure (google indexing/crawling), UI, UX, site speed, etc.)