What Should the Perfect Dealership Home Page Look Like?

[craigh]

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.

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

 

[Tallcool1]

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

View attachment 9554

Yep, that one is bolted on!

 

[DjSec]

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.

Totally agree. I’m hand-coding the site to keep things fast and lightweight, and while I don’t always stick strictly to a style guide during early development (since I’m still testing font sizes, colors, etc.), I’ve now implemented one and I’m using Montserrat and Inter as the primary fonts to replace system defaults.

And I've also changed the icons however I am still playing with the layout and colors so would love any input on the changes and the order, colors, and layout of things on the home.

inventory search filters are super important for most dealerships. You might be able to get away without them if you only have 10-20 cars in stock, but once you’re past that, they’re pretty much a necessity.

Love to see that you’re putting all of that theory into action though!

I spent a lot of time digging into this. What I found was:

• 62% of users leave after just one empty search
• 31% exit after 2–3 failed attempts
• Only 7% persist after hitting 3 empty filters

And the most-used filters tend to be Price Range, Mileage, Make/Model, and Year.

So I was thinking (and would love your perspective) that instead of dumping users into a full filter panel, it might be more effective to surface just a few button-style filters across the top (especially on mobile) focused on the most important categories.

The goal is to reduce friction, avoid dead ends, and help users start browsing quickly with low effort. Curious if you've tested anything like that?

 

[DjSec]

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.

Totally agree but I didn’t bring it up to brag about meeting the minimum. I brought it up because Amazon, Google, Walmart, CDK, Koons Automotive, and a dozen others have all publicly tied performance to revenue.

So while I see it as a baseline too, I also see it as a lever especially for small dealers who may not realize how much that one factor can impact leads and sales.

With the navigation, the simplification is good but if that's core functionality -- why isn't that more prominent?

I’ve been aiming for balance between clarity and simplicity. The nav is in a standard position, and all three core links are echoed throughout the homepage with supporting CTAs.

But if there’s a more prominent or modern pattern you’d suggest, I’m open to testing it. Always looking for ways to improve hierarchy and flow.

AI model can kick out quality work in seconds. As professionals, the baseline expectations are much higher now.

Absolutely agree and I think tools like v0.dev are game-changers. I really appreciate the link and even used it as inspiration to do a full redesign of the homepage layout. Would love for you to take a look when you get a moment.

That said, I still think human-led structure, logic, and experience design matter especially when it comes to semantic HTML, accessibility, SEO, and understanding the buyer journey.

The output from v0 was fast, but also written in .tsx, which isn't valid HTML and won’t index properly without translation or pre-rendering. So I see AI as an accelerator, not a replacement (yet!).

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.

Fair.. I can definitely get into the weeds . But I look at the data to validate ideas before testing them on users. Especially in a vertical like automotive, where 1% increases in conversion can equal tens of thousands of dollars, it feels worth taking seriously.

That said, I don’t start with stats. I start with:

• What the customer wants
• What the dealership needs
• Then I run every decision through what the data says might nudge behavior

Again really appreciate you challenging me to step back and reevaluate. I’ve already made big changes based on your feedback and the v0 prompt. If you get a few minutes to look at the revised homepage, I’d love to hear what else you’d improve.

Thanks again!

 

[DjSec]

And while the site is in development, make sure you have a no-index tag in place so clocktowerautomall.com (dev site) doesn’t start competing against clocktowerauto.com (live site) in the SERP.

That’s a good point.

In this case, the dev domain (clocktowerautomall.com) is:

• A new domain with no backlinks
• Not linked to from anywhere
• Structurally and content-wise very different from the current live site (clocktowerauto.com)

So even if it were to get crawled, it’s unlikely to rank or compete meaningfully especially without links or signals. And once the redesign is complete, we’ll likely redirect pages to the main domain anyway, which could consolidate any authority the dev site may have picked up.

That said, you're right adding a simple noindex meta tag during development is still smart. It’s just one extra layer of protection to:

• Avoid accidental indexing
• Prevent URL duplication
• Keep control over when the site goes live

So yeah I'll do it and it is inline with following best practices. Thanks for the reminder!

 

[DjSec]

Do you work at Carbase now? Was curious how you were able to work the home page.

I'm working on the site on a different domain name (clocktowerautomall.com) and not working on the Carbase site (clocktowerauto.com).

 

[DjSec]

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.

Totally get the skepticism. There’s definitely a lot of hype and vendor-driven “research” floating around. But for me, the red flags go down when you see companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart, and CDK independently publishing hard data that links performance directly to conversions.

Google even built PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse specifically to help developers test for speed because it impacts crawl rate, mobile UX, and ultimately rankings.

So while I agree it's not everything and things like caching, lazy loading, and smart UX play a huge role I tend to take speed seriously unless someone can definitively prove it doesn’t matter.

If there’s even a chance the difference is thousands (or hundreds of thousands) in lost sales per year, it feels like something worth optimizing.

1. 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.

Love that you’re seeing early signs of users finding things more easily especially the "Book Service" form. Removing sliders and narrowing CTAs has made a measurable difference for others I’ve worked with too, both in terms of conversion rate and page load speed.

Once you’ve gathered more data, I’d be really curious:

• How it affected your overall bounce rate and engagement
• If rankings shifted due to cleaner structure and speed
• Whether visitors naturally prefer starting with “All Inventory” over New vs. Used

It removes a decision point and simplifies the path. It might even help guide users to the inventory you most want to move, especially if you control sort order or feature certain vehicles at the top.

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.

I’d love to hear more about how those tests are going. I think a lot of dealers are waking up to the idea that investing in their own site gives them more control, better data, and potentially better ROI than third-party classifieds.

Let me know if you're open to sharing more as you gather results, I’d be happy to do the same on my end!

 

[Zack_AF]

I'm working on the site on a different domain name (clocktowerautomall.com) and not working on the Carbase site (clocktowerauto.com).

Ah, I overlooked the 2nd hyperlink! They also don't have they're name at the bottom of the home page so I was really confused haha.

 

[joe.pistell]

We removed their giant promo sliders and replaced them with 3 simple call to action options:

yo Craig, love what u r doing.
Consider adding a 'Finance" link to the header menu.

If you listen to a few thousand calls, Reps are always talking the shopper into using the finance link to get ppl to commit over the phone. Reps want to guide the shopper right to the link, so, make it easy to find.

p.s. @DjSec listen to calls, read emails and chats. You'll get a far better read on what sells cars.

 

[DjSec]

p.s. @DjSec listen to calls, read emails and chats. You'll get a far better read on what sells cars.

I read your entire thread I doubt I could get much more insight then that, I really learned a lot from it.