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Vinsolutions/DealerOn/Dealer.com or cobalt for website?

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#11
That's a really good point Padams. The biggest success stories come from great dealer and vendor relationships. You should absolutely work with a company that can work with your style. I've seen hundreds of dealers switch website vendors just because of lack of communication. They had great SEO, ranked well, had tons of traffic, converted well but just didn't like the relationship.
 
#12
cmjerry4531 said:
That's a really good point Padams. The biggest success stories come from great dealer and vendor relationships. You should absolutely work with a company that can work with your style. I've seen hundreds of dealers switch website vendors just because of lack of communication. They had great SEO, ranked well, had tons of traffic, converted well but just didn't like the relationship.
Click to expand...

I can vouch for this. I have a situation like this... if the relationship doesn't jell, it's a challenge on a daily basis.

Bill
 
#13
Good Morning,

My group switched from a bigger provider to DealerFire a little over 2.5 years ago and we couldn't be happier. They keep up with the emerging technologies and definitely want to keep their clients ahead of the curve, which is refreshing in this industry (great mobile sites and they now offer responsive design). Additionally, their customer service is above and beyond any relationship we've had with any other vendor. Most tickets are handled within 24 hours and they are very, very good with communicating updates during the process.

Our page-views, time on site, unique visitors, and conversions have increased tremendously since we switched providers. Also, unlike most providers, you don't just have options of 3 different templates for pages - their CMS allows for more customization than any other provider I have seen.

Feel free to message or email me if you'd like more specifics or have any questions
 
#14
Honestly, I recommend studying up SEO and other web trends so that you can make an educated decision when selecting a website vendor. Be warned that many of the bigger vendors use copycat website content on your pages and out of date SEO techniques, so it may hurt your rankings.

After being tired of vendors not providing us with the options that we want and charging us an arm and a leg for sub-par products, I have actually decided to ditch going the traditional route to actually self-host and build our new group website from scratch on the Wordpress platform with help from the DealerTrend Inventory API to facilitate the inventory portion of our new site. I'm nowhere near finished, but you can check out my progress here: Thornton Automotive . The site is fully responsive, and I am able to completely customize EVERY aspect while keeping up with the coolest website trends... Plus I can totally own our SEO tactics.

I work for a small automotive group that has a Chevrolet dealership and 2 (soon to be 3) used dealerships. We were looking for an option to make a group site that features inventory from all of the rooftops while we are going through our group re-branding process. After tons of research and demos with various vendors, I am SO happy that we have decided to go this route. Not to mention, we will be paying only a little bit more for our group site than we were paying for only 1 of our used dealership's basic Dealer.com websites.

I'm not a web designer/developer by trade (I went to school for Public Relations,) but as long as you are willing to put the time into learning, building your own site is possible (and very rewarding!)
 
#15
About ayear and a half ago, we switched our Ford/Lincoln store to VinSolutions (ourCRM) and then in January we went to a Vin site with our Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAMstore too. They are much more user friendly that I ever found myDealer.com site or FordDirect site to be. Having said that, it iscritical to understand that you want...NEED...your website to be Responsive sothat it will automatically fit on any size screen. If you make a change,check that feature out as well as the SEO provided (there are really good SEOcompanies out there as well, see JD Rucker's DealerAuthority). Also, eventhough I am not a DealerOn customer, I am a HUGE fan of DealerOn.
Whateveravenue you end up going down, try to get as involved as you can in the setupprocess and check out the sites of other dealers to see what you likebest/least and try to incorporate the good stuff into your site. I wish you the best, it can be a long haul,but it will be worth it!
 
#16
It is kind of funny that you posted this as yesterday I had a sit down with my GM rep and his partner from Dealer Digital. We have recently moved 95% of our website service from Cobalt to VinSolutions and could not be happier! We reduced the mandatory GM site to a nuts and bolts site and are focusing on the Vins site. I will say this, the best selling point with a VinSolutions site is if it is paired with their CRM, (which we have done.) With Haystack now in the loop, we are looking forward to the responsive sites when they launch. My biggest complaints with Cobalt were: poor communication and terrible response times on issues. Their analytics are good though.
 
#17
sryan said:
Our dealership is looking to change websites. We are a GM dealer

We use Vinsolutions for our CRM tool and are thinking about switching from the upgraded Cobalt site to a Vinsolutions/DealerOn or Dealer.com site

Which site(s) do you guys recommend????????????

Would anyone recommend staying with the upgraded performance website of Cobalt?

Thank you very much
Click to expand...

Can I ask what brands do you sell?
 
#19
My personal preference is dealer.com. I have found that their platforms are truly the best, they're back-end tools have a ton of flexibility and their customer service is "good".

BUT, the website provider is only a base from which to work. Its really in the design of the site, the conversion tools/techniques used and constantly maintaining the site that makes a site from any provider go from good to great.
 
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