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DealerOn fell off. Who are the good website providers these days?

Koons was originally on DealerOn, and I've never seen one of their sites take 26 seconds to load.

That stat comes from a 3G mobile test, which isn't really representative of a typical user experience.
If you use PageSpeed Insights, that’s Google’s own tool and the same one they use to evaluate and rank websites in terms of performance and Core Web Vitals.

And based on what I’ve seen, most dealership websites don’t come close to meeting Google’s recommended thresholds. Whether it’s desktop or mobile (3G or not), failing those benchmarks can impact rankings and user experience.

It’s not just about how fast a site “feels”, it’s about how well it performs under the conditions Google actually tests for.

Google intentionally uses simulated slower connections (like 3G) in their Lighthouse/PageSpeed Insights tool because it reflects worst-case scenarios and helps developers optimize for performance across all users, including those with slower devices, older phones, or spotty connections.

Even if your typical user is on 5G or high-speed Wi-Fi, Google’s Core Web Vitals are scored based on that simulated 3G mobile environment — because:
  • It highlights inefficiencies
  • It ensures a broad, inclusive user experience
  • It helps prevent performance cliffs for users in less-than-ideal conditions
So while most real users may not wait 26 seconds, a site that performs poorly under Google’s test conditions can still get penalized in rankings, especially on mobile.
 
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.
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?
 
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?
And speaking of Amazon - why do they use an adaptive site? Same goes for CarGurus.

Adaptive sites used to have a bad rep because the mobile versions often had a different URL and didn’t offer the same content or functionality as their desktop counterparts.
 
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?

Google has confirmed that mobile usability is a ranking factor, especially since the rollout of mobile-first indexing:
  • Source: Google Search Central – Mobile-First Indexing
In addition to this:

1. Bounce Rate Goes Up

2. Interaction Rate Drops

3. Core Web Vitals Failures

Non-responsive design often correlates with:

❌ Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

❌ Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

❌ First Input Delay (FID)

Core Web Vitals are confirmed ranking factors. Google tracks them for every URL.

4. Mobile-First Indexing Penalties

Since Google indexes and ranks the mobile version of your site, if that version is incomplete or poorly optimized:

Important content might be missing or unreadable.

Internal links might not work well.

Structured data may be misaligned.

This leads to indexing issues and ranking drops, especially on mobile.

5. Poor Local SEO Performance

For dealerships, local visibility is everything.

And since 3 out of 4 people are searching on mobile it can be a real dealership killer.
 
And speaking of Amazon - why do they use an adaptive site? Same goes for CarGurus.

Adaptive sites used to have a bad rep because the mobile versions often had a different URL and didn’t offer the same content or functionality as their desktop counterparts.

Because they:
  1. Have full control over the mobile experience.
  2. Want to optimize performance and layout very differently for mobile vs. desktop.
  3. May A/B test totally different user flows on different devices.
  4. Can load lighter mobile versions to speed up load time.
They can afford the engineering overhead to maintain two or more versions of the UI. Most small businesses can’t.

The problem at one time was that many adaptive sites used separate URLs which caused duplicate content and crawl problems but this is no longer a problem today.
 
We’re looking to switch to a new provider. DealerOn used to be great but they have turned to crap.

We’re a ford store so we might have limited options.

Why DealerOn Sucks

Every month we find a new thing on our site that they’ve broken.

For example, today we found all our cta’s were broken. They just reloaded the page when you click them.

We make no changes to the site. We want no changes to the site. But every month we find they have made some changes they made (without notifying us), and invariably, they’ve just broken something new on our website.

You call into support and they play it like it’s a “you problem”. It is never our problem. Always something they broke due to incompetence/carelessness.

It is something they broke for no reason. They don’t deserve $2500/mo. That is an outrageous price to pay for someone to do nothing but break your website once a month.
Hello, totally feel your frustration. We’ve been hearing similar complaints from other stores lately — especially about unapproved changes and broken site functions. At $2,500/month, you expect reliability and solid support, not monthly surprises.


It’s crazy how often providers make backend tweaks without any heads-up, and then leave you to figure out what went wrong. For a business that depends on digital leads, that’s unacceptable.


We’re also exploring other options, but being OEM-restricted (especially as a Ford store) does limit the choices. Curious if anyone here has switched to a different provider recently and actually seen improvements?
 
Totally hear you on this. We’ve had similar headaches with DealerOn — random site changes, broken CTAs, and support that’s more dismissive than helpful. It’s frustrating when you’re paying top dollar and getting the opposite of peace of mind.


Being a Ford store definitely narrows the options, but it shouldn’t mean settling for subpar service. We've started looking into alternatives too — a few dealers have mentioned better experiences with Sincro or Dealer Inspire, but OEM compliance is always the catch.


Would love to hear if anyone else in a similar boat has made the switch successfully.
 
Hello, totally feel your frustration. We’ve been hearing similar complaints from other stores lately — especially about unapproved changes and broken site functions. At $2,500/month, you expect reliability and solid support, not monthly surprises.


It’s crazy how often providers make backend tweaks without any heads-up, and then leave you to figure out what went wrong. For a business that depends on digital leads, that’s unacceptable.


We’re also exploring other options, but being OEM-restricted (especially as a Ford store) does limit the choices. Curious if anyone here has switched to a different provider recently and actually seen improvements?
Hi John what did you think about what Chris was saying?

Basically...

Let's say you spend $20,000/month on advertising. The OEM reimburses $8K–$10K through co-op, so your out-of-pocket is around $10K–$12K?

However…

OEM-approved websites kill your ROI.
  • Loading in 20–40+ seconds on mobile (a death sentence for conversions)
  • Not ADA compliant (a lawsuit waiting to happen)
  • Riddled with code errors and layout shifts
  • And worst of all, they don’t convert
Now compare that to what Koons Automotive did. They optimized for speed and saw a 1,400% increase in leads. Why? Because speed = sales.

If your site loads in 40 seconds and you cut that to 0.5 seconds, you’ve just improved load time by 39.5 seconds and that’s a potential 2,000%–3,000% jump in conversions.

So...
  • Slow OEM site? Maybe 1% conversion
  • Fast, optimized site? Up to 20%+ conversion
  • Same ad budget… but 20x the leads and sales
And you don’t have to lose the co-op money!

Launch a second optimized site and call it an extension of your digital marketing the same way you would with Facebook or Google ads.
  1. You keep your co-op.
  2. You dominate in leads.
  3. You stop wasting $10K–$12K every month.
Then you take the cheapest OEM site you can find and make money off the entire deal.
 
Totally hear you on this. We’ve had similar headaches with DealerOn — random site changes, broken CTAs, and support that’s more dismissive than helpful. It’s frustrating when you’re paying top dollar and getting the opposite of peace of mind.


Being a Ford store definitely narrows the options, but it shouldn’t mean settling for subpar service. We've started looking into alternatives too — a few dealers have mentioned better experiences with Sincro or Dealer Inspire, but OEM compliance is always the catch.


Would love to hear if anyone else in a similar boat has made the switch successfully.
Hi Jenifer

Totally agree with you, it's crazy how much dealers are expected to pay for websites that break, lag, or miss the mark on support.

When you’re evaluating a new web provider, I always recommend starting with two free tools that Google itself uses:
  1. PageSpeed Insights (https://pagespeed.web.dev/)
    Run the mobile test, that's the one Google uses to determine your rankings. If a developer’s own site can’t pass, it’s a red flag. Odds are your site won’t pass either, which means poor rankings, fewer indexed pages, and lost leads.
  2. W3C Validator (https://validator.w3.org/)
    This checks for coding errors. If a site fails here, it’s usually not ADA compliant, and there’s a higher risk it won’t work properly across devices and browsers. That’s not just a technical issue, that’s lost revenue.
At the end of the day, you’re paying for a professional service and a professional should validate their code the same way you'd checkout the car before returning it to the client. If a developer can’t pass these basic tests, they can’t deliver the performance your dealerships needs to compete online.
 


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