Adding website plugins and customizations?

[Alex Snyder]

I'm curious how easy it is to get something added to your website. There definitely seems to be a drastic difference in who can do what on which platform, and the perceptions around it vary widely from one dealer to another. How is your website vendor at knocking things out for you?

 

[ChrisR]

Also depends on the OEM. Subaru is very particular about what they allow on dealer sites, if it has anything to do with lead gen/capture, it must be approved by Shift, as they want to monitor all of the inbound leads.

 

[Tarry Shebesta]

Also depends on the OEM. Subaru is very particular about what they allow on dealer sites, if it has anything to do with lead gen/capture, it must be approved by Shift, as they want to monitor all of the inbound leads.

Exactly. So how is a dealer supposed to break out from the pack by using innovative technology? OEMs are slamming the door on potential sales by having gatekeepers approving website products.

The better path is to setup guidelines and rules for vendors if they want to participate. Having a third-party gatekeeper and a pay-to-play is the absolute best way to DECREASED sales and market share.

Let dealers be entrepreneurs!

 

[Jeff Kershner]

JC @Alex Snyder - loaded question with so many variables, ie - website provider, plug-in service, customer rep, dealer user, OEM involvement.

I don't have that much experience for this conversation as I have been using the same website provider for several years, even throughout my few moves between positions. DealerOn makes it quite easy to add services. Many are already set up in the admin and can be turned on with a few clicks and dropping of the code. Anything outside of that realm can usually be accomplished with a quick phone call. I've never run into an issue up to this point.

 

[Ryan Everson]

I've found that it's often too easy for vendors to add tools and code to our website without my knowledge.

Every vendor wants to overtake your website with banners, buttons, and menu links to help convince (annoy) a tiny percentage of additional visitors into using their tool.

Dealers are ultimately at fault for this though. We hold our vendors accountable to driving leads and sales (as we rightfully should) but this has only encouraged vendors to further plaster their tools so they can demonstrate additional value to us, without considering the big picture of our overall user experience.

It's a difficult balancing act of driving leads without driving your customers away.

We audit our websites bi-weekly and try our best to manage the addition (and deletion) of all vendor tools / code / banners / etc ourselves via Google Tag Manager. Stuff still slips by though.