Anyone using Wordpress to post vehicle inventory?

[Chris Cachor]

Yeah... But any dealer can do that. That's the easy part. The hard part that people struggle with is getting the data feeds setup, working with the inventory management system (every needs vin decoding/specs/etc), getting wordpress to auto add/delete cars as the data feed is updated, etc.

Plus tie-ing the inventory to a lead system, current incentives, thumb-nails, videos, credit apps, make/model databases, color matching, etc. There's definitely a lot to it -- the web vendors do a great job with the integration but unfortunately kind of fall short on the CMS side. There's a large gap between delivering a highly customizable solution vs. your shared tenant dealer sites.

 

[VVAuto1]

Vendors are hurting themselves and the dealer by discoraging creativity and tying new things.

"Let me forward this to custom content" =

 

[kcar]

Vendors are hurting themselves and the dealer by discoraging creativity and tying new things.

"Let me forward this to custom content" =

Rambling post ahead...

Pretty much, there's very limited innovation in the dealership industry online. Vendors are content making $ without making changes and who could blame them! But it's just a bad position for dealers to be in. It's one of the reasons I have massive amounts of respect for Yago & Mike, they are being innovative and seem to be working for the dealers. They encourage creativity, and are trying to gap the areas vendors are ignoring..

The biggest problem I see: Vendors... how are dealers supposed to grow, innovate and be creative if every custom change they want to make is in the form of "pay us" or "we can't do that since it's limited". I feel like vendors are trying to keep dealers in the cycle, they don't want them to run their own websites, and they don't want the Wordpress platform to expand. Because once it does, it's going to explode and they are going to lose a lot of money.

The other issues is there are dealers who don't know how to use things like Wordpress yet. But in due time that will change. Dealers had no idea how to use Facebook but now they all know how it works. Case and point, how do you expect dealers to learn if there's no product available for them to do so.

It leaves people like me, a few other dealers out there trying to figure things out for ourselves. And rest assured while it's a huge challenge for the small guy to undertake, there will be a point when this does happen and it gets more widespread. Even then we'll see these big vendors trying to snatch and buy these developments so they can keep the cycle and cash flow going.

Anyways, Yago & Mike are paving the way for all of us with Wordpress, and I hope dealers can remember that. The REAL people innovating and being creative for the dealers online are NOT these big vendors.. Tell me when was the last time vendors released a website that really delivered big time with new technology? And I will tell you, none all this technology has been out there forever.. "Adaptive websites" as the next new big thing? That arrived a long time ago, any coder can make that happen, its just a new point of sale. ADP's new "Cobalt websites", which are among the worst in the industry, and there's nothing new, period. It's the same technology in a new website "template or design". DealerFire websites, sure they look "fancy" but where is the innovation, and again its the same thing being sold as every other vendor. These vendors have all of these "features" but in reality they are all the same technology. (Keep in mind we are talking websites only) Next let's move onto Dealer.com's control panel, DD7? I forget what it's called. This big update.. What did it do? Nothing, you put analytical data on the homescreen to make it look "fancy".. For $5/Month I have real LIVE TIME visitor data, with name tagged visitors, (2 things you don't offer), all of the same site analytic data, plus it looks 10x better. My point is your technology has been out forever, your new selling "features" aren't new, they are old and resold in a new design.. Just more ways too fool dealers into buying into something. So I'm going to stop there..

Whew that was a long post, I might just be the most hated person in vendor history now but I speak the truth... As someone who want's to be creative in the dealer industry and works everyday to break the norm, I'm worn out from the "talk" and want "real innovation"..

 

[joe.pistell]

...Whew that was a long post, I might just be the most hated person in vendor history now but I speak the truth... As someone who want's to be creative in the dealer industry and works everyday to break the norm, I'm worn out from the "talk" and want "real innovation"..

kcar (aka grasshopper),

You're up for another "Lesson's Ol' Uncle Joe".

Uncle Joe Rule #34: If there is a big need AND there is money to be made... SOMEONE is after it... look HARD for that someone and observe what they're up to.

A pretty simple Rule. That takes us to...

Uncle Joe Rule #115: "Just because it's a good idea, doesn't me it'll work"

Grasshopper, if it's such a hot idea, then where are all of the boutique vendors building custom solutions that you propose is needed? Hell, the barriers of entry are very low, the hardest part of the auto dealer web publishing task is inventory collection and hosting and that's already done (e.g. homenet)!

You've convinced yourself that vendors are at fault and yet you cannot create a solution yourself. Think about that statement. If its so damn easy, then with that same growling passion you drop on vendors, explain why YOU cannot create this solution.

If it's so easy, they build it yourself, either by your own efforts, or by becoming your own project manager. Draft the scope of work, hire the player(s) to execute your vision, manage it's evolution, launch the platform, market it, service it... nothing to it.

I TOTALLY get your passion, but blaming others for not executing your vision actually puts the responsibility on YOU, not on the vendors.

 

[ddavis]

Kcar, I'm going to agree with Joe; however, I can't think of a time that I didn't. Joe has three used car super centers that put out a phenomenal number of cars. I understand why he would need custom websites but can only imagine the amount of time, effort, money and expertise that took. It is far beyond my capabilities.

You are at franchised new car stores. Based your comments, on other threads, your problems are with processes and sales management. Until you fix that mess, nothing you do is going to matter. You need people that will engage customers, followup, set appointments and close deals. Nothing very technical about it. All that is needed is a reasonable budget, any one of the top websites and CRMs recommended on drivingsales, and a good Sales Manager. An old Sales Manager told me, "this is the hardest easy job or the easiest hard job you will ever have."

 

[yagoparamo]

kcar (aka grasshopper),

You're up for another "Lesson's Ol' Uncle Joe".

Uncle Joe Rule #34: If there is a big need AND there is money to be made... SOMEONE is after it... look HARD for that someone and observe what they're up to.

A pretty simple Rule. That takes us to...

Uncle Joe Rule #115: "Just because it's a good idea, doesn't me it'll work"

Grasshopper, if it's such a hot idea, then where are all of the boutique vendors building custom solutions that you propose is needed? Hell, the barriers of entry are very low, the hardest part of the auto dealer web publishing task is inventory collection and hosting and that's already done (e.g. homenet)!

You've convinced yourself that vendors are at fault and yet you cannot create a solution yourself. Think about that statement. If its so damn easy, then with that same growling passion you drop on vendors, explain why YOU cannot create this solution.

If it's so easy, they build it yourself, either by your own efforts, or by becoming your own project manager. Draft the scope of work, hire the player(s) to execute your vision, manage it's evolution, launch the platform, market it, service it... nothing to it.

I TOTALLY get your passion, but blaming others for not executing your vision actually puts the responsibility on YOU, not on the vendors.

I don't disagree with you with the fact that is not the vendors fault to provide a tool to satisfy every dealer'e need because to do that you will need as many different tools as dealers exist int he US. But reality is also not that simple as your set of "uncle Joe's rules". I can easily argue the reverse: Just because Dealer.com hasn't tried to make money with it doesn't mean is not a good idea.

The "idea" could mean a great benefit for the dealer but little reward for the vendor once you take into account development, testing, selling, implementation, training costs. As an example, many dealer are flocking to large website companies without understanding that those companies don't develop anything unless they can monetize it in a large number of accounts and it requires little support. So tools that may be useful in niche markets like for example a new car configurator in Spanish for a dealer in AZ may never see the light.

Dealers claim to want to be innovative, have the edge in technology, etc, then I see that most have no guts when it takes risk to implement something new nor patience when a new tool is available. I have many tools that I can deploy right now but I don't because some little crap doesn't work with IE7 and dealers get extremely frustrated and want to change everything when one guy with a $200 computer that he bought in 1995 can't use the newest video stuff tool for example. It is easily missed that 90% of your clients will be able to use it and the other 10% that can't most likely know they computer is a piece of crap but they can't pay for an upgrade with food stamps so they just call and bitch about it with their prepaid cell phone.

I can fill up a book with missed opportunities... a few weeks ago we added full managed chat to a dealer that for 85 chats in 3 days and they call to cancel while in a 30 day trial. One customer chatted at 4am and was pissed when the chat person couldn't give a fiance rate for someone with a 400 beacon score. The dealer says they didn't want to make customers angry.

But let me tell you an even better story that better exemplifies the issue here; 8 years ago I build the inventory search pages in Korean for the 300,000 Koreans in Seattle. My wife is Korean so she translated them. I built the pages, changed the database (not easy 8 years ago), had to take photos of my wife's writing, photoshop them, and build the menus one by one. I implemented them at a Honda dealer. A few months later the dealer call me and ask to take them down because one Korean customer complained that one of the menus said something offensive. I checked with my wife and her parents (they don't speak English but they speak Korean) and the just menu said: Car, truck, suv. Why did i take that down? One guy?

These are not the exceptions but the rule.

So you learn as a vendor. You develop careful and only if you can monetize it. I work by a different set of rules, I develop because I enjoy the success of seeing that my tools help people find vehicles and help my clients sell cars. Most of the time I develop first and see if I can monetize later. I can do this because I have a very solid business base and because I have no investors to answer to. I think I'm very different than most other companies.

 

[joe.pistell]

Kcar,

Read Yago's reply deeply. Compare your "view of the dealer landscape" vs Yago's. Look at the senseless business logic he's had to endure.

Lastly, ask yourself why you aren't working with a custom shop like Yago's (or why are you not looking for one similar)?

 

[joe.pistell]

kcar,

Nearly 30 months ago, I was scouring other ROBO* verticals looking for a vendor that had WP dialed in. Here's the post: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f44/tools-post-inventory-wordpress-similar-759.html#post6222

I've had email discussions with the owner about the opportunity in the Car Dealer space. About 6 months ago he launched: WordPress Car Dealer Theme with Craigslist Integration | Gorilla Themes - Premium WordPress Themes

HTH
Joe

*ROBO = Research Online Buy Offline

 

[MikeFitzpatrick]

Been out of the loop for a while and missed this thread.

@Kcar, thanks!

One of the things that I would like to point out with our system. Even though we have a complete Vehicle Hosting tool that we have built in house and a WordPress plugin that displays that data, our strongest asset is our software stack and API. Our Vehicle hosting tool is built on a current Open Source stack that allows us to be very "agile". Even though we have built a WordPress plugin, and I am a huge WordPress fan, it could be Joomla or Drupal or any other CMS that a developer wants to use. We built an API so that dealers, marketing companies and developers can also innovate with inventory. Years ago I saw several dealers try to build their websites with local website vendors and they all failed because of inventory. This is why we set out in the direction we did with our hosting tool.

By the way, as robust as WordPress is there isn't a way to create an inventory plugin that can truly manage inventory. Things like data scrubbing, photo management, data merging, DMS polling, etc., etc. are all things that need to be handled in ways that wouldn't make sense to put into WordPress. Even the Gorilla Themes car dealer site that Joe mentions only really works for smaller dealers that manually upload vehicles and then turn around and manually mark them as sold.


As a side note:
It would be great to see the industry start to adopt data "standards" so that true innovation can begin. Instead of banging our heads against the wall just getting the simplest functions to work.

 

[sbell]

We just bought a Wordpress design for our site, but quickly realized trying to publish our inventory is going to be rather difficult. Currently, we have our inventory going through Homenet but we wanted to create a more robust site that looked a little nicer--no offense Homenet

So now we are stumped on what to do. The theme we purchased said it was easily able to update your inventory with "one click" and even their support said you would be able to update it quickly with an XML feed. However, it appears that the XML "feed" is rather a file that you manually have to update each time through the WP back end.

All of our inventory is in a CSV file and had a programmer create us something that transforms that into a XML feed with a URL, sort of like a sitemap but only with our inventory data.

ANY suggestions on what to do?

Thanks in advance

If you are happy with the file your programmer made to convert your CSV into an XML feed, than all you really need to do is setup a CRON job to run on your server at a pre-defined interval to process the file every day. What type of hosting environment are you on? If you using CPANEL you can setup cron jobs to fire and run any file you need very easily with (link to tutorial on cpanel cron jobs)

A couple other thoughts, you most likely will need to make a cron to pull the vehicle pictures from the homenet feed so you can download them locally, crop them to fit the size you want and then display on your site. I know from experience that if you hotlink directly to the images in vauto or homenet feed files they will not be very happy with you...

If this doesn't help post a little more info about your WP theme and the exact needs of your project, I would be happy to try and give you more helpful advice.

Also this is my first post on this site, so wanted to say hi to the community.