<UNCLE JOE RANT>
IMO, AutoTrader and Cars.com have FAILED to make their business accountable for the fees they charge. They have FAILED to challenge themselves to improve their platform that will increase their revenues.
AT and Cars.com see traffic on their pages, but, they can't think of a way to send a dealer a visible up. IMO this is completely un-acceptable.
Why aren't they trying new ideas to create ups?
For example, I am the designer and project manager for my indie website. 65000 visits monthly is my audience. EVERY single digital marketing expense I make MUST SELL MORE CARS ---and--- I need to show proof! My car shopper audience size dosent grow much, but, I need more leads, more phone calls and improving traffic metrics EVERY MONTH.
To produce these gains, I need to be constantly looking at data and research (example:
Is Your Dealership Website Chat Used or Abused?) trying to get into the shoppers mind and give them what they want. This 'work' is the lifeblood of digital marketing and is done by all major players like Amazon, Zappos, CarMax, Ebay, PriceGrabber, TripAdvisor, etc...
LET ME ASK YOU ALL...
When can you remember either AT or Cars.com seriously testing their layouts to help produce more leads for it's dealers? If these 2 players were seriously worried about pleasing its dealers, you'd see them running Split testings (aka A/B testing) where brand new "touch points" would pop up on pages, or totally new layouts would appear. THE RESULTS OF THESE EFFORTS would be more ups.
AT & Cars, don't tell me that the LAME AND USELESS Computer Generated VIDEOs is your answer. If you look at your engagement stats, you KNOW these videos SUCK. I am talking about real, rollup your sleeves geeked out optimization efforts like this one
Autotrader and Cars.com need a link to a dealer website
One last word to AT and Cars.com management.
Don't let the hard work of your sales team (who do all the hard work for you) be your score card. Get out of the board room and Challenge yourselves to find optimization consultants (like the savant of
Shopper Sciences - Who we are, John Ross) and dare to open a new door to new opportunities.
Its your mission to providing the best product for shoppers and your dealers. If you did upgrade your platform and become more important to shoppers, then dealers would see more ups. More ups mean more price increases.
Layers of management isolate the top brass from outside players who's innovative ideas challenge the status quo and MAKE EVERYONE UNCOMFORTABLE. The top brass needs more creative thinking (or creative thinkers)!
</UNCLE JOE RANT>
p.s. Blog post?