Cobalt - redirect?

[rlamb]

Question for those of you with a GM Cobalt site:

We have two websites - one Cobalt and and one site through another website company (which performs MUCH better than the Cobalt site). I am not satisfied at all with the Cobalt site or the "customizations" that are available on it. We do get a fair amount of traffic to the Cobalt site due to our Flex spending on SEO, etc. ...but the site sucks at actually capturing leads; whereas our other website is performing quite well.

So, my thinking it to just make the Cobalt URL redirect to our site that performs much better. Does anyone know if this is possible/allowed?



Thank you.

 

[ewalraven]

Aren't you required to have a cobalt site?

Either way, yeah, you should be able to use that domain and redirect to your current host. Wouldn't see why not .. it is your domain.

 

[yagoparamo]

You may not be able to redirected the whole domain but perhaps you can ask Cobalt to redirect the inventory pages so the customer goes from Cobalt to the inventory on your secondary page where the conversion happens.

 

[rlamb]

You may not be able to redirected the whole domain but perhaps you can ask Cobalt to redirect the inventory pages so the customer goes from Cobalt to the inventory on your secondary page where the conversion happens.

Good idea. Thanks.

 

[jscole86]

You may not be able to redirected the whole domain but perhaps you can ask Cobalt to redirect the inventory pages so the customer goes from Cobalt to the inventory on your secondary page where the conversion happens.

GM does occasional Cobalt website audits... External redirects, especially in the navigation, is something I was told that they check during those audits.

 

[rlamb]

GM does occasional Cobalt website audits... External redirects, especially in the navigation, is something I was told that they check during those audits.

If we pay them for the site, but choose to redirect it...they're still going to get the same amount of $ from us, we would just be sending customers to a website with a higher conversion rate than their site gives us...they're still cashing our checks either way, so not sure how/why the can object.

 

[yagoparamo]

If we pay them for the site, but choose to redirect it...they're still going to get the same amount of $ from us, we would just be sending customers to a website with a higher conversion rate than their site gives us...they're still cashing our checks either way, so not sure how/why the can object.

I think that what he meant is that the objection will come from GM not Cobalt.

 

[cmjerry4531]

Do you mean redirect as in 301/302, or just send them over to the other website with a link? If you just want them to switch sites you could request that the inventory buttons on the Cobalt site link directly over to your other website. Just make sure to No-follow those links. I've seen dealers give themselves penalties by sending site wide links like that.

They'll most likely say no, but it doesn't hurt to ask

 

[Blake Arbogast]

No chance. You would give GM a heart attack.

Have you tried Cobalt's new Flex Site? It's not bad, my conversion has doubled. If we can get them to change the conversion forms the sites would perform really well.

 

[Chris Cachor]

If we can get them to change the conversion forms the sites would perform really well.

I second that. I've seen Cobalt make strides in many areas but the two single most important pages of their dealer's website are long overdue for a makeover. The search/inventory pages need desperate attention as well as the associated lead forms. It's been over 5 years since they've updated them and would solve some of these conversion problems.