Custom Website

[Ryan Everson]

This thread is turning into an answer to "why aren't there more vendors making a _______ product?" Or why isn't Microsoft/Amazon/Salesforce/etc. building tools for car dealers?

The barrier to entry is high. If a company doesn't have an experienced crew already that crew must be recruited.

Then there are these mostly automotive specific integrations:

• Inventory feed (ex. HomeNet)
• Inventory translator (ex. Chrome)
• OEM Rebates
• Financing Incentives
• Financing Rates
• Lease Residuals & Money Factors (ex. ALG)
• Taxes
• OEM certifications
• Shift Digital Vigs
• DMS Pulls (there can be many different ones just for a single DMS vendor)
• DMS Pushes for deals
• DMS Pushes for service
• CRM integrations
• Chat tool integrations
• Book Value integrations
• Trade-valuation tools
• Telephony
• SMS + texting with media (yes, they're two different things)
• Email blasts
• Email 1 to 1's
• Full credit pulls
• Soft credit pulls
• Just to name a few I have worked on

Not to mention the other pieces that people don't consider or give enough time to develop:

1. Analytics
2. Security
3. Choosing the right database to license
4. Hosting (although AWS sure makes that easy)

Agreed. I think Devin's best chance for success is to focus on developing a basic inventory website, then once he gets that perfected (and proven) start building the additional features he envisions. You don't want to bite off more than you can chew all at once.

That may mean this Honda dealer isn't his ideal first candidate, a large used car dealership may be a better fit. Then build yourself up to the new car space that has a lot more intricacies.

At least that's what I would do if I were starting a car dealership website company

 

[AWNick]

To add to this discussion as a dealership website provider,

There is room for a lot of improvement in the automotive website marketplace. That's why my company has been working on our latest major iteration of our platform for well over a year. Our platform is based on WordPress and it has still taken a very long time to develop. However, we only build custom-designed websites for our clients, so we had to build in a lot of functionality that is highly flexible. This definitely added a lot to the development time.

There is a lot more that goes into this than you might think. Previous commenters are right. I could write a list of hundreds of considerations that you'd need to examine and balance. Things like site speed, user experience, SRP design, VDP design, sales funnels, analytics, OEM requirements, data feeds, SEO, etc. Understanding the fundamentals of those things is pretty simple, but learning to balance them in the creation of your platform is what takes experience, research, and lots of hard work.

If you're just looking to build a one-off site for this dealership, then it would probably be easier. You won't have to build in as much modularity or features. Depending on the client's level of involvement with updating content or customizability, you could probably cut a lot of corners by not having to create the tools for them to do that.

That being said, it can be done and good luck to you! Most people on this site could probably develop something that outperforms MOST of the current web providers out there. So you've got that going for you.

To answer your original question more specifically, Honda dealerships are able to use whichever provider they want, given that they follow a strict set of branding compliance guidelines. You can get these from your dealership. It is very important to note that Honda is very serious about their branding compliance. Failure to comply with their guidelines can lead to very costly penalties for your dealership and they will check your website regularly for compliance. You absolutely need to submit everything you intend to develop through Honda compliance before a user ever sees it.

 

[Alexander Lau]

You're welcome!

Dealer Inspire was initially started under similar circumstances, an ad agency that was frustrated with all of the crappy website vendors. The advantage DI had was back when they started there were not a bunch of "great" website vendors, whereas you now have a much higher benchmark to overcome as there are many great website vendors, with DI being at or near the top. If you decide to still move forward, I sincerely wish you luck on your large ambitious project and hope it's a huge success.

However, since this project is easily going to take months and months to complete, I would highly recommend devoting some of your team's resources to continuing to improve their existing site so you don't leave the dealership at a standstill. Don't let the dealership give up on their current website by solely focusing on something coming way down the pipe.

Yes, but... they built the thing on Wordpress, which I told my former boss (about 7 years ago) at WorldDealer, now Stream Technologies that someone would, and that enabled them to utilize a well-supported core (they didn't have to build themselves = smart, been discussed heavily). With that, they needn't do as many updates etc,. With that said, are you going to utilize a system like WordPress or build your own?

 

[Alexander Lau]

Agreed. I think Devin's best chance for success is to focus on developing a basic inventory website, then once he gets that perfected (and proven) start building the additional features he envisions. You don't want to bite off more than you can chew all at once.

That may mean this Honda dealer isn't his ideal first candidate, a large used car dealership may be a better fit. Then build yourself up to the new car space that has a lot more intricacies.

At least that's what I would do if I were starting a car dealership website company

So, if you do go down this route and since WP is heavily accepted and a viable platform option, don't try and reinvent the wheel. Look at these themes and templates at https://themeforest.net/search/car dealer, etc., actually some beauties there. Just make sure you secure THE HELL out of them. Unless you plan on creating something you can pitch to other dealers as more of a proprietary approach...?

Let's not act like group such as DI don't push out similar (pretty much exactly the same) themes across brands, etc. (sorry for the double negative).

 

[Ryan Everson]

So, if you do go down this route and since WP is heavily accepted and a viable platform option, don't try and reinvent the wheel. Look at these themes and templates at https://themeforest.net/search/car dealer, etc., actually some beauties there. Just make sure you secure THE HELL out of them. Unless you plan on creating something you can pitch to other dealers as more of a proprietary approach...?

Let's not act like group such as DI don't push out similar (pretty much exactly the same) themes across brands, etc. (sorry for the double negative).

I’m not sure starting a dealer website business that you want to scale off of a $39 publicly available theme from an overseas developer with zero experience in the auto space is the best idea.

The theme creation is one of the least complicated pieces of the overall project so I would take the little bit of time necessary to do it right.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I’m not sure starting a dealer website business that you want to scale off of a $39 publicly available theme from an overseas developer with zero experience in the auto space is the best idea.

The theme creation is one of the least complicated pieces of the overall project so I would take the little bit of time necessary to do it right.

I disagree, plenty of those themes have the ability to pull in XML or CVS or TXT inventory (SRPs and VDPs are going to be the biggest challenge). I think that's exactly where you'd want to start, if you're going down the Wordpress route. I clearly stated (or attempted to), that'd work for a one-off site, but if he's going with the intent of selling to more dealers l'd create his own with a proprietary product. Seems like a lot of if's...

 

[Ryan Everson]

Here's the Wordpress plugins I'd use to jumpstart the development of a wordpress based car dealership website:

• Custom Post Type UI - Create custom post types for inventory, service coupons, staff, etc
• Advanced Custom Fields - Create custom fields such as vehicle photos, year, make, model, etc for the custom post types
• WP All Import - Schedule imports of the inventory feed CSV file into the custom inventory post type
• Elementor or Beaver Builder - Drag and drop page builder with the ability to create customizable page widgets

 

[Alexander Lau]

Agreed. I think Devin's best chance for success is to focus on developing a basic inventory website, then once he gets that perfected (and proven) start building the additional features he envisions. You don't want to bite off more than you can chew all at once.

That may mean this Honda dealer isn't his ideal first candidate, a large used car dealership may be a better fit. Then build yourself up to the new car space that has a lot more intricacies.

At least that's what I would do if I were starting a car dealership website company

Then we are ALL actually agreeing. If he wants to build out a platform, by no means will he want to download a WP theme. My point, if it's a one-off, why recreate the wheel? There are loads of templates out there.

Here's the Wordpress plugins I'd use to jumpstart the development of a wordpress based car dealership website:

• Custom Post Type UI - Create custom post types for inventory, service coupons, staff, etc
• Advanced Custom Fields - Create custom fields such as vehicle photos, year, make, model, etc for the custom post types
• WP All Import - Schedule imports of the inventory feed CSV file into the custom inventory post type
• Elementor or Beaver Builder - Drag and drop page builder with the ability to create customizable page widgets

Right, as such either those WP automotive themes are already incorporating something similar or they have their own proprietary plugins (seems like DI does) built for it. Chances are the decent automotive WP theme sellers are licensing similar or the same plugins (now whether or not they are freeware, shareware, costly, etc.... I dunno').

 

[joe.pistell]

.... I'd wake up if someone in this thread were saying something like...

"car shoppers refuse to use a shopping cart, therefore our websites suck. It is my mission to design a UX that deeply assists the car shopper in a manner than makes them smarter than when they came. I'll judge the websites performance on its ability to create LESS leads. I'll judge the site on a sale teams closing rate and the sales time required to make a sale"
​

That's how you build disruption that can move mountains.

 

[joe.pistell]

Disruption is a lonely profession.