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TAKE POLL Dealers: What do you want in a website?

Marty Minton

Green Pea
Jun 29, 2017
7
0
First Name
Marty
Award winning website designer and coder is looking to go out on his own and provide dealers with custom high quality websites. I have been involved in the OEM side of website building and designs the last 8 years and designed a few websites for dealerships back in 09. I recently stepped out on my own to bring a change to the auto industry and deliver quality user experiences for car buyers. I have the talent, energy and drive. I'm looking for feedback and beta dealers to help contribute to building better converting websites.

If you have ideas, opinions, or any feedback that is of value. Please send me a message.
 
If you have ideas, opinions, or any feedback that is of value. Please send me a message.

The design and UX are important, but the platform that lets dealers use and manage the site is also critical.
Wordpress is very popular, but don't underestimate how many vendors have taken Wordpress and built significant tools and time on top of it to allow dealers the control they need.

Inventory management, feed syndication, photo quality, vendor integration, lead distributions, ADF support, etc.
Not trying to intimidate you because you're on the right path, but don't make the mistake of thinking that pretty sites will still sell without the functionality to back it all up.

There may be an option for you to implement design and UX on top of another platform if you aren't able to deliver the platform itself, but there's a smaller market for vendors that don't give the dealer control over their presence.
 
@craigh Thanks for the feedback.

You're absolutely right in that website management is critical.

I have a few questions.

  1. Would a dealership be interested in having a point account rep to assist with all updates to the website? I think some website management functionality is okay such as incentives, page and content management, and chat but everything else I would like the rep to handle. Mainly to maintain the brand and professional image of the dealership and to not bloat the user experience with unnecessary distractions. Thoughts?
  2. My assumption is that inventory management is done inside the CRM or third party software and that we can connect through ftp or and api to retrieve the data. What inventory management functionality would be needed? Internet pricing custom field?
As of right now im focusing on where I see slack in the market which is mobile. I feel that the website companies that are currently in the market are just focused on responsive and having the experience be bare minimal.. We're missing the boat as of right now and conversions could be much higher than where we are currently. My focus is strictly mobile in coming up with an incredible user experience that drives conversion, give it away to a few dealers for feedback and then tackle the heavy backend functionality.
 
Websites need to convert period! We rolled out our website platform (not built on WordPress and with an intuitive backend that allows dealers to customize and maintain their site). Our sites convert at a higher percentage than any other site out there because of UX.

Marty -

The different integration are simple, no API just some FTP accounts and parsers. Integrating vendors is easy via GTM. There is no rocket science going on with integrations.

If you can build a high converting site - Go for it!