Displaying new car inventory on your dealer website?

[Gerald]

We absolutely display our inventory. Perhaps the Toyota buyer is not as savvy as the MB buyer, but my website shows thousands of vehicles as available or in stock. Most customers web up on a vehicle whether it is in stock or not. Perhaps ebcause the average MB buyer wants a "new" new car, and not something with dealer trade miles on it is where the difference is.

But you can think of it this way: For every customer you lose because you don't have THE car, you'll gain another for the one you DO have.

And as we all know, better gross, Customer Satisfaction and Vehicle Delivery Quality on in stock units, right?

 

[bhoecht]

Want a 100% web-based DMS that will not disappoint in terms of functionality or cost, go to www.neosynergy.net

Contact Allan Green [email protected] to inquire

Allan built the NeoSynergy DMS as well as the Auto-Mate (now Dimension Data) DMS that has > 90% market share in South Africa.

Cross-franchise consolidation, yes. True web-based architecture, yes. Rich GUI, yes. Lower cost than R&R and ADP and UCS, most definitely. Document scanning and image archiving, native. Vastly improved internal controls vs. legacy systems, most definitely.

An aggressive startup with few equals, yes.

I was one of the founders many, many moons ago. I do still have a minor stock holding (full disclosure) but no ongoing relationship.

Just a thought if you'd like to explore an option you may not have been aware that you had.

Oh... and it is built on world-class technology from Progress Software out of Boston (look them up on the NASDAQ).

 

[bhoecht]

To represent "We can get anything or only show what you have?"

Effective sales practice is to effectively manage consumer expectations. "Come on in, we have it" is a lie if you don't. "We can get anything" is a lie if you can not.

But the world is not so black and white. How about these:

1) Configure what you want.
2) Tell us where you have flexibility
3) We can get just about anything, so we can order what you want from the factory, dealer trade what you want in and here are the closest ones from our inventory to what you specified
4) Oh and here is one with more equipment, one with less equipment and the closest used vehicle we have to it for you to compare your options

Isn't that what you would do in the showroom?

Why would you do less for an Internet consumer? I'll give you a hint: because your dealership's use of the Internet is nothing more than an advertising medium.

Until you adopt a true eCommerce capability where consumers can actually do meaningful shopping on your sites, just stick to whatever your effective Internet advertising practices are.

I make no secret that my company has just such an eCommerce system for a dealer to provide to their consumers. It is also a hybrid approach - confirmed email to get in... so dealer gets more + better leads even if don't buy within system... but that is not the point of this post.

If you are a dealership and the point of your Internet strategy is to get consumers to call or email so they'll come in and buy, then set a true, effective expectation and support it with the "calls to action" on your website.

He (or she) who has the best experience wins with the Internet consumer (which is all of them these days).

 

[Ron McCoy]

As 1 in 7 people in the US today are Hispanic, do any of the online systems allow for Spanish language content to be displayed in parallel? Is this an issue, or a non-issue?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Ron, not sure how this is relevant to this posting (other then building a link to your website) BUT, yes there are several providers that do offer Spanish translation on their dealer websites. It really depends on a dealers demographics to whether or not they need Spanish translation on their website. Could be a decent topic of conversation in the future though.

-Jeff

 

[John O'Connell]

I really enjoyed reviewing the question and comments in regard to inventory live or virtual. 15 months later I think it would be interesting as to how attitudes are changing and in which direction......