How are parts departments dealing with their obsolete parts?

[DjSec]

Parts are a commodity, leading to a race to the bottom with the lowest price. Customers will just buy from the cheapest seller they find on Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, etc.

Differentiate through personalization, data, and niche targeting. Instead of selling “a part,” your platform can show buyers exactly which vehicles it fits. Each obsolete part listing becomes a unique SEO page with AI-generated fitment details, repair guides, and related parts links that then links back to the make and model.

Boosting internal link juice and rankins for each car.

When 5,000+ part pages each target long-tail search queries like “2007 Accord OEM mirror replacement,” you’re ranking for low-competition, high-intent keywords. These traffic sources aren’t purely price-driven.

As a result, margins are razor-thin, and you have to spend money on shopping ads to generate sales, further cutting into those margins. And don't even get me started on the amount of long-term SEO investment and commitment that would be required to forgo paid ads.

Each part auto-generates an SEO-optimized page (title, description, image alt text, schema markup). Thousands of pages funnel “link juice” back to the main inventory listings for vehicles (huge SEO advantage).

AI blog & topic clustering using GPT models to generate repair tips, FAQs, and “how to identify your part number” posts. Internal linking strategy improves domain authority, reducing ad dependency.

The SEO advantage alone makes it worth doing and when you look at the reason people buy price never sits as the number one reason people buy in all the data I have seen.

And then you have the hassle of dealing with fraudulent orders, credit card chargebacks, and more.

Use Stripe and suspicious orders (odd quantities, mismatched address/IP) are automatically flagged or held.

To be fair, there are some success stories such as Flow Chevrolet's GMPartsDirect.com, Suncoast Porsche's SuncoastParts.com, and a handful of others.

Chevrolet and Suncoast Porsche succeeded because of focus + process automation ... things you can replicate:
They built fitment trust and SEO authority and with Django you do it faster and cheaper.

AI adds automation so you don’t need a big staff.

You also need to pay someone to pack and ship the parts, manage customers with unrealistic delivery expectations (thanks Amazon Prime), and handle returns when customers order the wrong part or claim it’s defective.

• Shipping automation: Auto-calculate dimensional weight, print labels, update tracking, and batch-process shipments from dashboard.
• Customer expectation management: Automated emails set clear delivery timeframes and offer proactive updates (“Your part shipped today!”).
• Customer service chatbot: AI answers questions about compatibility, fitment, and delivery times.

While parts may seem like commodities, customers don’t just buy parts, they buy certainty that the part fits, ships fast, and is backed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

AI lets you automate the trust-building at scale ... rich content, compatibility intelligence, transparency, and personalization, turning commodity parts into expert solutions

Studies show price is never the #1 reason people make a purchase.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Differentiate through personalization, data, and niche targeting. Instead of selling “a part,” your platform can show buyers exactly which vehicles it fits. Each obsolete part listing becomes a unique SEO page with AI-generated fitment details, repair guides, and related parts links that then links back to the make and model.

Boosting internal link juice and rankins for each car.

When 5,000+ part pages each target long-tail search queries like “2007 Accord OEM mirror replacement,” you’re ranking for low-competition, high-intent keywords. These traffic sources aren’t purely price-driven.


Each part auto-generates an SEO-optimized page (title, description, image alt text, schema markup). Thousands of pages funnel “link juice” back to the main inventory listings for vehicles (huge SEO advantage).

AI blog & topic clustering using GPT models to generate repair tips, FAQs, and “how to identify your part number” posts. Internal linking strategy improves domain authority, reducing ad dependency.

The SEO advantage alone makes it worth doing and when you look at the reason people buy price never sits as the number one reason people buy in all the data I have seen.


Use Stripe and suspicious orders (odd quantities, mismatched address/IP) are automatically flagged or held.

Chevrolet and Suncoast Porsche succeeded because of focus + process automation ... things you can replicate:
They built fitment trust and SEO authority and with Django you do it faster and cheaper.

AI adds automation so you don’t need a big staff.

• Shipping automation: Auto-calculate dimensional weight, print labels, update tracking, and batch-process shipments from dashboard.
• Customer expectation management: Automated emails set clear delivery timeframes and offer proactive updates (“Your part shipped today!”).
• Customer service chatbot: AI answers questions about compatibility, fitment, and delivery times.

While parts may seem like commodities, customers don’t just buy parts, they buy certainty that the part fits, ships fast, and is backed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

AI lets you automate the trust-building at scale ... rich content, compatibility intelligence, transparency, and personalization, turning commodity parts into expert solutions

Studies show price is never the #1 reason people make a purchase.

Search any GM part number and nine times out of ten, GMPartsDirect.com will have the lowest price, usually by a wide margin. That's their entire model - low margin, high volume and they have the scale and infrastructure to make it pencil.

Search the same part on Amazon and you’ll see it defaults to the lowest priced seller, except when there's an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) listing.

In the retail parts business, price and availability are what matter most. In the wholesale parts business, it's relationship and availability.

 

[DjSec]

Search any GM part number and nine times out of ten, GMPartsDirect.com will have the lowest price, usually by a wide margin. That's their entire model - low margin, high volume and they have the scale and infrastructure to make it pencil.

Search the same part on Amazon and you’ll see it defaults to the lowest priced seller, except when there's an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) listing.

In the retail parts business, price and availability are what matter most. In the wholesale parts business, it's relationship and availability.

Search rankings and market dominance are constantly shifting. A site that ranks at the top today can easily fall tomorrow. Competing online isn’t about beating giants at their own game; it’s about understanding how the game works and positioning yourself differently.

While price matters, research from consumer psychology and neuroscience consistently shows that trust, convenience, and clarity often outweigh cost in purchasing decisions.

For example, I buy my parts from a friend who owns a local parts store, not because he’s the cheapest, but because I trust him. My mechanic is another friend I trust, and I’d rather pay a little more knowing they’ll stand behind what they sell.

That’s the same dynamic that drives loyalty to brands like Apple, Starbucks, or Nike. People pay more because they trust the experience, the quality, and the consistency. Even something as simple as aspirin, most people choose a familiar name brand over a generic one.

The real opportunity for dealers isn’t in racing to the bottom on price; it’s in standing apart with clarity, service, and trust.

I once read about a forklift dealer who built an eCommerce site for parts. His site was so simple and clear that not only did other dealers start buying from him, but even the manufacturer began sending customers his way, because it was easier than explaining parts over the phone.

There are plenty of real-world success stories that prove the model:

• Robert St. Romain Jr built a $4M annual GM online parts business in two years.
• Murfreesboro Nissan does around $60K in monthly parts sales.
• Dover Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram generates over $20K monthly online.
• A tractor parts company even made Forbes’ list of top-performing small businesses.

And as for Amazon, it might sort by price, but not everyone shops that way. Many buyers, myself included, avoid Amazon because the experience feels cheap or impersonal. When my son wanted a drone, I took him to a local store that specializes in drones because expertise and support matter more than saving a few bucks.

So yes, price and availability matter. But in the long run, trust, clarity, and brand positioning win far more loyal customers than a race to the bottom ever will.

And the goal isn’t to sell every part, adding those listings to your main site adds thousands of long-tail URLs that improve your overall SEO.

That internal link equity flows back to your core business pages (sales, service, finance, inventory, and vehicle detail page) improving those rankings, so you’re not just moving parts, you’re building a stronger digital footprint for the dealership as a whole.