Is Wordpress better than the rest?

[Alex Snyder]

Just wanted to stir the pot

Something else I appreciate

We have seen dealers go from 100 leads a month to over 900+ leads a month from their website without changing anything but their site (every piece matters, backend, code structure (google indexing/crawling), UI, UX, site speed, etc.)

Whoa!

Let's hear more about this.

 

[Ben Blanco]

4. Built in PHP (a dying coding language)

Yo, I didn't realize we were stirring the pot, ha! I'm not saying WordPress is the best. Not at all.

However, I kindly take issue with your quoted statement above and point to the Statamic CMS that's built on Laravel/PHP/Vue.js. There is still a lot of love and growth for PHP. Statamic is hands down the best WordPress alternative CMS I've built sites on. In fact, I'm thinking a dealer site would be perfect fit for it. After building a recent site using Statamic I'm in love. Craft CMS is another alternative....

I also have lots of love for Angular and PWA. However, I don't think it's necessarily the language you use. I think it's the attention to detail more than anything:

- Clean, semantic code
- Proper use of JSON/LD Schema tags.
- Including location, article, place tags.
- Actually doing the hard work to implement Critical CSS for faster browser painting.
- Leveraging PostCSS plugins to UnCSS code that's not used.
- Stop using plugins...
- Stop using databases for static content. <--
- Leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Test, Analyze, Test again, Analyze, Test again....yup...test again.
- Utilize NGINX and set proper caching headers.
- Stop using third-party tools with bloated scripts....
- I'm looking at you [insert vendor name], haha

The list goes on and on, but all the above matter. The little things matter. On their own they're fairly insignificant, but when you do the hard work you'll start to see the results in conversions.

Cheers!

 

[Ben Blanco]

Everything I mentioned in my previous post is foundational. The foundation is often overlooked, and dealers are left with a bloated mess of a site that will eventually hold you back.

At the end of the day the web platform is just one component of an overall successful digital marketing strategy. Developers often get stuck in the weeds with code, and forget about the mission at hand. Dealer platforms should enable our non-technical staff to generate great content quickly, and efficiently.

The platform should get out of the way so we can focus on creating great, engaging experiences for our customers.

 

[Alex Snyder]

This Honda dealer prior to our website had been generated around 100-170 leads per month from their site. Here we are 4 months later (our SEO platform has now kicked in and is powered by Artificial Intelligence), user loyalty is high, we are utilizing the same SEM partner but have now introduced pre-roll video (running for 4 months) and Kernel (running for 2 months) and here are May results...can I drop the mic

Here's the math: 33+13+308+105+98+201+25+66+50+8+16 = 923 Lead Submissions

Making a claim like this is could bring out a lot of dissection questions. Like this one: can we see the site you're talking about? And another one: an old friend @joe.pistell has claimed most leads are the result of a poor user experience, but a 900% jump sounds too good to be true. Did they see a 900% increase in sales?

 

[craigh]

Firstly, WordPress is only as good as the team behind it. It is a free CSS platform that has limitation around SEO, customization and plug-ins.

It's a CMS* platform.

My on WordPress is:

1. Security of WordPress sites is an issue
2. There are limitations to the CSS
3. Code is bulky

Yes.

4. Built in PHP (a dying coding language)

No. PHP is not dying. What gives you that impression?
PHP is the most popular back-end language on the internet to date. This website is built in PHP.
PHP 7.3 is coming out this year and PHP development is as active, if not more active, than ever.
There are many dying languages, but PHP is not one of them.

The backend (code) and build of a site is an important piece to SEO and the ability for Google to crawl a site and reference it in it's SERP.

Not really. The source code you present is important, but whether it is generated by PHP, Ruby on Rails or Cobol has no impact on SEO.

This is why we have been building automotive sites using Google's own coding framework called Angular, it is faster, less code and provides the flexibility for us to develop, design and implement anything we want, it is limitless. And, if you believe, Google is bias toward its products then Angular coded sites have a leg up on the competition. Angular also has the ability to build pages using PWA (Progressive Web Applications) and we can now allow a consumer to utilize the site while being completely offline (including submitting a lead). With our 2.0 Website coming out built on Agular as well (releasing in July) there is literally no load time.

What? No. So much no.
First of all, Angular is a front-end framework built on JavaScript. It is not a programming language and it has nothing to do with back-end code.
A huge portion of Angular sites are built on PHP back-ends. You might want to check with your team on which back-end language they're using, because AngularJS is not it.
Also, you can't literally have no load time. Check Chrome developer tools and throttle your connection to rural DSL speeds.

Again, just my opinion. At the end of the day, if you are happy with the UI/UX and performance of the site then :thumbup:.
Here is an example of Bounce Rate on a WordPress site versus our Angular build site:

See above. You can't compare Wordpress to Angular.
Wordpress has nothing to do with bounce rate. Wordpress is a back-end framework that provides a framework to build on and a content management system (CMS). Wordpress is garbage, but we can at least base that opinion on facts

This Honda dealer prior to our website had been generated around 100-170 leads per month from their site. Here we are 4 months later (our SEO platform has now kicked in and is powered by Artificial Intelligence), user loyalty is high, we are utilizing the same SEM partner but have now introduced pre-roll video (running for 4 months) and Kernel (running for 2 months) and here are May results...can I drop the mic

Here's the math: 33+13+308+105+98+201+25+66+50+8+16 = 923 Lead Submissions

when you redid the site, did you also cancel live chat?
Did the old site have trade-in forms on new and used?
Did the old site have lease return forms?

The list goes on and on, but all the above matter. The little things matter. On their own they're fairly insignificant, but when you do the hard work you'll start to see the results in conversions.

Great list. There's many more to add, but the point is absolutely true: tools and frameworks are less important than execution, hosting, front-end code, etc.

 

[joe.pistell]

Hi Jason,
Raw lead counts are eye-popping, but, without context, one could argue that leads went up because ppl could not find what they wanted.

I'd love to see you spin up an engagement algorithm in GA. @jon.berna has a simple one:

Qweb is an advanced user segmentation in GA that anyone can create. Ours is based on time on site > 400 seconds and page views > 7 and sessions > 4.

We also add two additional segments for used and new (Qweb New and Qweb Used). For these we add another condition that they view a new VDP or a used VDP based on the website provider's corresponding VDP logic.

https://www.driven-data.com/universal-benchmarks/ ​

It would be interesting to see the Qweb data before and after the new site launch. In my experiences, a new site launch is followed by a fall off of engagement by returning users (who are lost in the new UI).

p.s. the screen shot of GA lacks data points to assist in the analysis.

 

[craigh]

(our SEO platform has now kicked in and is powered by Artificial Intelligence)

Just singling this out because it's a pet peeve of mine.
It's not artificial intelligence. People need to stop throwing that term around.
If your system has the ability to learn from data and constantly improve, that's machine learning.
If your system has checks and balances, decisions trees and a programmed decision making logic, it's skip logic.
If your system can think for itself, operate as efficiently as a human and make decisions in which the answer is a new concept that doesn't exist yet, it's artificial intelligence. And you are too wealthy to be here talking about it.

 

[Jason@nabthat]

@craigh

Yes you are right WordPress is a CMS platform but it is restricted with regard to the CSS. You are limited to templates and how the WordPress platform is designed. I am not a fan of all of the plugins, etc.

Yes, Angular is a framework and we use RubyonRails as our coding language. PHP is not as popular with developers as it was before. There is specific utilization for php development especially around data oriented systems.

I love the feedback and great insight.

 

[Jason@nabthat]

@craigh

Craig,
We do utilize Artifical Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to look at data and build pages automatically based on specific data points...this is AI as it is defined.

Again, I appreciate the great communication on topics like this.

 

[Alex Snyder]

This Honda dealer prior to our website had been generated around 100-170 leads per month from their site. Here we are 4 months later (our SEO platform has now kicked in and is powered by Artificial Intelligence), user loyalty is high, we are utilizing the same SEM partner but have now introduced pre-roll video (running for 4 months) and Kernel (running for 2 months) and here are May results...can I drop the mic

Here's the math: 33+13+308+105+98+201+25+66+50+8+16 = 923 Lead Submissions

View attachment 3629

Jason, I appreciate you sharing a little more with me directly :thumbup: - thank you!

I do want to point out that this dealer is suffering from something I absolutely HATE: the OEM dictating that a price has to live behind a lead submission form. I started bitching about it here: https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/thr...-dealers-are-you-liking-your-price-wall.5830/

You have absolutely implemented the best system for dealing with it I have seen yet. But that isn't an acknowledgment that I agree with the practice or the user experience. In fact, I think this Honda dealership proves @joe.pistell correct: a bad user experience creates more leads.

The GA screen shot you shared reflects this too as most of the conversion points are on new cars. Less on trade appraisals and other things that seem to perform at the same ratios of many other dealership websites. However, the specials conversion is interesting.

Now, none of this is reflection on Nabthat or the work you all are doing. This is just a coincidence of a terrible OEM mandate creating a user experience that forces lead conversion over a productive site visit.