Leaving Dealer.com in 2018....where did you go next?

[CameronDV]

Not sure I see the evidence of that, but doing that properly could have some benefits.
It also means you have to manually patch exploits though, so it has a heavy trade-off on manual updates.

Are you referencing site examples from our website?

Our older platform, which we shared with Alex and Jeff - and the current site examples you see on our site do not reflect our security changes and functionality- they are on our old platform. New stuff is being buttoned up, old migrating to new, and rolled out this month - Craig, I'll be sure to share them with you to get some feedback.

 

[Alexander Lau]

100% agree with @craigh. Our latest build is on our own "Lite" version of WP and those types of security exposures were addressed from Day 1. WordPress as a downloadable platform is very code heavy, slow, and insecure - as has been mentioned a few times here. We made modifications to offer desired dealer customization, to simplify the back end use, along with a few other fun and unique items

You act like dealerships are downloading WordPress, installing / hosting it themselves and are unaware of security vulnerabilities. They are not, obviously they're using 3rd party groups. All of the major WordPress-based automotive website hosting groups have a very slim install, have been heavily customized (for dealership requirements) and are built for speed and security.

 

[Joud Mansour]

You act like dealerships are downloading WordPress, installing / hosting it themselves and are unaware of security vulnerabilities. They are not, obviously they're using 3rd party groups. All of the major WordPress-based automotive website hosting groups have a very slim install, have been heavily customized (for dealership requirements) and are built for speed and security.

We're not acting like dealerships are doing anything. A point about speed and security was brought up by @Alex Snyder - We simply answered his concern. What other companies are doing is not any of our concern. While we study competitors to come up with ways to be better and offer better solutions, we also focus on our long term goals of building our product to be the most competitive in the industry. We are not new around the block, we have been in Automotive marketing for 10 years and have been very successful at what we do. In that time frame, we have built products and technologies that our client's vendors would either strip our code or refuse to work with -- that worked out amazing for the clients whose vendors did.

We finally had enough at one point and decided to enter the automotive tech space to build extremely competitive technologies and software to help dealers move more cars by leveraging their website platform. That is our goal. Not to follow others, but to create our own ways of making dealers extremely successful and thankfully we were able to do that in a short period of time.

I highly suggest you schedule a demo with us Alex, at least this way you can understand what Dealer Venom has to offer. At that point, when you offer criticism, it can at least be used to help to make us even better.

PS, any one that has ever Demo'd Dealer Venom including @Alex Snyder and @Jeff Kershner will vouch that we did not take any short cuts when creating Dealer Venom. We focused on the ability to scale to provide consistent updates, enhancements, and features for our clients.

When we demo clients, their consistent positive responses that are followed by sprinkles of surprise at each stage of the demo prove to us that we are truly solving the migraines they have been tackling for years.

 

[Alexander Lau]

We're not acting like dealerships are doing anything. A point about speed and security was brought up by @Alex Snyder - We simply answered his concern. What other companies are doing is not any of our concern. While we study competitors to come up with ways to be better and offer better solutions, we also focus on our long term goals of building our product to be the most competitive in the industry. We are not new around the block, we have been in Automotive marketing for 10 years and have been very successful at what we do. In that time frame, we have built products and technologies that our client's vendors would either strip our code or refuse to work with -- that worked out amazing for the clients whose vendors did.

We finally had enough at one point and decided to enter the automotive tech space to build extremely competitive technologies and software to help dealers move more cars by leveraging their website platform. That is our goal. Not to follow others, but to create our own ways of making dealers extremely successful and thankfully we were able to do that in a short period of time.

I highly suggest you schedule a demo with us Alex, at least this way you can understand what Dealer Venom has to offer. At that point, when you offer criticism, it can at least be used to help to make us even better.

PS, any one that has ever Demo'd Dealer Venom including @Alex Snyder and @Jeff Kershner will vouch that we did not take any short cuts when creating Dealer Venom. We focused on the ability to scale to provide consistent updates, enhancements, and features for our clients.

When we demo clients, their consistent positive responses that are followed by sprinkles of surprise at each stage of the demo prove to us that we are truly solving the migraines they have been tackling for years.

Awesome, but you're not doing anything differently than the guys that have outpaced and outsell you (scalable protocols are their bread and butter or they'd be dead). Yep, it's tough being a start-up, but you need an absolute differentiation to make your product BETTER (maybe you have a bell and whistle, I don't know). If you can penetrate the market and steal some share (due to innovation or potentially disruption), then good on you.

I will say, what you have going for you, the unbeknownst sector of the ~20,000 out there don't know any better or the differences in a platform. You can sell them on WP. Dealer Inspire has laid the path for you. You only need a small % to make decent money.

I told a former employer (circa 6 years ago) that groups would build on an open source framework and leave the proprietary frameworks in the dust. It's happening. Therefore, I'm not knocking your product, but your competition have slim, secure, fast and stable options as well. Maybe your pricing makes it worth the while...? Or, you wait long enough for the large groups (we all know them) to buy the decent WP-based groups and they screw them up (which always happens), then it's your chance.

 

[CameronDV]

Awesome, but you're not doing anything differently than the guys that have outpaced and outsell you (scalable protocols are their bread and butter or they'd be dead).

We have our differentiation. And we have others being worked on that will be revealed in the future. (If they prove as valuable tools to solve the problems dealers are expressing.) Our bells and whistles sound pretty good too, though. Hey, that's why the OEMs have car trims with all the various features for - they sell!

From your perspective, I can see where you come up with your assumptions - so thanks for not knocking our product without all the necessary info, we appreciate that.

If building a successful company were as simple as just having a unique product, then R.J. Reynolds would still be around selling their smokeless cigarette from 1989 - today, haha. There are many other variables to navigate the path to success and presenting value- take personal service for example, and actually caring about dealer success. It has value. Which all goes hand in hand with a company's product.

The goal is to help those ~20,000 some become aware of what most of the DealerRefresh community is already aware of - and I know from the history of your posts, that you share that same goal. Money will come from the work we put in and the success we bring our clients, but it is not something Dealer Venom will chase blindly - we work to deliver a valuable solution and exceptional service.

 

[John V.]

can we get back on topic here boys?

 

[Alex Snyder]

 

[Alexander Lau]

I've no idea how their platform had become the point of this thread...?!

 

[Joud Mansour]

Not sure I see the evidence of that, but doing that properly could have some benefits.
It also means you have to manually patch exploits though, so it has a heavy trade-off on manual updates.

No manual updates needed. We use our own light version of WP. So that means, we do not have to after updates and update their core. We can modify and update our own as needed. The security patches are implemented at the same interval everyone else's is as we get an update and a change log of what has been done.

In addition, we have re-mapped the wordpress framework so that files no longer follow the standard wordpress structure. That alone limits robots from having access to core files. There are many things that can be done to protect wordpress sites. The core issue with wordpress is it's so open source. That's why we decided to use our own

 

[Sheena]

If there is a recent post similar to this one I apologize - feel free to reply with the link to that thread and I'll shut up and go away

Hello All,

This post could get real long so I am going to try and keep it as brief as possible. Our group has been with Dealer.com for 8+ years and it may be time for a change. Top 3 points I am with them and Top 3 why I want to leave.

Here is why I am currently with them .....still:

• Website Editor: been using it for 8 years, its very intuitive and lets me build content the way I want to. All my sites' homepages and extra content (except for the group site which is essentially just a fancy landing page) were built by me in their composer - did not have to rely heavily on their production team. Click, drag, drop, done.
• Mobile Specific Content: went to another vendor that was 100% responsive and hated it. Could not put mobile specific content above my VLPs, Homepage, etc. Also could not build a page the way I wanted it wand was stuck using 75/25 splits, could not rearrange content on mobile specifically the way I wanted. "I want the form here dammit!!"...nope...It was a mess and a I came back to DDC.
• Back-end tool: their Control Center is very in depth and easy to use. 90% of any issue I have or question I need answered I can figure out myself using one of the tools in Control Center. Only call support when I need an inventory specific change for the most part.

Why I want to leave.....:

• Advertising: took about 3 years but I finally have access to all my Adwords accounts including those on Shift Digital OEM programs. Their SEM is so hamstrung by being tied to their TCD tool that you are limited to running Max CPC campaigns only. No enhanced CPC, no maximize ROAS or conversions, nothing. I find that I have to monitor how my account is running on a daily basis or else I will under-spend, the used jeep wrangler I have in stock eats $300 over the weekend, I'm spending 3X the CPC that I should be on a model I only have 1 of, oh....and my ad copy keeps reverting back to the same default crap everyone else has. I pay a management fee because......??
• Being told NO: I hate it. Plain and simple. When I asked to have a particular model widget link to inventory instead of a showroom page I was told no - expected functionality. Took 3 months to get done after canceling one site for 90 days. When I wanted my homepage and mobile site to look a particular way. Nope.......except i was able to build it in composer myself and then have DEV fix a few things. It's a website, anything is possible if you really want to try.
• SEO: Their SEO is basic. Nothing fancy. Nothing advanced. Their SEO team could not build a conversion friendly landing page to save their life. No thought goes into the strategy at all, no market research, no competitive analysis. Just rinse and repeat. I am on Premium SEO for two of my stores and am with a local vendor who's fees are 1/4 that of DDC. Same organic growth YOY.

So, for those who have been with Dealer.com for a long time and left for someone else in the last 12 months: Who did you go with and why?

Hi John,

I have a question, how were you able to gain access to your Adwords account? We have been told through our representative that we are not allowed to have access to our Google Adwords account. Do you have any tips or tricks to get around this problem?

Thanks in advance!