Pulling the vendor trigger for my new dealership, advice?

[MikeFitzpatrick]

If you are planning on a WordPress blog to begin with anyway, why not build it to look like you want your ultimate site to be (header, background, etc). Add your vehicles as posts with video and pictures (gallery or slider) that sell you just as much as the vehicle. Based on your business plan and timeline you will be 6 to 12 months into it before you would even need any more than this.

It sounds like one of your biggest selling points is the fact that your aren't a dealer. No offense to dealers of course, but there is a market for that approach and a content rich site that sells you could separate you from the dealers.

I get that WordPress can be a little overwhelming and even time consuming for a beginner, but a well chosen theme and a couple videos and you could get it done in a night. Most of the difficulty with WordPress is learning which themes and plugins to use to accomplish your goals. If you need any help at all with a WordPress site/blog, I would be more than happy to help where I can (no charge).

P.S. I am of course biased toward WordPress .

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Perhaps I missed somebody mentioning this, but the man is going to need a good CRM tool at some point.

 

[craigh]

Perhaps I missed somebody mentioning this, but the man is going to need a good CRM tool at some point.

If I had ever seen a good CRM tool, I would have recommended it

 

[craigh]

Eric and Craig: On the whole I can't disagree with any of your thoughts and enjoy hearing more about vendor packages and selling. I understand they will sell you as much as you "need" yet have had an excellent experience w/ the two I have been in touch with so far in not overselling.

... I do not intend to stay in the 2-4 car range for long, just for the completion of my alpha pilot for 1-2 more months as I lease/buy a space for this and my other business. All of my pictures, detailing, listing, etc are done by me for now and I agree can continue w/ low inventory. Depending on my fund raising abilities (as always), I anticipate to rapidly scale in increments of 9 cars at a time as I fund the rest of the business; I anticipate inventory of around 18+ by years end and staying staff lean ...

Personal bias aside as much as possible, I recommend you go with a "custom work" company that can cater to this. I don't think you want to see a website that's setup for 100 car inventory only display your first 4 cars. Even at 18 cars, many of the platforms I have seen would make that inventory appear small. I don't know the market down there terribly well, but I know there are companies that do all custom designs on their platform.

I also have to agree with the comments about not being a dealer though - although I don't think Wordpress is a long-term solution for this, I do think you should play on your strengths whenever possible. If you only have 4 cars, those 4 cars should be the focus of the entire website in a positive light, but you'll also have time to write 4 paragraphs about the reconditioning process or the tread on the tires - this can make a world of difference.
See description: Active Inventory | RK Motors Charlotte | Collector and Classic Cars

 

[MikeFitzpatrick]

@Jerry Thibeau

Perhaps I missed somebody mentioning this, but the man is going to need a good CRM tool at some point.

How about Highrise or infusionsoft? For up to 50 vehicles or better Highrise would do everything needed and then some. Plus it is month to month, inexpensive and super easy to use.

@craigh

although I don't think Wordpress is a long-term solution for this

WordPress can be as long term of a solution as desired. Speaking from experience of course, there are plugins and tools that will scale as large as any dealer or dealer group would need. We are seeing other products coming to market for WordPress of recent that will open the door to choice as well.

 

[craigh]

WordPress can be as long term of a solution as desired. Speaking from experience of course, there are plugins and tools that will scale as large as any dealer or dealer group would need. We are seeing other products coming to market for WordPress of recent that will open the door to choice as well.

I know Wordpress like the back of my hand. The problem is not scaling, it's constantly twisting it into something it's not.
There's numerous threads on here about the benefits and drawbacks of using Wordpress. I stopped using it because after launching 200 Wordpress sites and writing custom plugins, I got sick of their aged code base. The rest of that discussion gets into development speak, so I'll leave it at that.

 

[MikeFitzpatrick]

I know Wordpress like the back of my hand. The problem is not scaling, it's constantly twisting it into something it's not.
There's numerous threads on here about the benefits and drawbacks of using Wordpress. I stopped using it because after launching 200 Wordpress sites and writing custom plugins, I got sick of their aged code base. The rest of that discussion gets into development speak, so I'll leave it at that.

We have built one or two WordPress sites over the years as well, and I couldn't agree with you more. Where most people fail with WordPress is trying to twist it into something it's not as apposed to utilizing it for what it is, and extending upon that in a logical way.

The only drawbacks that we have encountered over the last 6 plus years of using WordPress is the abundance of poorly coded themes and plugins. This is easily overcome however with experience and/or listening to those with experience. Like most things in life, value and experience is knowing what not to do just as much as what to do.

 

[DakanGK]

Thanks for the great feedback Mike and Craig. Joe thanks for the ebay thread. Jerry, you are right and Subi at Joyce Koons Honda Buick already got me started in the search. I'll look into InfusionSoft and Highrise and looked at an open source CRM called Sugar CRM today.

I agree that my model is different, that is the point, and I really like the idea of playing up the the broker or anti-large dealer, especially as I play up testimonials and great content from my first sales. Seems like the way to start in the very least.

I think that I certainly do have the time/skill to develop a rich Wordpress site and train on something like Lynda.com to understand how to make the site do what I want to do. My startup co-founder who is non-technical like me even is having some pretty good success with other solutions like Wix.com that non-developers can easily add widgets to. Then I don't see any problem with manual inputs to Autotrader, C/L, etc and very high quality photos and unique videos for each car. I don't really need to worry about scaled C/L problems like ghosting and should be able to rather quickly replicate the photos/description manually for the site and all of the distributor sites, even if its a short term pain.

Specifically for Mike and Craig, are there any good templates/package providers that you could recommend to look into for a Wordpress site/blog? We bought a WP template before but did not build the site.

Now that I am understanding the scale (and cost) of the vendor packages and who they're built for, I have to agree that there will be too much overhead for tools like IOL that I won't even fully utilize. At the very least I have the numbers in the spreadsheet for the financial projections for a fully developed vendor site if/when I need it with larger inventory or multiple locations.

For the final piece, the issue of SEO and automotive SEM and proactive chat, I will continue to look into piecemeal options on those, since I view the vital piece of my model to be able to find not only enthusiasts (I learned there are plenty that suck up clicks) but enthusiasts that are in the market. Thoughts on this piece? I will contact the vendors to see if chat for instance can integrate on a wordpress site.

Thanks,
Glen

 

[MikeFitzpatrick]

Specifically for Mike and Craig, are there any good templates/package providers that you could recommend to look into for a Wordpress site/blog? We bought a WP template before but did not build the site.

Glen, I just sent you a couple links and gave you access to some WordPress tutorials, but will answer here too.

Themes that will just work:
Premium WordPress Themes by StudioPress and their Genesis framework themes.
Themes from Automattic (Company behind WordPress) Twenty-Eleven, Twenty-Twelve, Twenty-Thirteen.

Learn what a child theme is: Child Themes « WordPress Codex

If you are going to have a site designed and built have them use one of these themes (Craig may have other recommendations too) and have a child theme built on top.

By the way, I have used Sugar CRM in the past and it is an awesome tool. It is a CRM that can be configured for any type of business all the way to enterprise, and therefore can be configured for "anything". You will spend a month figuring it out instead of marketing and selling cars though. Highrise is drop dead simple and you can be adding content to it in minutes.

There are free Chat solutions for WordPress and we have had success with Live Chat Software, Live Help, Support Ticket and Knowledgebase Management as an inexpensive tool.

 

[craigh]

I'll look into InfusionSoft and Highrise and looked at an open source CRM called Sugar CRM today.

SugarCRM is great, but you need someone to install/configure it for you. Out of the box there is way too much going on and, as Mike said, it will take a long time to understand how it works. That said, if you end up with a sales team one day, it's a phenomenal tool for teams and reporting, etc. If you just want to track contacts, use Highrise or something similar.

Specifically for Mike and Craig, are there any good templates/package providers that you could recommend to look into for a Wordpress site/blog? We bought a WP template before but did not build the site.

There are generic Wordpress templates, like those that Mike suggested, but none of those are going to come with any automotive specific styles, which would require you to have a fair bit of custom work done to add in vehicle details and listing pages. I still think it's worth it, but depending on what that's going to cost you, it might be excessive if you don't intend to stick with Wordpress long term.

I can't speak to the actual quality of these, but I know someone using:
WordPress - Light House - Clean Real Estate WordPress Theme | ThemeForest

ThemeForest has a few "Automotive ready" site templates and Wordpress themes.
Automotive | ThemeForest

I would recommend first making a list of what you want your website to do, then Mike or I can probably recommend the best plugins to achieve that, then find a theme that is flexible enough to allow you to do what you want.

For what it's worth, I prefer custom Wordpress themes and if I'm stuck in a Wordpress project I won't do anything but custom anymore.