Having recently minored in computer science, and being pretty damn proficient with computers, software, and some online programming, my GM would always ask me to give him some thoughts on all the vendor pitches he was getting.
My first piece of advice would be, it will be insanely difficult for an amateur developer, or even a $60k a year developer, to outcode a team of quality high paid developers. Sure, a quality developer having a mental seizure thus willing to work for half of what they do in the real tech industry can be found if you're lucky, but for how long and what about when he leaves? The 'cool stuff' you wish your site did, but for some reason they cant get it done for you, is most likely difficult. If it was doable, theyd do it and present this cool flexibility to all their customers. Them investing 300 man hours applied to 50 customers makes way more sense than you investing 300 for your one rooftop.
About all the SEO drama, and even some of the PPC drama..
My GM would ask about investing in SEO to create article pages tailored to our region and blah blah blah. He wanted to come up in the organic results for towns 10 minutes away in case someone searched "That town, usa ___ dealership" even though there wasnt a dealership there.
I told him:
"I think those people will find you anyway even if you dont artificially optimize to catch them. Our current manufacturer spec'd site gets us thousands of visits to the site a month. The site/Autotrader/cars/craigslist gets us hundreds of phone calls a month. We buy hundreds of leads. Floor traffic is good. But we have Bill, Jerry, and Mike selling 4-7 cars? My car is stuck in detail for 3 hours on a Saturday so Im babysitting customers instead up taking ups? How about we work on a plan to convert the thousands of opportunities we have a month better instead of funneling a few more people onto the site. I'd rather get 3% more people to put in a lead (1000 visits equals 30 more leads) than getting 100 more visits and sticking with our below average conversion. And then lets increase closing ration. And make phone calls better. Lets focus on getting all the customers into our CRM, WITH EMAILS, when they call. That will pay off better than SEO I believe".
