Should I maintain my own dealer site or have another company do it

[joe.pistell]

DIY autodealer website is easy, doing it right is a giant project.

You can tell how prepared a person is by the quality of their questions. IMO, Brian's questions look like someone who has no autodealer website experience and has just begun the journey.

Again, Brian may be more than qualified, IMO, the single most important topic in DIY is not technical, it's all about Brian.

 

[Chris Cachor]

I'd have someone build it for you -- unless you're sinking in over $60k/yr for your websites hire outside help.

 

[ddavis]

Brian, I would be looking at what other successful performance shops, not car dealerships, are doing. I have known Kenny Tran at Jotech for about ten years. He does his own and here is a link to his website. At my last store, we sponsored a couple of car clubs and he usually attended. He is a celebrity, among the tuner crowd, but super nice and very humble. Not being local, I bet he would answer any questions, you might have.
They have a stage 5 performance package for GT-Rs that starts at $78,000 but he provides transportation for the car and a photo shoot. I was there a few months ago and he had five of them there but one was his personal car.
Like any good performance shop, they emphasize the quality of their technicians.

 

[ChrisS]

In house is the long term goal, this is due to the level of control, flexibility, and response time. 3rd party is the best first swing and there are a lot of great companies out there. Until you really, and I mean really become an expert marketer, then you should not go in house.

 

[ddavis]

Chris, we are a community of car people but this is a Speed Shop not a dealership. Looking at their website, I would guess that this business is fairly new and possibly with limited funds.

 

[Brian Nguyen]

Thanks everybody for your feedback. Definitely gave me info and advice on what I should do.

 

[CCDealer]

Keep in mind that if you do the website in house, you are at the mercy of the employee who designs and maintains it. I've seen a number of cases where the "website designer" left/got fired, and no one knew how to maintain or even access the website, causing problems there, too.

A more professional website is probably in order, and there are inexpensive ways to do that. In-House is a great ultimate goal -- just make sure you have trained redundancy into place so that if something happens, there's someone else there who knows how it all works.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Keep in mind that if you do the website in house, you are at the mercy of the employee who designs and maintains it.

Struggling with this now. You all remember David Moon? Well he designed mine and now he's disappeared. I can't get him to respond to an e-mail or phone call. Very disappointing!

 

[CCDealer]

That's frustrating, Jerry -- do you even have access to the user name and password to log in, or are you completely out-of-pocket on the deal now that he's vaporized?

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

That's frustrating, Jerry -- do you even have access to the user name and password to log in, or are you completely out-of-pocket on the deal now that he's vaporized?

I can get in and manage most of the website, just a few advanced things he did that I can't update. Very frustrating that he's gone cold. I've even recommended David for other projects, but not anymore. Nor will I write anymore reference letters for him.