The Top Vehicle Listings Websites - Who's NEXT?

[yagoparamo]

^^^ @forumcube

Not sure what you intended with the quote, maybe you deleted what you typed BUT very interesting point @flosho brings;

Not all new features are loved by the dealers. Two edged sword.

 

[Scott Zagurski]

Love these forums, is there a new Cars.com or Autotrader.com on the horizon?

Answer sure, but unless they are well capitalized and spend money on branding to get their name out there, they will be as good as the next Google algorithm change.​

Can we afford not to be on these sites?

Answer sure, if you have a value proposition that can aggregate traffic on a group or regional website to compete with people in your area. If you want reach past your immediate geographic area, you need 3rd parties​

What about local realtors or travel sites? How well do they do if they are not on 3rd parties?

Real Estate brokers rarely have the majority of inventory in any market. But do you,
Also, Southwest Airlines would disagree with the whole 3rd party listing thing. Sometimes being the odd man out creates brand loyalty and traffic to you but you have to be a fan worthy company.​

Will we have this same discussion a year from now?

Yes, but I am sure I will get 50 phone calls this week asking me for "just 15 minutes of my time" in order to fix all of my traffic problems now ​

 

[amirxl]

Use LotVantage, it's FAR cheaper than AutoRevo and Skipster.

• eBay Motors
• AutoTrader
• Craigslist
• Oodle
• Vast
• Backpage
• etc.

Focusing on Used Cars.

Believe me, used car dealers are content with their vendors' autoposting tool for CL, and most have some sort of package that sends inventory feeds to the Oodle/Vast/Recycler/etc marketplace. I think Homenet still sends out to Oodle's network for free?

 

[Alexander Lau]

Believe me, used car dealers are content with their vendors' autoposting tool for CL, and most have some sort of package that sends inventory feeds to the Oodle/Vast/Recycler/etc marketplace. I think Homenet still sends out to Oodle's network for free?

Nice! However, I would attack all of them. There is no magic panacea. DMAs all behave differently and all of those 3rd parties should be tested.

 

[yagoparamo]

All FREE sites bring you enough business together to perhaps buy pizza for one night.

 

[amirxl]

All FREE sites bring you enough business together to perhaps buy pizza for one night.

Not just any pizza, it's Digiorno!

 

[Alexander Lau]

All FREE sites bring you enough business together to perhaps buy pizza for one night.

Yep, FREE sites aren't going to work. LOL!

 

[Joe Johnson]

Funny thing.. I was shopping for a car for myself a few weeks ago and starting diving into these sites from a buyers perspective. I am on autotrader/cars/guru/craigs/etc at least 10 times per day anyway, but for some reason they felt different when I was on the other side of the desk. I really liked the "local" feel of Craigslist even though I couldn't find the right car there. There is just something out clicking on the name of a town you actually live in instead of doing a radius search. I found myself using keywords even on sites like Autotrader that have very thorough filters, because as I started going after specific year models and trim levels I was worried that the seller may not even know what they were selling. Sure enough I found several "Touring" model Honda Odysseys listed as EX-L`s and a few "Touring Elite's" listed under the ""Touring" trim. Lots of dealerships are spending big bucks listing cars and listing the wrong equipment. I started brainstorming and thinking about how I would build the perfect classifieds site and came to the same conclusions you guys are stating. It sure would be a fun project, but realistically it would cost a fortune to get the word out and any "ground breaking" ideas that you could implement could easily be copied by the big names. Not only that, but do we really need 17,000,000 different places to search for cars? Even a search engine to search the other search engines doesn't make sense to me. I am surprised that Google hasn't taken a stronger stab at this.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Has anyone seen au.to? <-- sweet URL.

They're loading your dealerships actual VDP inside of their website. Seem to be indexing well in the SERPS. A

 

[ryan.leslie]

I typed up a ton of questions for the community about monetization and lead attribution from this model... then I clicked around on the site. The answer to some questions is different questions I suppose.

I agree Jeff, VERY COOL URL!