Thinking of dropping Dealer.com

[davidmoon]

I disagree entirely and believe this is the missing point of this entire thread. A WordPress website may give you "100% control' but you are going to miss out on what's most important - INTEGRATION.

You can't have a highly intelligent and fully functional dealer website if the largest pieces of the puzzles aren't talking to each other (i.e. inventory & content).

You may be able to change the background from white to black without paying a $100 fee, but you can't have OEM incentives driving your homepage display, or pre-sorting your inventory based on user-behavior, or...I could go on.

Automotive Website Vendors today are more intelligent than ever and are going to continue to get better. Nothing you can do on your own including hiring a Full Service Online Marketing firm could build you something as integrated. Believe me, we work with them all the time. And...I used to be one.

But if they don't offer the flexibility of making changes on the fly; that's not advancing on the user experience. Data and display may be state-of-the-art, but it's being packaged in tired, old templates with an inability to test, upgrade or make changes on the fly. And that's not necessarily a dig on Dealer.com.

I use Wordpress as only an example. Offer the tired, big beveled button, dark background templates, but also give a dealer an option to work from scratch with a flexible platform and modern CMS. Or an ad agency to come in and optimize the experience around the intelligent framework of the apps. Or someone like Uncle Joe to come in and do their magic.

It's really an unfair advantage not to give more control.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Right now I manually change our website monthly based on incentives. And, I think the pre-sorted inventory line seems like BS - no offense.

I'm not speaking for my employer with this statement....

I think you should try it. The experience of managing a project like this will make you a much more advanced business engineer. Before you get started you should reread everything Joe Pistell had to say and give yourself a good month to think about it. This is an insane amount of work that is going to take your focus off of selling cars and making your employer money. Do your best to make a value statement for this kind of effort. Are the costs acceptable for the ROI this project will return? I strongly advise you have a document prepared to break that down just in case your boss asks you that question a few months into the project.

I also suggest starting a new DealerRefresh thread to give progress reports on the project. You'll probably find a lot of help and advice to get you through it (as you've had here). If the thread is simply about your project, it will stay on topic of solely talking about your project.

 

[Bruce Novicky]

I love the concept... heck I used to build websites as a side business and now use Cobalt for our site at the dealership so I can certainly understand the frustration...

I just cannot wrap my head around it being worth it... I mean it is going to take hundreds of hours.... factor that + the focus being taken away from sales... the cost would be huge.

Say it took 500 hours to get it going full steam ahead...

now take $75k/year employee at 50ish hours a week is almost making 30 dollars an hour...

That equates to $15,000 in just man hours (on the clock not when you get an awesome idea at home) just to get it running... heck even half (250 hours) would be $7,500!


Now I could be WAY off with these numbers... but that is just how I am seeing it.


I would again suggest making the most out of what you have first, because if you cannot have a top 5% dealer.com site there is no way you will be able to have a top notch homebrew site.

 

[MullerToyota]

ECURB,

I really don't see where you are getting those numbers from. The hardest thing about any of this is the inventory feed. After that, I could pretty much put together everything I use from my site now in a matter of days on a wordpress site.

And, if I spent $7,500 on a site and then hosted it myself, there is a huge amount of savings. Let's figure I spend $7,500 and $300 per month for hosting. That would be roughly $15,000 in two years. Under Dealer.com's contract, I would be spending $60,000 in the same amount of time. I would be saving over $45,000 for my company, which I could allocate to other marketing channels.

Look at it this way, besides the inventory pages, what does a typical dealer site have:

Home Page
Service
Parts
Specials
Finance
About Pages
Maybe a Blog

All of those are just static pages that take less than an hour to build.

The hardest part of the whole project is the design and getting the inventory the exact way I want it.

The inventory is the hardest part of the whole project. After that, everything else is pretty much a cake walk.

And remember, I'm not planning on doing this myself. If I do go the route of doing everything from scratch - I would be contracting a web designer to do everything for me.

 

[terrencegordon]

I really fail to see how the two things you mention (OEM incentive driven homepage and pre-sorting inventory based on user behavior) are a game changer. Right now I manually change our website monthly based on incentives. And, I think the pre-sorted inventory line seems like BS - no offense.

Clay, the fact of the matter is that the features I mention above are game changers. Not only are they proven to increase top-level statistics on our own websites, but the largest e-Commerce websites, Search Engines, and enterprise-level, consumer-focused websites are implementing dynamic, behavior-driven content delivery systems. It is these advanced features that are proven to improve top-line and bottom-line numbers.

Quick anecdote - Recently I sat in an meeting with 14 GMs, Internet Managers and Owners of a very large dealership organization. All 14 had their own opinion of the look, feel, and usability of their website...all the way down to what color the navigation links should turn when you hover over them.

I can also tell you that not one of them had any data to support their 14 different opinions...other than their own opinion.

 

[Bruce Novicky]

ECURB,

I really don't see where you are getting those numbers from. The hardest thing about any of this is the inventory feed. After that, I could pretty much put together everything I use from my site now in a matter of days on a wordpress site.

And, if I spent $7,500 on a site and then hosted it myself, there is a huge amount of savings. Let's figure I spend $7,500 and $300 per month for hosting. That would be roughly $15,000 in two years. Under Dealer.com's contract, I would be spending $60,000 in the same amount of time. I would be saving over $45,000 for my company, which I could allocate to other marketing channels.

Look at it this way, besides the inventory pages, what does a typical dealer site have:

Home Page
Service
Parts
Specials
Finance
About Pages
Maybe a Blog

All of those are just static pages that take less than an hour to build.

The hardest part of the whole project is the design and getting the inventory the exact way I want it.

The inventory is the hardest part of the whole project. After that, everything else is pretty much a cake walk.

And remember, I'm not planning on doing this myself. If I do go the route of doing everything from scratch - I would be contracting a web designer to do everything for me.

Like I said... I could be way off...

I do stand by maximizing your current setup though... if you are not able to make the most out of what you have... there is a good chance you will not make the most out of any site you have.

There are dealers making great ROI with dealer.com sites... (I am not even one of them) so you also have to do some looking in the mirror before you jump ship... sometimes it is the internal process and not the external product (but it is easier to blame the product)

Also keep in mind... I am really just playing devils advocate here... I would not be any money on my statements...

 

[Bruce Novicky]

I know I am only harping on one thing... but the chat button for example...

I attached a clear version... took about 30 seconds...

I would spend a full day making the most out of your dealer.com site... little changes like this... and big ones... sit down with everyone on your staff and have them go through the site & tell you what they would change... quiz some internet customers for opinions...

If nothing else... you will learn a lot to prepare yourself for a wordpress site...

 

[MullerToyota]

Clay, the fact of the matter is that the features I mention above are game changers. Not only are they proven to increase top-level statistics on our own websites, but the largest e-Commerce websites, Search Engines, and enterprise-level, consumer-focused websites are implementing dynamic, behavior-driven content delivery systems. It is these advanced features that are proven to improve top-line and bottom-line numbers.

Quick anecdote - Recently I sat in an meeting with 14 GMs, Internet Managers and Owners of a very large dealership organization. All 14 had their own opinion of the look, feel, and usability of their website...all the way down to what color the navigation links should turn when you hover over them.

I can also tell you that not one of them had any data to support their 14 different opinions...other than their own opinion.

Again, no offense, but I am reading a lot of big buzz words - with no data to back them up.

What features are you talking about?

What data to you have to support your claims?

What kind of changes would a dealership like mine expect to see?

Now, if you tell me that you save a cookie and know that a customer is looking at Corollas every time they log onto the site they get hit with Corolla deals - that would be a game changer.

However, I really haven't seen the kind of intelligence that you are suggesting from Dealer.com or any other major auto web provider.

 

[MullerToyota]

I know I am only harping on one thing... but the chat button for example...

I attached a clear version... took about 30 seconds...

I would spend a full day making the most out of your dealer.com site... little changes like this... and big ones... sit down with everyone on your staff and have them go through the site & tell you what they would change... quiz some internet customers for opinions...

If nothing else... you will learn a lot to prepare yourself for a wordpress site...

I think your chat button example is the best example of why I want/need to change. It would take me 30 seconds to do the exact same thing. Except that I can't - because Dealer.com doesn't allow me to make those kind of changes.

I feel like I am talking to wall about this sometimes.

I want to be able to make a change like that in 30 seconds. Right now, it takes days - if I am lucky. I want that chat button everywhere. I sent a PDF with pages of my website marked up with how I wanted it to look.

Obviously, you have seen the end result.

Not only can I not change the header of my site manually - I can't manually add the chat button anywhere because Dealer.com does not all me to add the SCRIPT tags anywhere on my site manually.

So, your point is exactly the reason I need to make a change.

Don't think that I can't do everything you are suggesting because I don't have the skill set - it is because I am handcuffed by my lack of power to make changes the way I want them on the fly without needing to rely on people that don't really care about what I want.

 

[Bruce Novicky]

That really does suck and trust me working with Cobalt I know how you feel.

I am just curious though... if you sent them the clear PNG I posted would they not replace the JPG that is there now?

I think your chat button example is the best example of why I want/need to change. It would take me 30 seconds to do the exact same thing. Except that I can't - because Dealer.com doesn't allow me to make those kind of changes.

I feel like I am talking to wall about this sometimes.

I want to be able to make a change like that in 30 seconds. Right now, it takes days - if I am lucky. I want that chat button everywhere. I sent a PDF with pages of my website marked up with how I wanted it to look.

Obviously, you have seen the end result.

Not only can I not change the header of my site manually - I can't manually add the chat button anywhere because Dealer.com does not all me to add the SCRIPT tags anywhere on my site manually.

So, your point is exactly the reason I need to make a change.

Don't think that I can't do everything you are suggesting because I don't have the skill set - it is because I am handcuffed by my lack of power to make changes the way I want them on the fly without needing to rely on people that don't really care about what I want.