• This thread is just the tip of the iceberg.The people ahead of the curve aren't Googling for answers — they're already in here, having the conversations you haven't found yet. DealerRefresh is free.Get the full picture →

Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

joe.pistell

Uncle Joe
Apr 7, 2009
5,168
2,531
Awards
10
First Name
Joe
@Alex Snyder how do you feel about the Capital One button cannibalizing leads from your FRIKINTech thingy? ;)

COMMUNISTS!​

:lmao:Joe

@Ryan Everson, I think Capital One is hiding from its competition and using boots on the street + this product to enable it. As a business practice, it is smart on their part, but it is a terrible consumer experience. It is anti-transparency all because they don't want to publish rates. Just another fancy lead form that bleeds dealership website visitors away from the dealership. Too many dealers have fallen for this without regarding the customer experience.

I think dealers should choose an obvious online path for the customer that does not conflict with what they will experience in the showroom. FRIKINtech goes through a lot of effort to make sure payments a customer sees are repeatable by sales managers, regardless of who the lender is (we have access to over 1,400 lenders, by the way).

When it comes to Capital One, I don't lose any sleep over them. Where FRIKINtech is headed is a vastly different direction than competing over real estate on a dealer's website. Our website component is a bonus for dealers on top of all the ways we can engage their shoppers now! Things have changed in the last two years ;)
 

✨ AI Highlights

Joe Pistell, formerly of Cars.com, relaunches his 'Makeover Diary' series to share automotive digital merchandising experiments and strategy, inviting community challenge and debate. Discussions range from practical tips like showing CarPlay in vehicle photos, to AI-generated detailer imagery, to Carvana and CarMax's superior vehicle merchandising loops that focus on sales productivity metrics rather than lead volume. The key insight is that fragmented dealer website vendors lag far behind vertically integrated players like Carvana, whose tight engineering-to-sales-floor feedback loop enables rapid, conversion-focused iteration.

Replies Views 252 82,775 Started Last Reply