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Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

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#151
joe.pistell said:
Dear Cars.com product leaders,
Car shoppers are in market for weeks and months. Cars.com should see macro trends of consumer behavior well before its seen at wholesale auction prices (rising or falling), or on the sales doc (rising or falling).

If I may suggest, sell API access. Your biggest and brightest dealers will work the data in house, or, a consultant could sell your data as a service.
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The natural progression for Alex Vetter and Cars.com is to create a vAuto alternative.

They already have the initial framework with Dealer Inspire's Metal IMS, live first-party shopper data from Cars.com and DI websites, and forward-looking valuation data points from Accu-Trade.

It's a bigger market opportunity than an API service, plus shareholders love to see SaaS expansion MRR...

Not to mention the ancillary benefits of a website platform and marketplace having an in-house syndication solution.
 
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#152
Ryan Everson said:
Not to mention the ancillary benefits of a website platform and marketplace having an in-house syndication solution.
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How about everyone just ditch SFTP and get working on an inventory API to speed things up? Tekion and Authenticom are working on that now. I just wish that would become a thing with all, across all companies, as a standard inventory/merchandising flow. If we take a picture or change a price or sell a unit, wouldn't it be great to have it change on the sites in realtime?

"...How about it, science?" - Jack Handy
 
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#153
#1 - It was taken at the correct height. I wish the exterior color was bolder like it is when you see it in person. Because of the better height, the wheel really pops as well.
#2 - The exterior color looks the sharpest and shows the contours / curves well, but I agree with Ryan, it was taken about a foot too high for this small SUV. A little lower photo height and it would make the wheels and chrome trim really pop.
#3 - The true exterior color of this Jeep doesn't come through well at all on this one - I know that color well. It also doesn't show the contours / curves on the vehicle very well. I personally don't like the fact you can see through to the interior.
 
#154
Dan Sayer said:
How about everyone just ditch SFTP and get working on an inventory API to speed things up? Tekion and Authenticom are working on that now. I just wish that would become a thing with all, across all companies, as a standard inventory/merchandising flow. If we take a picture or change a price or sell a unit, wouldn't it be great to have it change on the sites in realtime?

"...How about it, science?" - Jack Handy
Click to expand...
Homenet's inventory API is actually pretty good - we use it internally. The difficulty is getting everyone to agree on a standard and then having the hundreds of vendors (marketplaces, CRM's, DMS's, inventory management systems, website vendors, photo providers, etc) divert dev resources to implement it.

All this to get a price updated or vehicle removed 8 hours sooner? What would happen to our Check Availability and Get E-Price leads then? ;)
 
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#155
jscole86 said:
#3 - The true exterior color of this Jeep doesn't come through well at all on this one - I know that color well. It also doesn't show the contours / curves on the vehicle very well. I personally don't like the fact you can see through to the interior.
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Quickly seeing the interior is probably a personal preference of mine - I prefer tan interiors, but they are often incorrectly marked as black interiors, making filtering unreliable and forcing me to click on each VDP and go through the photo carousel until I get to an interior pic.

Ultimately it all boils down to the fundamentals - dealers really need to get better at merchandising to provide a better online experience.
 
#157
joe.pistell said:
3 Indoor booths...
View attachment 8097
Pictures tell a 1,000 words
What do you see?
Is there a difference?
Thoughts?
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1 is too close so distortion gives slight fisheye look and seems washed out.
2 is too high so gives a "never seen in the wild" angle but great resolution and lighting
3 seems to be right height, right distance (although hard to tell without seeing the back wheel) but lighting is odd. I would rather not see the interior on an exterior shot. It gets too busy for a shopper's eyes.
 
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#159
This is interesting, great feedback.
I chose to crop out much of the setting and focus on the car itself.
1693947700567.png

All 3 are great, from my seat, I look at:
--the luster (or depth) in the paint,
--the clairity of the lines (e.g. fenders, glass, head lamps, etc)
--The light fill at the lower part of the car.
--The overall quality/resolution of the image

My $0.02:
#1) I just love the color depth and clarity of Booth 2.
#2) I helped build booth #1. The red isn't as rich as booth 2 (lower quality LEDs?)
#3) Booth 3 has 'fender reflections of stuff on the wall in the paint, and it's missing scrim lighting (overhead)


Ryan Everson said:
Quickly seeing the interior is probably a personal preference of mine
Click to expand...
The overhead scrim helps define the color and lines in the car, but, it'll mask the glass (ie interior)
1693948305531.png
 
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