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#42
Dennis Walsh said:
If this is still going on, I'd love the feedback.

I coded our software / website and the marketing on my own, so any feedback is welcomed!

Click to expand...
Dude! Awesome site. Love the copy, the GT font (it's what we use on ridemotive.com), and the SRP layout. Do you manually remove the background of the thumbnail photos or do you have an image processing engine?
 
#44
johnhabeck said:
Dude! Awesome site. Love the copy, the GT font (it's what we use on ridemotive.com), and the SRP layout. Do you manually remove the background of the thumbnail photos or do you have an image processing engine?
Click to expand...
Thanks John! You're the first person to know that's GT America ! (I get asked frequently)

I sent the pictures to pixelz.com. They remove the background by hand.. I can't find an engine that can reliably create a great background removed image.

I've gone back and forth on pictures vs background removed, but the background removed lets us leverage a lot of interesting advertising.. like dynamically generated and properly formatted OG tags. E.g. https://api.buycrosscut.com/picture.jpg?element=#adHeroImage&url=https://www.buycrosscut.com/advertising/ckou84skrsyqj0d380zbclds9?portrait=true

Very impressed by your work. My software is multi-tenant (data model knows about dealerships, stores, etc) and I've considered turning it into a company. Had you been around, I would have been a customer.

Our stack is very similar -- NextJS, Node, Algolia, Auth0, etc. It's nice to see new players in the space without another reskinned Wordpress theme. There's a real need to modernize the dealer web and love what you're doing.
 
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#45
Alex Snyder said:
Why is the inventory listing opening in a modal?
Click to expand...
Hi Alex,

Thanks for your question and taking the time to look!

I want to communicate that the user won't lose their scroll position and filters. The user should feel that they can click any link without incurring a penalty.

Many ecommerce sites fail to preserve scroll positions moving between list and detail views. Here, both are preserved -- the position on the vehicle detail page and inventory. And the contextual based modal routing pattern is becoming more common (e.g. Instagram).

The modal was A/B tested vs a traditional list/detail page and customers viewed an extra 1.7 vehicles with the modal.
 
#46
Dennis Walsh said:
Thanks John! You're the first person to know that's GT America ! (I get asked frequently)

I sent the pictures to pixelz.com. They remove the background by hand.. I can't find an engine that can reliably create a great background removed image.

I've gone back and forth on pictures vs background removed, but the background removed lets us leverage a lot of interesting advertising.. like dynamically generated and properly formatted OG tags. E.g. https://api.buycrosscut.com/picture.jpg?element=#adHeroImage&url=https://www.buycrosscut.com/advertising/ckou84skrsyqj0d380zbclds9?portrait=true

Very impressed by your work. My software is multi-tenant (data model knows about dealerships, stores, etc) and I've considered turning it into a company. Had you been around, I would have been a customer.

Our stack is very similar -- NextJS, Node, Algolia, etc. It's nice to see new players in the space without another reskinned Wordpress theme. There's a real need to modernize the dealer web and love what you're doing.
Click to expand...
Dennis, thanks for the kind words! We're new and still learning, but we have a knowledgeable team and some neat tech to boot.

GT is the absolute best. I think that the photos with the backgrounds removed are very cool, and it is something that we would like to do on our platform. The only downside is that users may think that the images are stock photos because they're so well-manicured.

We've experimented with https://www.remove.bg/t/car-photo-optimizer, but the API is incredibly expensive so the economics would not make sense for us.

P.S., we're hiring :)
 
#47
johnhabeck said:
Dennis, thanks for the kind words! We're new and still learning, but we have a knowledgeable team and some neat tech to boot.

GT is the absolute best. I think that the photos with the backgrounds removed are very cool, and it is something that we would like to do on our platform. The only downside is that users may think that the images are stock photos because they're so well-manicured.

We've experimented with https://www.remove.bg/t/car-photo-optimizer, but the API is incredibly expensive so the economics would not make sense for us.

P.S., we're hiring :)
Click to expand...
I'll DM you so we can talk further.

Not to pollute the thread, but... some others may find this topic an interesting aside.

I started using background removed images several years ago and had the same reservations. Would people think it's a stock photo?

So I did my best to make a convincing fake. I went out and shot a great background. I matched the angles between the background and the vehicle images so the photo would look real. (If I take the pictures at the right time of day so the shadows align, it's very hard to tell that the composited photo isn't real.)

But within the past year I noticed dealers were using background removed pictures quite a bit. Were consumers now savvy to the clipped images?

So I ran an A/B test... could I run a more branded, obviously background removed image vs my real looking fake?

00A0A_1KXQ4NoK6NEz_0hm0bF_600x450.jpg00R0R_ktxgV7x6HEuz_0hu0bx_600x450.jpg

The CTR on the right was almost 2x the left. Granted, the reasons could be many -- maybe the right is just more visually appealing . But this test was enough for me to put the clipped photos back into realistic backdrops.

But I haven't run a real picture vs background removed picture A/B test because the formatting advantage is dispositive. The above are used in my open graph images, Craigslist, and eBay (landscape formats). But below is for Facebook's portrait orientation.


picture-1.jpg

Given the ever changing landscape of photo dimensions and orientations, and the need to dynamically generate, I think background removed hero images should be dealership table stakes.
 
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#48
Dennis Walsh said:
I'll DM you so we can talk further.

Not to pollute the thread, but... some others may find this topic an interesting aside.

I started using background removed images several years ago and had the same reservations. Would people think it's a stock photo?

So I did my best to make a convincing fake. I went out and shot a great background. I matched the angles between the background and the vehicle images so the photo would look real. (If I take the pictures at the right time of day so the shadows align, it's very hard to tell that the composited photo isn't real.)

But within the past year I noticed dealers were using background removed pictures quite a bit. Were consumers now savvy to the clipped images?

So I ran an A/B test... could I run a more branded, obviously background removed image vs my real looking fake?

View attachment 5703View attachment 5704

The CTR on the right was almost 2x the left. Granted, the reasons could be many -- maybe the right is just more visually appealing . But this test was enough for me to put the clipped photos back into realistic backdrops.

But I haven't run a real picture vs background removed picture A/B test because the formatting advantage is dispositive. The above are used in my open graph images, Craigslist, and eBay (landscape formats). But below is for Facebook's portrait orientation.


View attachment 5705

Given the ever changing landscape of photo dimensions and orientations, and the need to dynamically generate, I think background removed hero images should be dealership table stakes.
Click to expand...
Wow, that looks great. I hadn't thought of using a background-removed image as the open graph image. Wouldn't be too hard to programmatically generate nice-looking composites for each vehicle like the example you gave. Just costly.

BTW - are you an attorney? I've only ever heard attorneys use dispositive.
 
#49
Dennis Walsh said:
If this is still going on, I'd love the feedback.

I coded our software / website and the marketing on my own, so any feedback is welcomed!

Click to expand...

This an absolutely beautiful website. Typeface is stunning. I'm using similar for my logo (dealership to launch soon)

Curious, what DMS do you use? I have very little experience in web design and code itself, but pretty keen marketing eye and know a guy that has built thousands of website and could no doubt make something like this that's stunning as long as the APIs or whatever is open on your DMS right?
 
#50
turbotaylor said:
This an absolutely beautiful website. Typeface is stunning. I'm using similar for my logo (dealership to launch soon)

Curious, what DMS do you use? I have very little experience in web design and code itself, but pretty keen marketing eye and know a guy that has built thousands of website and could no doubt make something like this that's stunning as long as the APIs or whatever is open on your DMS right?
Click to expand...
Thanks, I really appreciate the kind words!

If you're curious, here's our style guide where we go over our font, logo, colors, etc.

I made our DMS. I just made a video for a few dealers showing how it works.

View: https://youtu.be/VDdxhYCFUOo

I'm in the process of rebuilding my site into a CMS and license it to other dealers where you can have a Webflow/Square space experience and make an amazing looking, performant, and designed site but with your touches.

Happy to answer any questions!
 
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Dominion DMS
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