Websites made by a company that doesn't specialize in dealerships?

[joe.pistell]

...The original RFP is critical in it's detail...

RFP = Request for Proposal.
Dealer makes RFP.
Dealer is responsible for "details".


Again, in this scenerio, the ultimate responsibility of "does it sell cars?" rests on the Dealer.

 

[craigh]

Huh? All dealership websites are templates?

Those purchased by dealerships from various vendors. You still have to add description, pictures, etc.

Considering I work at a dealership website vendor that offers dealership websites that are not templated, I'm going to disagree with you on this one The only thing we template is that your inventory URLs must start with /inventory/

 

[joe.pistell]

Craig, all dealership websites are templates, even the best....

Folks, templates are a problem in YOUR mind, not in your shoppers.

Template designs are a problem for you because
--you look at them all day long.
--you need to find a way to tell your story and stand out
You conclude: My site sucks because its a template.


Consider your shoppers P.O.V.
--I'm buying from an authorized franchise*
--Don't make me think
--But, help me be a smarter shopper


I was chatting with Dr. Henry from our User Experience team and he's stressed that all shoppers want a predictable experience. They want the website to fit their "mental model" so they can be more efficient. He speaks in great detail about "normative scripting" and all matters of shopper behavior that reinforce my conclusion that a template'd website design style is not the challenge, it's getting out your UVP (your UVP <-- great link!).


HTH
Joe

*How freaky would it be if you were hungry and out of town and went to the local Olive Garden's website and it looks nothing like the Olive Garden site back home?

 

[craigh]

I agree that consumers may enjoy a consistent experience, but we also have statistics to show that non-templated sites CAN rank higher than templated alternatives, even with very similar content. The issue with templates to me is not that they're templates, it's that the templates are limiting in other ways. If the template and CMS don't allow me control over everything, it's restricting me and all others on the platform in the same way.

On the flipside, you take one of those clients off the templated system, give them full control over everything they want and now they can tailor their site to their customers which still maintaining a similar style if they wanted.

For me and my team, it boiled down to a choice between offering your current consumers the consistent experience they were used to or building something that worked better organically and attracted more consumers. I'm more than content with the direction we went.

 

[joe.pistell]

I agree that consumers may enjoy a consistent experience, but we also have statistics to show that non-templated sites CAN rank higher than templated alternatives, even with very similar content.

Craig,

Nothing pisses me off more than making a claim increased performance based on research and then NOT SHARING data and research... especially if the implied message is touting your UVP.

If you've got an interesting discovery that helps the community, share it. If you can't share it, plz don't post it.

 

[joe.pistell]

...For me and my team, it boiled down to a choice between offering your current consumers the consistent experience they were used to or building something that worked better organically and attracted more consumers. I'm more than content with the direction we went.

Who in the heck says this is all about you and your 12 websites? I am not talking about me and my company, c'mon, do your best to "hide the knife"*. Speak for the community's needs, share your knowledge, not your pom-poms.



*A wize ol salesman (Mark Blanchard) once told me "A great surgeon never lets his patient see the knife".

 

[craigh]

Joe,

I understand entirely and I don't mean to lay false claims out or anything of the sort.
I'm trying to find the time to finish the "whitepaper" of sorts that actually brings about the correct context and justifies the numbers better than, "Hey look at this chart". There's many factors involved and we track every change and how it impacts things.
The charts I use are always organic traffic because paid traffic doesn't show anything about website performance unless you're looking at pages/visit or other metrics. The problem is that I don't necessarily have all the answers to explain the performance.

I can't give you the names of these stores because I don't have their permission yet, but all 3 are from the same Automotive group. All 3 moved from the same old platform to our platform. One switch over in late January and the other 2 switch over in March of 2013. All 3 had different OEMs, different target markets and 2 of them are from completely different locations.


Switched Websites Late January

Switched Websites Late March

Obviously these charts aren't enough information, which is why I'm working on an actual document that pulls together all our in-house analysis and reasoning behind each change, the results we saw, etc. If I had the document today I would share it.

This site is our poorest performer on the organic front. I can't explain why necessarily, but they have historically been a poor performer and we weren't able to fix everything about that with just a website. The major dip just past July 2013 was a lack of analytics - someone made a mistake and the tracking code was removed for a week or so.

We also have all the other metrics to show year over year, month over month, change in # of page views, etc.
The insight has helped us to make every decision that we make. We noticed an increase in bounce rate correlated directly to an increase in what I call "Unassociated Organic Traffic" - traffic that wasn't necessarily looking for what we're offering tends to have a higher bounce rate, but for some reason the sites rank for things that don't necessarily apply. The blogs tend to add to this as well.

I'm more than happy to share information, but I only have so much time in a day to prepare this paperwork while still continuing to do my job. We're not a huge team yet and we all have plenty on our plates.

 

[craigh]

Who in the heck says this is all about you and your 12 websites? I am not talking about me and my company, c'mon, do your best to "hide the knife"*. Speak for the community's needs, share your knowledge, not your pom-poms.



*A wize ol salesman (Mark Blanchard) once told me "A great surgeon never lets his patient see the knife".

I'm trying to share, but I'm not willing to share knowledge I don't have or cannot confirm.
The only knowledge I can confirm is from my personal experiences. I'm not trying to promote my product (feel free to see earlier posts where I'm more than happy to recommend other vendors or DIY), but my product is the only thing I have firm analytics for. I wish I had more stores and the data you probably have access to - that would be a game changer for all my theories.

For now, I share what I can. I'm more than happy to share more information if I know what people want to see, but sometimes the truth is "We tried this and it worked. We tweaked it a bit and it didn't work as well, so we tweaked it a different way and now it works better than ever. We applied that to a second store, it worked. We applied that to a third store, it worked. We applied it to our most problematic client and it didn't work".

 

[ddavis]

I'm sorry if people think that I am bashing the product by referring to it as a template. When we switched to a Dealer.com website, our numbers jumped immediately. It had the same pictures, descriptions and prices as before and that I why I think of them as templates.

 

[craigh]

I'm sorry if people think that I am bashing the product by referring to it as a template. When we switched to a Dealer.com website, our numbers jumped immediately. It had the same pictures, descriptions and prices as before and that I why I think of them as templates.

I should also apologize on this front. The reality is that my entire experience with Dealer.com and Dealer.com clients has been through their reseller in Canada. Almost all the issues I had with them when my job was "Guy in charge of all the Dealer sites" had to do with poor communication and capabilities between the reseller and Dealer.com - I've heard great things about their sites south of the border.

That said, every site has issues. As I tried to demonstrate in my list for Joe earlier, if you aren't paying someone to manage your site for you then much of the blame falls to you to get it figured out and keep things accurate and up to date. The vendor can't be blamed for things you don't notice are wrong.