• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

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

Jump to latest Follow Reply
#52
JoePistell said:
Oooo, good observation.

One process I'm working on is an automatic overview system that looks for human typo errors. 1st office errors like miles, price, then data collection errors in the field like trim or missing options.
Click to expand...

This is why I wrote a package that basically addresses "problems" for the websites.
It has user-defined rules, but commonly I setup rules for things like:

- Inventory over X days (yes, they should know this already. This is in the event that it should not be on the website any more)
- Inventory without photos or without a certain # of photos
- Inventory that has not had a price change in X days
- Inventory that has over X views and is not sold
- Inventory that has over X leads and is not sold
- Specific CMS page types that haven't been updated in a while (ie: page has a "specials" flag but it's been 3 months since it was updated)
- Dead links / 404s - you would be shocked how many people have no idea they have deadlinks or links going to incorrect or invalid pages

and the list goes on and on.
It's very very helpful for both myself and the sales manager on the client's end.

That said, I would love to have it in a dashboard format that could be used for far more things.
Also, spell checking is also a great idea. Would be very handy.
 
#53
I think we should talk about this in real terms;

The web, the entire web, is made of templates that follow from previous designs. But that also happens to be the case for architecture, books, umbrellas, cars, bicycles, etc, and it is not a bad thing.

From time to time someone will break with the conformity of accepted patterns and at great risk and investment (not for $699/month!) will find a new application that works better for a particular set of circumstances (small application).

I think that we get lost on the fact that sometimes the "custom web" comes with content, graphics, and other things that the dealer wouldn't do with their previous website and hence the increase of performance (and I don't say this as a negative thing).

I'm very skeptical about informal usability layouts and weary about design ideas. Overlooking at 1000 websites (and Joe more than that) I would put informal design at the bottom of my list when it comes to increase a dealer's performance.

Custom is not always best in a large investment scenario, the next ones to up our business, real state and banks, got nothing custom (is only custom to their needs for the most part).

I strongly believe that non-custom became negative in our business as an inheritance of the 90s when Cobalt had one way to bake the cake and that was it. Nowadays there are many other important factors other than the perception of custom.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
#54
The biggest issues I saw in going with non-automotive, They don't GET what we're going for. If you're at a dealer that wants to rip open the envelope by making something no other dealer has, then I'm 98% sure you fall into the GET IT group. When you start talking about SPR layouts & VDPs, CTAs, ADF feeds, they get a little fidgety. If you go into what information is going to need to be displayed, sorted, and the ongoing content and changes, along with the SEO needs we think of as basic, you can see the panic in their eyes. Cars aren't toothbrushes, I don't have 5 blue ones and 3 red ones; each is unique. If you want to trust an untested company with your biggest lot, your first impression and want to invest in them the time it will take to teach them a good piece of the CarBiz, it could go very well. However, it took about 2 months to get launched with a dealer focused provider and we're still working on getting everything actually finished. The site is also out preforming one OEM site and quickly gaining on the other OEM site's numbers in just 4 months live.
 
#55
However, it took about 2 months to get launched with a dealer focused provider and we're still working on getting everything actually finished.
Click to expand...

Kelly, did you mean this is an independent project compared to a vendors "platform"? If you don't mind sharing, what was the primary driver to hiring outside of the prominent dealer website vendors?
 
#56
I'm not sure where this conversation is at, but I do have an extremely strong opinion towards a DIY, non-vendor, and/or in-house solution. I was a website/developer that came into the automotive industry with ZERO automotive systems knowledge. I had 60-days to bring our family of websites for our group in-house and away from a vendor. I didn't know what a DMS, an inventory management system, what a XML lead, how an automotive CRM system worked, or what a inventory feed was. Within those 60 days (actually 65, I rolled out 5 days late) I was able to design, develop the entire site front to back as a single person team. I received no help from any vendor (all were clueless on how to connect the pieces or didn't want to help), zero in-house, and zero external help.

That website has outperformed our vendor website by 3x total visitors, increased our organic traffic by 2.5x, and doubled the lead volume vs previous vendor site. All within 3 small to medium sized markets - combined market size of around 400,000 people. Our markets didn't magically double in size, I was able to exploit the weaknesses of vendor templated VLPs, VDPs, and websites to start the domination of market. Those weaknesses still exist today, although I see some vendors catching on. A good non-automotive website agency can easily find these same weaknesses and exploit them as well. It wouldn't take much for an outside agency to learn the systems and produce a very functional and well performing website.

The combined numbers (1 group site, 3 websites for each market, and 1 group mobile site)
Organic Traffic
7,275/month ave - prior vendor
17,304/month ave - current

Total Visitors
11,504/month ave - prior vendor
30,374/month ave - current
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
#57
csabatka1 said:
I'm not sure where this conversation is at, but I do have an extremely strong opinion towards a DIY, non-vendor, and/or in-house solution. I was a website/developer that came into the automotive industry with ZERO automotive systems knowledge. I had 60-days to bring our family of websites for our group in-house and away from a vendor. I didn't know what a DMS, an inventory management system, what a XML lead, how an automotive CRM system worked, or what a inventory feed was. Within those 60 days (actually 65, I rolled out 5 days late) I was able to design, develop the entire site front to back as a single person team. I received no help from any vendor (all were clueless on how to connect the pieces or didn't want to help), zero in-house, and zero external help.

That website has outperformed our vendor website by 3x total visitors, increased our organic traffic by 2.5x, and doubled the lead volume vs previous vendor site. All within 3 small to medium sized markets - combined market size of around 400,000 people. Our markets didn't magically double in size, I was able to exploit the weaknesses of vendor templated VLPs, VDPs, and websites to start the domination of market. Those weaknesses still exist today, although I see some vendors catching on. A good non-automotive website agency can easily find these same weaknesses and exploit them as well. It wouldn't take much for an outside agency to learn the systems and produce a very functional and well performing website.

The combined numbers (1 group site, 3 websites for each market, and 1 group mobile site)
Organic Traffic
7,275/month ave - prior vendor
17,304/month ave - current

Total Visitors
11,504/month ave - prior vendor
30,374/month ave - current
Click to expand...

Chad,

Not taking anything from you accomplishment but could be that the vendor you used was terrible and you are excellent, so we have a case of 2 ends of the spectrum.

If the vendor would have been a really good one, perhaps your numbers wouldn't have been so different.

Just because someone is a vendor doesn't make it automatically good, and by the same token custom doesn't always hot the correct path.
 
#58
yagoparamo said:
Chad,

Not taking anything from you accomplishment but could be that the vendor you used was terrible and you are excellent, so we have a case of 2 ends of the spectrum.

If the vendor would have been a really good one, perhaps your numbers wouldn't have been so different.

Just because someone is a vendor doesn't make it automatically good, and by the same token custom doesn't always hot the correct path.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. Similar to Chad, I started my job as a one-man team bringing an entire Automotive group off of one vendor and onto an in-house solution built from the bottom up. I had the luxury of 90 days to develop it, but didn't have the luxury of being able to use a pre-made CMS solution in any way.

That said, (not trying to take away any of your thunder) going from any poor vendor (or even some of the better vendors) to a Wordpress site is a huge shift.
Wordpress SEO has been proven time and time again to work, their RSS feeds and SEO plugins are effective and have sufficient development power behind them. I would consider it one of the best platforms to work with on the performance side.
 
#60
I think there are more than enough of us on the development side, but I've been trying to find people that can do a bit of BI as well and it's tough. It's not that I am any better at anything, I was just raised in a dealership all day and on a computer all night writing BASIC apps. This was the natural career path.

But yes, I agree with most points here. It can be done, but it takes the right people.
Don't try it if you aren't ready.

I think the deciding point for me is that if you need to ask someone else if it's a good idea, you're not ready.
 
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Menu