What Did You Pay for Your Dealer Websites?

[Ryan Hartigan]

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering what you have paid to have your dealer website created, or what you pay a third-party to maintain it.

One of my previous clients paid $40K for a fully-fleshed out Wordpress site, with a nice inventory plugin, and a thorough finance application that did "progressive profiling" to increase conversion rate. Since they are not sending adequate traffic to the site, the same inventory has been up for ages and they aren't moving any metal.

They could have pulled something from Themeforest for $80 and made the same amount of sales.

So I'm curious... what did you pay for your dealer site? Did you think it was a good deal at that time? Are you happy with it now?

I've created the poll above. If you have paid a one-time fee and you pay a monthly-recurring fee, then you may select both a "one-time fee" option and the "ongoing monthly fee" from the poll

PS. Welcome me to the forum! It's my first post

 

[Chris Cachor]

They could have pulled something from Themeforest for $80 and made the same amount of sales.

Are you new?

 

[Alexander Lau]

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering what you have paid to have your dealer website created, or what you pay a third-party to maintain it.

One of my previous clients paid $40K for a fully-fleshed out Wordpress site, with a nice inventory plugin, and a thorough finance application that did "progressive profiling" to increase conversion rate. Since they are not sending adequate traffic to the site, the same inventory has been up for ages and they aren't moving any metal.

They could have pulled something from Themeforest for $80 and made the same amount of sales.

So I'm curious... what did you pay for your dealer site? Did you think it was a good deal at that time? Are you happy with it now?

I've created the poll above. If you have paid a one-time fee and you pay a monthly-recurring fee, then you may select both a "one-time fee" option and the "ongoing monthly fee" from the poll

PS. Welcome me to the forum! It's my first post

Hey WELCOME!

No offense, but how would one easily support a full-blown automotive website by downloading a Themeforest Wordpress theme? Granted, there are plenty of 3rd parties like Dealer Inspire and DealerX that build automotive-centric themes on Wordpress and their sites are nicely done, but support comes along with the cost.

What happens when your inventory crashes (which it typically will) and does the inventory mechanism work with 3rd party feed providers like Homenet, etc.?

Generally speaking, dealers aren't set up from an HR or management perspective to hire internal web developers or webmasters. Is the talent available in the area, retention, etc.?

$40K sounds like way too much to me, that's about 20 months for a decent 3rd party option (give or take). What do you mean the same inventory has been up for ages? Oh man... no, back to inventory issues (updates). This is a dynamic process (constantly updated), especially for unique, used vehicles. You might get away with showing new inventory (generically), but even so they're finite.

Clearly, it's better and much more popular to outsource automotive web platform hosting to the plethora of 3rd parties out there, unless the stars are aligned with the right internal resources and even then, a huge and on-going challenge.

I'll not get into compliance, etc. that's another hurdle to jump through, unless you are referring to second sites or portal / parent sites.

For fixed-ops, heck yeah, download a WP theme and plow away at it. There are plenty of good ones for that model (I listed a bunch, the other day). Much easier to maintain. However, I'd still have your fixed-ops options listed on the inventory-based website. Users expect it.

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

Hey WELCOME!

No offense, but how would one easily support a full-blown automotive website by downloading a Themeforest Wordpress theme? Granted, there are plenty of 3rd parties like Dealer Inspire and DealerX that build automotive-centric themes on Wordpress and their sites are nicely done, but support comes along with the cost.

What happens when your inventory crashes (which it typically will) and does the inventory mechanism work with 3rd party feed providers like Homenet, etc.?

Generally speaking, dealers aren't set up from an HR or management perspective to hire internal web developers or webmasters. Is the talent available in the area, retention, etc.?

$40K sounds like way too much to me, that's about 20 months for a decent 3rd party option (give or take). What do you mean the same inventory has been up for ages? Oh man... no, back to inventory issues (updates). This is a dynamic process (constantly updated), especially for unique, used vehicles. You might get away with showing new inventory (generically), but even so they're finite.

Clearly, it's better and much more popular to outsource automotive web platform hosting to the plethora of 3rd parties out there, unless the stars are aligned with the right internal resources and even then, a huge and on-going challenge.

I'll not get into compliance, etc. that's another hurdle to jump through, unless you are referring to second sites or portal / parent sites.

For fixed-ops, heck yeah, download a WP theme and plow away at it. There are plenty of good ones for that model (I listed a bunch, the other day). Much easier to maintain. However, I'd still have your fixed-ops options listed on the inventory-based website. Users expect it.

I don't think you need a fully-fleshed out automotive site. What you need the site to do is convert traffic into leads. You need to move them to the next step in the customer journey and not get caught on your beautiful landing page - increasing the chances of them shopping somewhere else because you don't have the right vehicle, or picking up an incoming call because they were on your website for too long before they applied, or doubting their decision, or finding it difficult to navigate the website, or visiting your "About Us" section and reading about how many years Billy Bob has sold cars.

You need to give them the exact right information for them to take the next step confidently, to build a relationship with your dealership, and to increase the chances of following through the purchase decision when the salesperson gets the lead.

I don't even see testimonials on most dealer websites. They're doing it wrong.

It's conversion-rate optimization. Split-testing the landing page design and advertising copy, making sure that all of your VDP's lead directly to the application, making sure that every page pushes them to the next one.

It's much more powerful to have separate landing pages for each of your ad creatives than to send all of your traffic to your one mammoth site and expect people to know what to do next. That's why people bounce.

You can pay a third-party to build you a fully-fleshed out automotive site, or you can pay a copywriter to turn your traffic into high-quality leads.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I get good, high quality leads at a lower cost than my competitors and I don't do anything fancy with a big, fully-fleshed out website. I try my hardest to do minimal design, decrease the top-bar navigation (usually - I don't have any), and make sure that the "next step" is always the only step they can take next

 

[Chris Cachor]

Are you here to do market research or solicit business?

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

Are you here to do market research or solicit business?

The poll was for market research.

Just had to defend my position

 

[Alexander Lau]

I don't think you need a fully-fleshed out automotive site. What you need the site to do is convert traffic into leads. You need to move them to the next step in the customer journey and not get caught on your beautiful landing page - increasing the chances of them shopping somewhere else because you don't have the right vehicle, or picking up an incoming call because they were on your website for too long before they applied, or doubting their decision, or finding it difficult to navigate the website, or visiting your "About Us" section and reading about how many years Billy Bob has sold cars.

You need to give them the exact right information for them to take the next step confidently, to build a relationship with your dealership, and to increase the chances of following through the purchase decision when the salesperson gets the lead.

I don't even see testimonials on most dealer websites. They're doing it wrong.

It's conversion-rate optimization. Split-testing the landing page design and advertising copy, making sure that all of your VDP's lead directly to the application, making sure that every page pushes them to the next one.

You can pay a third-party to build you a fully-fleshed out automotive site, or you can pay a copywriter to turn your traffic into high-quality leads.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I get good, high quality leads at a lower cost than my competitors and I don't do anything fancy with a big, fully-fleshed out website. I try my hardest to do minimal design, decrease the top-bar navigation (usually - I don't have any), and make sure that the "next steps" is always the only step they can take.

Good luck with your approach. I don't mean that facetiously, but you're biting off quite a bit.

There are many components (that you had mentioned) that the major automotive website platform providers offer, including testimonials and reviews integration. It's also about the platform being well-supported with usable SRP and VDP pages. Those pages do, in fact, convert many leads for dealerships, as does a well-produced blog (w/ or w/o dynamic inventory hooks), showroom(s), fixed-ops area, etc. CRO and A/B, Multivariate or Split testing is part of the development process with many of the larger platforms.

I'm unsure what a relationship has to do with a credible, usable, well-supported automotive website platform. However, I do agree, it's important to understand client expectations and overall relationship quality.

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

Good luck with your approach. I don't mean that facetiously, but you're biting off quite a bit.

There are many components (that you had mentioned) that the major automotive website platform providers offer, including testimonials and reviews integration. It's also about the platform being well-supported with usable SRP and VDP pages. Those pages do, in fact, convert many leads for dealerships, as does a well-produced blog (w/ or w/o dynamic inventory hooks), showroom(s), fixed-ops area, etc. CRO and A/B, Multivariate or Split testing is part of the development process with many of the larger platforms.

I'm unsure what a relationship has to do with a credible, usable, well-supported automotive website platform. However, I do agree, it's important to understand client expectations and overall relationship quality.

I think the big issue is that most of the dealerships are competing on the same level. When you add the general public distrust of dealerships and the fact that people would rather go to the dentists office than go into a finance office, it really comes down to rethinking the focus on VDPs. Not to mention, the third-party lead sites are killing the dealerships when it comes to paid and organic VDP ranking.

The more benefit-driven the webpages are, specific to what ads the customers have clicked on, the higher chance the customer will buy from you.

I don't think it should be this one mammoth site. All these flashing banners pitching different vehicle packages and services... I can't see how that can convert traffic at a good rate. There's hundreds of other dealerships in my city that have websites like that, so you're only differentiating yourself based on your inventory when you do that.

When you talk about subprime, the focus on VDPs with no explanation of the process is going to confuse people and may even piss them off. They apply because they are interested in a specific vehicle, and then they learn that they can't get approved for the vehicle that you advertised on your site (let alone at the given bi-weekly price or an "OAC" interest rate).

I think the webpage should begin the sales process. The marketing team and the salesteam should work very closely with one another. Most dealerships, I see them outsourcing their marketing or hiring an in-house marketer who hasn't done sales and expecting them to take the reigns on everything.

Btw, does anybody know the industry standard for conversion rate when somebody reaches a dealer website?

 

[ed.brooks]

Automotive is not eCommerce, unless you want to change the world like Carvana. Selling cars has never been about Lead Gen, and in the age of mobile, that has never been more true.

Good luck to you @Ryan Hartigan, in your business venture -

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

Automotive is not eCommerce, unless you want to change the world like Carvana. Selling cars has never been about Lead Gen, and in the age of mobile, that has never been more true.

Good luck to you @Ryan Hartigan, in your business venture -

Lead gen is important for every business. I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. In the age of mobile, lead gen is just as important (you just have to focus on more click-to-calls and retargeting because people don't fill out as many forms on mobile)