Tordiway, Sometimes I am as dumb as a box of rocks... You wrote:
"....I'm not talking about sites that have to do double duty promoting the dealership's showroom sales in addition to Internet sales. I'm talking pure Internet sales sites."
So I have to ask, what does this mean? In my wacked view of the world, they are one.
OK, OK, it is all coming back to me now. I started this thread and posed the question a week or more ago, and it only showed up, like, 2 days ago, by which time I had already gone a lot deeper into the subject and realized that the sentence above, the one you caught, is indeed incorrect.
I am caught in a semantics trap of my own making.
Since this led us to debating the definition of eCommerce sites here is mine (now): if I can see an item, put that item into a shopping cart, and buy that item (pay money) online that is an eCommerce site. Amazon.com is an eCommerce site. iTunes.com is an eCommerce site. eBay Motors is an eCommerce site. (Depending upon its price I may not be able to buy the car outright on the site but I can leave a deposit - cash commitment - that starts the fulfillment of the transaction).
The site takes my money.
Upon further investigation and to my surprise, ecarlink.com, ecarone.com and fitzmall.com are
not eCommerce sites. The sites can't take your money. Case closed.
What I believe they
do do (and what the
Sun Auto Warehouse site does exceptionally well, IMHO) is combine information presentation capabilities unique to the Internet and HTML with a fresh and novel approach to merchandizing cars. And that was what I was trying to identify when I started the thread.
I was trying to isolate those sites that deliver a unique and wouldn't-be-possible-without-the-Internet car shopping experience from those that are little more than an online print brochure with a semi-interactive inventory. (That latter type make up the overwhelming majority of car dealer websites, wouldn't you think?) I called the former type of sites
pure Internet sales sites. Probably not the clearest and most understandable label. But I hope you can see that my intentions were there.
My hunch is that most of us hanging around DR work for companies that have "little more than an online print brochure with a semi-interactive inventory" type websites and secretly (or sometimes publicly) wish our employers had sites that deliver a unique and wouldn't-be-possible-without-the-Internet car shopping experience.
