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TAKE POLL Which Stellantis Approved Website You Recommend?

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#11
Ryan Everson said:
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Here are the 6 Stellantis-approved website providers and my personal ranking:
  1. Dealer Inspire
  2. Dealer.com
  3. DealerOn
  4. DealerFire
  5. Dealer E-Process
  6. Pixel Motion (I have no personal experience with them, so ranking them last)
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@Ryan Everson, my rankings of these sites closely mirror yours, but I'm curious how Dealer.com made it above DealerOn on your list. The UX on DDC alone knocks it down a peg in my book and their support is pretty lackluster in comparison.
 
#12
JessicaRobertson said:
@Ryan Everson, my rankings of these sites closely mirror yours, but I'm curious how Dealer.com made it above DealerOn on your list. The UX on DDC alone knocks it down a peg in my book and their support is pretty lackluster in comparison.
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It's very close between #3 DealerOn and #2 Dealer.com, almost a toss-up for me. The reasons that I ultimately ranked DDC slightly higher than DealerOn are:
  1. Approved by more OEMs. For a group with multiple brands, this is important because it makes things easier to scale. There's a reason a lot of the mega groups and publics are still using DDC.
  2. SRP superiority. The search results page is where DDC really shines, especially on mobile. They have the best and easiest-to-use search filters of any automotive website provider, in my opinion, although Dealer Inspire is rolling out a new set of filters that comes very close.
  3. Backend ease of use. Don't get me wrong, their page builder isn't great, but their overall backend makes it super easy for anyone in the dealership to add / edit staff, service coupons, specials, and inventory. I absolutely love Dealer Inspire, but I'm not going to trust giving my average receptionist access to WordPress to manage the staff page. Whereas on Dealer.com I absolutely would.
  4. COX. There are some nice synergies available for dealers that use Autotrader, KBB, Vinsolutions, etc.
That being said, I would still choose Dealer Inspire over Dealer.com all day long; they are leaps and bounds better overall. But Dealer.com is a pretty good alternate option for a dealer that maybe isn't super hands-on and is ok with being middle-of-the-road. It just works.

But there are some big downsides to Dealer.com when compared to DealerOn, like their blog platform, page builder, not technically responsive, etc. But the average middle-of-the-road dealer wouldn't even use the blog, page builder, etc.
 
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#13
Ryan Everson said:
It's very close between #3 DealerOn and #2 Dealer.com, almost a toss-up for me. The reasons that I ultimately ranked DDC slightly higher than DealerOn are:
  1. Approved by more OEMs. For a group with multiple brands, this is important because it makes things easier to scale. There's a reason a lot of the mega groups and publics are still using DDC.
  2. SRP superiority. The search results page is where DDC really shines, especially on mobile. They have the best and easiest-to-use search filters of any automotive website provider, in my opinion, although Dealer Inspire is rolling out a new set of filters that comes very close.
  3. Backend ease of use. Don't get me wrong, their page builder isn't great, but their overall backend makes it super easy for anyone in the dealership to add / edit staff, service coupons, specials, and inventory. I absolutely love Dealer Inspire, but I'm not going to trust giving my average receptionist access to WordPress to manage the staff page. Whereas on Dealer.com I absolutely would.
  4. COX. There are some nice synergies available for dealers that use Autotrader, KBB, Vinsolutions, etc.
That being said, I would still choose Dealer Inspire over Dealer.com all day long; they are leaps and bounds better overall. But Dealer.com is a pretty good alternate option for a dealer that maybe isn't super hands-on and is ok with being middle-of-the-road. It just works.

But there are some big downsides to Dealer.com when compared to DealerOn, like their blog platform, page builder, not technically responsive, etc. But the average middle-of-the-road dealer wouldn't even use the blog, page builder, etc.
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I appreciate your thorough response! I hadn't considered #2 as in-depth (especially the part about the sorting features!) & ease of implementation for extras listed in #4.

Dealer Inspire is definitely one of our favorite platforms to work on, especially for creating custom landing pages. They also have built-in schema for parts of their sites that I don't think I've seen on other platforms, which gives a huge leg up for SEO. Dealer.com has made some updates in the past year and a half that have made page building much more complicated than it used to be. Some of the widgets can be challenging to configure as well, but I like your point of view on it all! DealerOn is welcomingly simplistic, and their support is great for website changes that are needed outside of the average Joe's level of editing access. *Edited to add: That being said, if you don't have HTML/CSS coding down pat, creating intricate landing page layouts will prove challenging on DealerOn.
 
#15
DealerOn is my choice hands down for any OEM. Dealer Inspire does have a few real advantages, but service, design flexibility, automatic landing page creation, and the bulk editing tools in backend make website management much simpler.

When checking out vendors for our groups, DealerOn put together the most attractive packages, and our salesperson was a great point of contact for escalating issues and getting free trials. My DI salesperson for the store we transitioned didn't reply to texts or voicemail once he closed the deal. Huge difference overall in personalized, actively good service. However, DI has a much more robust training/tutorial program and chat customer service, which are nice perks.

There's no way people should be choosing dealer.com in 2023 unless they totally change their website product. After a thorough audit of a site, I submitted a list of requests. The answer to every single one was either, "No," or, "If you sign up for X package for $yyy/month." DI and DealerOn both just said, "Yes." Dealer.com built-in reporting was also always way off.

In my opinion, it's a two dog fight. They're so far ahead of everyone else, neither is a "bad" choice. But I really like DealerOn's development pace, and they are a hungry company. They will work to get your business, which in my case saved my clients thousands of dollars a month, and they even gave us access to their employees' backend tools because we'd transitioned 9 sites. No way any other vendor was giving a small agency access to internal tools.
 
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#17
DrewAment said:
Website, Dealer, or Vender fault/problem??

Umm -- is it just me, does anyone see a problem here? 4MB of SCRIPTS???
View attachment 7710


6 GTM tags??
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All of the above - OEM, LMA, website vendor, and dealer ad agencies. We try to require that all vendors use our GTM (we provide edit access), but it's an uphill battle.
 
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#18
DrewAment said:
Website, Dealer, or Vender fault/problem??

Umm -- is it just me, does anyone see a problem here? 4MB of SCRIPTS???
View attachment 7710


6 GTM tags??
View attachment 7709
Click to expand...
Definitely a common problem on dealer websites. A common cause of excess tags is dealers switching vendors or website providers and not removing old ones. For the groups I've consulted with, one of my first site optimization steps is to get a list of every single tag & integration from their website provider. It's important to ask for integration info as well, because if you only ask for GTM, they might list only manually-added tags.

GTM and scripts are an area where dealers need to be proactive. I have never seen a canceled 3rd party say, "Be sure to remove our script, because it will slow down your site," but I've also never seen a new 3rd party say, "Be sure to remove your old vendor's scripts when you add ours." You don't know what you don't know, and I've found this to be an almost universal blind spot for dealers.

Edit to add: It's not just about site performance either. Those canceled parties are still getting data from you. I have seen old providers use that data to find flaws and try to win back business.
 
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#19
Ryan Everson said:
View attachment 7670

Here are the 6 Stellantis-approved website providers and my personal ranking:
  1. Dealer Inspire
  2. Dealer.com
  3. DealerOn
  4. DealerFire
  5. Dealer E-Process
  6. Pixel Motion (I have no personal experience with them, so ranking them last)
Click to expand...

Mostly agree, but I do believe I would give DealerOn the advantage over DDC. I may be biased since I was a user of DealerOn websites for too many years to count. If I recall correctly, I was one of the first 5 dealers using their platform. IF you gain full access to the admin, and have a decent knowledge in HTML/light code editing, etc - there's a lot of things you can achieve to increase efficiency and performance.
 
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