Car dealers websites

L-M

So, when you are looking to buy a car, most people will generally use the likes of carzone.ie, autotrader.ie, cbg.ie etc. etc. to find the car they are after. The odd few may go straight to the dealers website.

If you were to go onto a dealers website, what do you look for?

PhilipMarlowe

Usually the 'back' button on the browser...

copacetic

If I click through to the dealers website, I'm usually hoping for much bigger pictures and more of them. Never happens though, the usually just have an embedded carzone search.

IMO autoquake is about the gold standard for car sites. No haggle pricing, fantastic pictures, including all docs and specific pictures of any issues. It's an easy enough thing to do but no-one else is bothered to do it.

I'd also like to see a car history, eg low mileage, one owner car. Or even

'high mileage, rep car, always serviced on time, clutch just done and mileage reflected in price'

Something they don't do is link directly to reviews of the exact model listed which would be nice.

-Chris-

Licksy wrote: »

Usually the 'back' button on the browser...

LOL, great answer!!!

Anyone got any other suggestions?

L-M

Aye, i see where you are coming from. But i was more so talking about the website itself.

In relation to look for bigger pictures. Nearly all dealers will have the embedded carzone listing on there site as it only requires them to update the carzone database and it works then for all.

I know what you mean by looking for more information on the cars, but to put up such information on each car wouldn't be time/cost effective. You see, carzone use a very simple system, where you input all the details or the car, and upload the pictures. It's very simple and anyone could use it. Where as to have your cars put up by you separately it would take alot longer, and you would have to have access to your website (which most dealers have someone else who designed and hosted the website for them) and also to have knowledge of html etc.

ninty9er

Limerick man wrote: »

I know what you mean by looking for more information on the cars, but to put up such information on each car wouldn't be time/cost effective.

Ned78 would beg to differ.

I'd like:

• A service booking page
• An "enquire about this car" button
• Name of the salesperson dealing with the car.
• skype us
• "this car was added on ---- and last updated ---"

Okay it's take 10 minutes per car, but WTF are you doing all day that you can't do it for every car that comes in?

L-M

ninty9er wrote: »

Okay it's take 10 minutes per car, but WTF are you doing all day that you can't do it for every car that comes in?

No, you see, unless the dealer had a program in which they could just input all of the information they wanted, then it would take ten minutes and i would agree with it. But the fact that you would have to know your html and all that craic, it would take alot longer than you think to get each one up.

Atomic Pineapple

Limerick man wrote: »

No, you see, unless the dealer had a program in which they could just input all of the information they wanted, then it would take ten minutes and i would agree with it. But the fact that you would have to know your html and all that craic, it would take alot longer than you think to get each one up.

seems like its screaming out to be a Rich Internet Application (RIA) :cool:

L-M

draffodx wrote: »

seems like its screaming out to be a Rich Internet Application (RIA) :cool:

Could well be, any entrepeneurs out there?? LOl

Atomic Pineapple

Limerick man wrote: »

Could well be, any entrepeneurs out there?? LOl

Looking into it in my final semester of college, we've started looking at RIA's today so we have to do a project so its an idea I might look into doin, obviously it wouldn't be a fully working version but its worth looking into

L-M

draffodx wrote: »

Looking into it in my final semester of college, we've started looking at RIA's today so we have to do a project so its an idea I might look into doin, obviously it wouldn't be a fully working version but its worth looking into

If you need any advice on what to have in it give me a shout.

Atomic Pineapple

Limerick man wrote: »

If you need any advice on what to have in it give me a shout.

will do indeed

ninty9er

Limerick man wrote: »

No, you see, unless the dealer had a program in which they could just input all of the information they wanted, then it would take ten minutes and i would agree with it. But the fact that you would have to know your html and all that craic, it would take alot longer than you think to get each one up.

It would take 10 minutes with a basic HTML course (which has not been cutting edge since the 90s). It should take no more than 3-4 with a GUI system.

-Chris-

copacetic wrote: »

IMO autoquake is about the gold standard for car sites. No haggle pricing, fantastic pictures, including all docs and specific pictures of any issues. It's an easy enough thing to do but no-one else is bothered to do it.

I've never looked at autoquake before - that's a fantastic site!
It's amazing that a dealer can invest the time in the architecture and design of such an excellent website, yet neither Irish dealers, dealer groups, the SIMI or carzone can do something half as well...

L-M

AudiChris wrote: »

I've never looked at autoquake before - that's a fantastic site!
It's amazing that a dealer can invest the time in the architecture and design of such an excellent website, yet neither Irish dealers, dealer groups, the SIMI or carzone can do something half as well...

Aye but would you not consider that site to be on par with the likes of carzone, rather than a dealer. It looks like alot of what they do is based online which is the complete opposite for a regular dealer.

ninty9er

Wouldn't like a dealer's site to be like Autoquake.

Owen

The major issue is that a lot of Dealers operating in smaller outlets just don't do the whole tinternet thing well at all - some have trouble printing invoices, let alone being artistic enough to take a selection of decent photos, noting down all the spec, going through the history of the car to write a commentary, etc. And what happens then is the age old story, mileages are displayed incorrectly, number of owners is incorrect, and cars get listed as having full service history without having anything of the sort.

I'm working on a new site for my Dealer at the moment which will be pretty much all singing and dancing in terms of the tech used to display the cars, but the system will be as good as the information going into it.

To answer the original question, I would imagine what a prospective sales customer is looking for in a site is :
Professional layout - it's the first reassuring step
Blurb about customer satisfaction and reassurance
Immediate links to a used car search, which isn't another Carzone offering
Clear photographs, taken indoors if possible under decent lighting
Good commentary about the vehicles on display
Clear call to action buttons to progress the potential purchase
Autoresponder eMail to acknowledge your eMail has been received
Followup eMails within 24 hours or less.

In my experience though, it's all a waste. 99% of the Irish public just go to Carzone. The only time they go to a Dealer's own page is to get directions to the garage, or find an eMail form to lodge a service complaint.

McSpud

As mentioned above Autoquake is an excellent site. The standardisation & level of detail in the pictures really would encourage customers to buy without ever seeing the car. Because the pictures are standardised it gives a feel they not taking from different angle to hide something.

I would expect maybe large number of car pictures on a dealer site unless they have something to hide. More importantly accurate list of cars available for sale. Lost track of the number of times seen cars listed on say carzone but not listed on dealers own site even though it is often embedded. Accurate opening times. Location map.

L-M

Thanks Ned, you pretty much hit it bang on. I made the website for our place as well, pretty much hit all the same things. Do you use a program to create yours or are you using standard html?

ninty9er

Personally I'd like a full body photo of the particular salesperson that can be superimposed onto each sale page, giving a short sales pitch for the car.

Owen

Limerick man wrote: »

Do you use a program to create yours or are you using standard html?

I would normally hand code with a text editor, graphics through GIMP/Photoshop/CorelDraw, flash stuff through OpenLazlo. With the new site though, to be honest, we're farming out a lot of the database work and connectivity to another company - my coding isn't that good, and my time doesn't allow me to get that good either.

L-M

ned78 wrote: »

I would normally hand code with a text editor, graphics through GIMP/Photoshop/CorelDraw, flash stuff through OpenLazlo. With the new site though, to be honest, we're farming out a lot of the database work and connectivity to another company - my coding isn't that good, and my time doesn't allow me to get that good either.

Aye HTML can be fairly messy, if you don't know exactly what you're doing to could spend hours perfecting each thing.

ninty9er

Please tell me you're not still using HTML Ned:eek:

Owen

lol, my HTML is grand, I've been at that donkeys, it's the php/mysql stuff that I'm weak enough with (Despite running a php/mysql rich site on the side), but with the new site, there's some interoperability with other sites which will need some serious backend work, and that's best left to people you can shout at when it breaks

ninty9er

ned78 wrote: »

lol, my HTML is grand, I've been at that donkeys, it's the php/mysql stuff that I'm weak enough with (Despite running a php/mysql rich site on the side), but with the new site, there's some interoperability with other sites which will need some serious backend work, and that's best left to people you can shout at when it breaks

Ah php is better alright, bu I assume if you're spending money to get a tight looking site it'll be Java based.

Owen

There'll be Javascript, but no Java - it's a hound on performance. Mostly some flash, a lot of database driven pages, some Javascript, but the rest will be down to good old fashioned content

Yakuza

Any content management system would not normally require the administrator to have the first clue about HTML. Normally, they would have access to a page where they input the details of the item in question (car, house etc) which would validate the data and then store it in the database so that it would appear in future searches.

The programmer of the system would provide these admin pages (with their look and feel specified by the dealer in high level terms), as well as the search pages that the end users see, but the admin user (dealer in this case) shouldn't have to know the first thing about markup.

Flash or AJAX would be the best platforms to knock up something very slick, but you could get the basics done in Classic ASP or php.

cianclarke

ninty9er wrote: »

It would take 10 minutes with a basic HTML course (which has not been cutting edge since the 90s). It should take no more than 3-4 with a GUI system.

..but the double entry would be soul destroying - any price drops, spec/pic changes, sales need to be changed on both. Definitely not very feasible.