Latest activity

Aug 14, 2009

Thanks for sharing Alex. This was a very informative webinar thanks largely to your input and willingness to share your expertise. I intend on distributing this to all of my dealers next week.

Here is the link to the recorded session available on Monday if you missed it:

Loading…

dealers.cars.com

John O'Connell · Aug 10, 2009

Guys EBay / GM are they making a play to bypass the dealers or are they trying to put the squeeze on the auctions to lower fees? It seems to me they are opening a can of worms with dealer associations etc to "increase market share" in a place like California where they are getting it handed to them from every angle. Upwards of 33% off vs imports.Or is it a inventory distressed merchandise dump for rdr's? Thanks as always

bpulseadmin · Aug 10, 2009

Our Best Cars, Your Best Offer: eBay Motors and General Motors Make Shopping For a New Vehicle Online as Easy as ‘Click and Buy’ from California Dealers

Shoppers now have online access to the new car showroom and can ask questions, negotiate price and make buying arrangements online from participating dealers.

SAN JOSE, Calif. and DETROIT, Mich. – August 10, 2009 – In a move to help simplify the carshopping process, eBay Motors and General Motors Company today announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind promotion that enables consumers to ‘click and buy’ new cars, crossovers and trucks online from participating California Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Pontiac dealers at outstanding values. The new car shopping website - gm.ebay.com - will be available to consumers from August 11 through September 8, 2009.

Consumers will be able to browse hundreds of California dealer online showrooms, ask questions, negotiate prices, and arrange financing and payment to purchase a new 2008, 2009 or select 2010 car, crossover or truck online. With more than 225 GM dealers in California participating, shoppers can at any given time expect to see a wide selection of up to 20,000 new GM vehicles at very competitive prices. Vehicles will be offered through eBay Motors’ traditional formats such as “Buy It Now” (where shoppers agree to pay the advertised price) and eBay’s innovative “Best Offer” option (where buyers indicate the price they are willing to pay and can negotiate online with the dealer for the vehicle).

The site also incorporates features that will allow consumers to compare pricing across models or participating dealerships, get tips and advice with a Buyer Checklist, and determine the value of their trade-in or whether their current vehicle may also qualify for government funded ‘Cash For Clunkers’ incentives.

“With 12 million individual car shoppers visiting our site every month, eBay Motors has unique insight into how people prefer to buy their cars,” said Rob Chesney, vice president, eBay Motors. “Through this program, we are helping GM dealers to extend their physical showroom while at the same time delivering to our buyers the great deals and broad selection they expect from eBay.”

“Together with eBay Motors, GM and our dealers are reinventing the car-buying experience for our California customers,” said Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of U.S. sales. “As the dealer showroom expands from the parking lot to the laptop, this makes it easier for a customer to browse available new-car inventory, make an offer, buy it now, or send a message asking for more information from a dealer – all at the customer’s convenience.”

gm.ebay.com represents a benchmark in the evolution of both online commerce and automotive sales, where the Internet is becoming the new dealer showroom and playing an increasingly important role in auto selection and purchase. A recent J.D. Power & Associates study cites more than 75 percent of new-vehicle buyers in 2008 used the web during their shopping and research process, compared with 70 percent in 2007. The study also found that 2008 marked the largest year-over-year increase in online automotive shopping since 2001.*

"We are very excited about being a part of this special eBay initiative in California. We've found that serious shoppers want it to be easy and have shifted from the traditional forms of researching and purchasing vehicles to getting it all done on the internet," said Ted Nicholas, president and CEO of Three Way Chevrolet in Bakersfield. "In the not too distant past, a customer had to work too hard to find a vehicle and what might be the best offer to be found. Now, with the custom-built GM/eBay microsite, customers can get all the information they need about available inventory, compare features and price ... and make a decision to buy a vehicle now or make an offer."

Complete program details including participating GM dealer inventory available through individual GM brand websites that can be found at gm.ebay.com, chevrolet.ebay.com,buick.ebay.com, gmc.ebay.com, and pontiac.ebay.com.

About eBay Motors
eBay Motors [www.ebaymotors.com], a part of eBay Inc., is the Internet's largest marketplace for buying and selling all things automotive. The site offers everyday cars for everyday drivers, as well as collector cars, motorcycles, auto parts and accessories. eBay Motors is consistently ranked the #1 automotive site on the Web by Nielsen//NetRatings (June 2009).

About eBay Inc.
Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. [NASDAQ: EBAY] connects hundreds of millions of people around the world every day, empowering them to explore new opportunities and innovate together. eBay Inc. does this by providing the Internet platforms of choice for global commerce, payments and communications. Since its inception, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including eBay, PayPal, Skype, StubHub, Shopping.com, and others. eBay Inc. is headquartered in San Jose, California.

About General Motors
General Motors Company, one of the world's largest automakers, traces its roots back to 1908. With its global headquarters in Detroit, GM employs 219,000 people in every major region of the world and does business in some 140 countries. GM and its strategic partners produce cars and trucks in 34 countries, and sell and service these vehicles through the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, Opel, Vauxhall and Wuling. GM's largest national market is the United States, followed by China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia and Germany. GM's OnStar subsidiary is the industry leader in vehicle safety, security

and information services. General Motors Company acquired operations from General Motors Corporation on July 10, 2009, and references to prior periods in this and other press materials refer to operations of the old General Motors Corporation. More information on the new General Motors Company can be found at gm.com.

# # #

*According to J.D. Power & Associates 2008 New Autoshopper.com StudySM (October 2008)

Aug 20, 2009

Ste - Thanks for coming back to respond. I would really like John to respond to me as I think he can help shed some light on Live Analytics and I'd like to offer some Dealer Refresh space to him so he can say more about it to the automotive industry. But he hasn't gotten back to me since August 8th, so I think I am going to pass the offer to someone else.

Since August 8th, I have done a little research myself and have found what John posted to be more accurate than what I was told previously. I still don't fully understand how it all works, so I can't intelligently speak to the various types of coding. Because of that, and the fact that John has not responded to me, I am going to let future readers of this article run off the short Edit and these comments. I would prefer to work with John on another article that takes the focus off of this one.

On another note, I have heard from a few people and companies who have now installed Woopra because of this article.

Aug 20, 2009

Alex,

Firstly sorry for sounding offensive. I can only echo what John said. What you claim is impossible. You need to have words with whoever told it was happening and get them to clue themselves up a bit. I don't mean to offend you, as re-reading your post now it sounds like your network bods came to that conclusion and your merely the messenger. Any professional network admin should be able to tell the difference.

Simply put, short of the Woopra javascript include (the defacto standard method that analytics systems use these days) running exploits against your visitors browsers and installing viruses onto your visitors computers it's just not going to happen the way you've been informed.

Aug 20, 2009

Ste - I shot an email off to John at Woopra asking for a little more clarification. He has not responded to me, so what the hell do you expect? At this time all I have is a comment in this article from him - is that enough to go on?

Aug 20, 2009

Hi Alex,

The little note to read John's comment hardly does the job justice of correcting your misinformation. In my eyes it's akin to a newspaper running a headline article calling someone a rapist only to print an apology saying they were wrong in an 8pt footnote on page 37.

IMHO, make it a all bold, and begin after "EDIT:" with an admission of fault and you might be getting somewhere.

Ste Daniels

umer.autojini · Aug 17, 2009

It be great if the CRM companies provided the option to link data to live customer view.

As far as cookies goes... third-party cookies are track-able across sites. Most browsers have an option to either disable or alert you about third party cookies... Woopra can track the user across two sites... as longs both sites are using Woopra... so can ActivEngage.

Aug 11, 2009

I think it's awesome when dealers start getting into the analytics, that's really the crux of digital.

I'm curious what dealers are using as KPI's to measure their success. I'm a firm believer in dashboards. Otherwise you risk an excess of information that's valuable, but more detrimental if not applied towards goals.

Aug 11, 2009

I sent John Pozadzides an email, but haven't heard back from him. I'm glad he came in here to clarify things.

Aug 8, 2009

Live analytics is very addicting, I have used Bold Chat for about three years and it has all the features you have talked about and a bit more. I advise owners all the time on the value but very few see that it is of any use to them to sell a car!!! Goes to show most dealers are still way behind Internet marketing.

If I was to be behind a desk again I would absolutly insist on Bold chat again, as not only the analytics are valuable but you sell vehicles almost everyday using that tool, great for setting appointments and completing credit apps. If you do not have one of these chat tools call monday morning and get it, you can get bold chat for ten days "free" just install and go easy as 1,2,3

Aug 8, 2009

Alex,

This is a rather difficult comment to leave, because I don't want it to come across as angry or chastising - so please grace me with a little latitude.

I appreciate that you blogged about this topic, as I am a huge proponent of online privacy. In fact, I've blogged about it endlessly on my personal blog. So, if Woopra were doing as you've suggested - tracking every visitor to your site even after they've left it - then I would be the first person to say it should be dismantled and burned to the ground!

But it is not. And as long as I own and manage the company it never, ever will.

From a purely technical standpoint, what you've suggested to be occurring is literally impossible (not just difficult). I suspect that your folks noticed, and reported a different behavior to you which I'll explain in a moment, but first let me deal with this assertion. As I understand it, you were led to believe that the tracking cookie that Woopra installs somehow persists in the visitor's browser and then reports back to Woopra on all of their future activities. But a cookie is only a small snippet of text which is in no way executable, meaning it cannot "do" anything.

Wikipedia has a nice write up on it here.

The entire contents of a cookie generally looks like this:
RMID=732423sdfs73242; expires=Fri, 31-Dec-2010 23:59:59 GMT

The only purpose of the cookie is to set the unique identifier so that a Web server can tell if you are a returning visitor or a new one. It allows you to stay logged into a site when you come and go without having to re-enter credentials, for example.

Now, the behavior that I suspect your folks noticed which they misunderstood was as follows:

The Woopra service requires that you install a little javascript on your Web page whose primary purpose is to send us visitor details so we can report it to you. However, the javascript we use also has a timer function which "pings" our server on a fixed schedule - as long as the visitor remains on YOUR site.

By pinging us periodically we can verify that a visitor is still on your site. Without this verification any estimation of a visitor's time is merely a guess. Other services do not have to do this because they are not truly "live". However, I can assure you that the moment the visitor leaves your Web site, they are no longer sending us data, because they are no longer executing the javascript.

I hope this clears up the confusion, and I would invite you to return to using your Woopra account! All the guessing you did about whether the client you saw on your site was the one who filled out the form would be unnecessary, as Woopra would link the two events together for you absolutely. There really is no substitute...

You've got my contact details, and I hope you will reach out to me if any lingering questions remain. We are committed to 100% transparency to avoid exactly this sort of confusion. I just regret that you missed out on collecting a years worth of data in Woopra because of a misunderstanding. But it's never too late to start!

Cheers,

John P.

John Pozadzides
Chief Executive Officer
iFusion Labs (Woopra)

Aug 7, 2009

Sorry I wasn't more clear about that Mark. It is a cookie, but the cookie reported ALL browsing behavior back to Woopra - not just on the site the person browsed with the Woopra code. We discovered it as our employees hit our website and our servers were overrun with pings back to Woopra each time they hit a new page on the Internet. It was easy enough for us to install a block, but did not feel this was the type of thing we could stand behind for our customers.

Aug 7, 2009

I may be a bit unclear on this but you said "we discovered they were installing some sort of feeder on each of our visitors browsers that pinged back all Internet-surfing histories to Woopra." I looked at woopra's site and they state that they place a cookie on incoming browsers. Most commercial sites do this like amazon etc. is this so bad?

Alex Snyder · Aug 7, 2009

Over a year ago Jeff told me about a website called Woopra that allowed me to watch site traffic as it was happening on Checkered Flag.com. I was able to see what search phrase each visitor used to find us, where in the world they were, the configuration of their Internet connection, browser, and operating system along with many other things. I was immediately hooked! The learning experience from seeing things happen in real time is much stronger than viewing reports about what had already happened. Instead of all visitors being looked at on one page of report stats, I was performing tech-psychology on each person. How long did they spend on the finance application? What piece of inventory did they look at before submitting that finance application? Did they click the finance application link on the inventory page or from the nav bar? Did they use Google to find that piece of inventory and how much did they misspell things when they entered that search query into Google?

To the casual reader, these might sound like silly questions but they're incredibly insightful to have the answers to when you're building your website, SEM campaign, or BDC.

Unfortunately, a short time after installing Woopra, we discovered they were installing some sort of feeder on each of our visitors browsers that pinged back all Internet-surfing histories to Woopra. We quickly yanked the code and went without the live analytics for a while. EDIT: Woopra has commented on this - be sure to read the comments from this article.

Then I started speaking to Todd Smith at ActivEngage. We immediately hit it off on eCommerce philosophies and he mentioned to me that a big part of their chat tool is a live analytics piece. He had even more of my attention! In fact, he got enough of my attention to bring Checkered Flag on as a new ActivEngage client. Yes, we have live analytics again - I'm a happy man!

As I'm typing this article I am seeing that Cash for Clunkers is starting to die down on search phrases and used car searches are on the rise again (a trend I would have had to of waited days to see in regular site analytics). I am watching someone who came from Honda.com jump from used inventory searches on a Pilot to new inventory searches on the 2010 Pilot - that person is obviously doing price comparisons. That person is also looking at our Honda specials, so the 0% APR financing must be enticing that new car search. And now that person just left; spending about 5 minutes on the site....and guess what - there's a lead sitting in the CRM on a new 2010 Pilot that just popped up. I wonder if that is the same person? He or she was the only one looking at Pilots.

Just one more example: I answered a chat from a Mrs. Greene this morning who wanted to know if a certain salesperson was still with us that she had bought a car from in the past. That was at 8:56 AM. She came on Checkered Flag.com at 8:51 AM and is still browsing the Honda used car inventory at 9:21 AM. She came to our site via a Used Car Honda SEM Campaign and has now looked at almost our entire Honda inventory while spending 3 minutes of that time looking at a Certified 2007 Accord EX-L in Silver. I have a feeling she called that salesperson and he is guiding her through the inventory and they finally landed on a car. I'll check the CRM again in a few minutes to see if he got an appointment.

We are getting ready to launch a whole-new version of Checkered Flag.com and even though it won't be 100% obvious what changes we've made to get away from the typical dealership website architecture, I can attribute that a lot of the theories and practices we've incorporated have come from the knowledge gained from Live Analytics.

Thank you Todd and everyone at ActivEngage!

Sep 22, 2009

Mindy, where did you get that info? Your dealership fronted the money to the customer, and then you are paid directly into your dealership account the $3500 or $4500 by the NHTSA via CitiGroup - so why would General Motors (US Motor Liquidation Co.) need that money that your dealership fronted, without interest?

P.S. Of the 82 submitted deals for CARS, we've been paid on 80, with just 2 Under Review - one of them since July 28th!

P.P.S. For those of you who submitted these for your dealership, I hope they paid you very handsomely for your tireless efforts.

jj14268 · Sep 18, 2009

i have had one approval left for three days, why do you mock me nhtsa?

Sep 16, 2009

I understand that after my invoice is paid, I have to submit a payment voucher supplied by the government to General Motors. Does anyone know how to access the payment vouchers?

Sep 12, 2009

Let's face facts, this is a mainly a dealer exchange, we understand the ins and outs of our business and why some dealers did what they did, they tried to make sure they kept their doors open when the government didn't pay out in a timely fashion (the nerve of those assholes).

Another thing to keep in mind is you only see a handful of customers bitching throughout this thread when in reality 700,000 people made purchases, overall it looks like most dealers followed the guidelines or customers understood the risk the dealer was taking and were willing to work with them.

So I guess the best thing to do is look at this in a positive light, because we all know you would have still be driving your clunker for quite a bit longer than the month these dealer inconvenienced you. The only reason these customers bought was the government rebate, so be happy, you are driving or will be driving a new car soon and you won't need to carry your supply of duct tape a bailing wire with you anymore.

Oh yea, I am glad this will get back to a being a dealer forum now.

jj14268 · Sep 11, 2009

Yikes, so much tension, you could cut it with a knife. A knife that will have to be scanned, converted to a pdf file and sent as a legible attament to the NHTSA for review. My dealership has several knives rejected, but we are about 50% paid on the sales of 84 cars under this program. Thank Goodness we had, and still have available capital for this. This is the part that consumers do not know or care about. If the dealer was on this program, then that dealer was under the impression the they would be loaning the money to the NHTSA while they processed these documents to then pay the dealer back. We, like many are still waiting for in most cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and have been for nearly two months. You are all welcome, and thanks for participating in the program.

Sep 11, 2009

Last-Last-Last thing: my SINCERE aplogies to John Quinn at Reed-Lallier. I HONESTLY am not John Quinn from Reed-Lallier. I was very confused by the reference until I googled it myself. Next time, I'll try to pick a name that's not already in use!!

Sep 11, 2009

I was done here too, but one last thought: It's been very interesting to see the chasm here between Dealers and Consumers. Obviously, the Dealers on this (Dealer) forum are "in the know" here: this is our business, our livelihood -- we know what we are talking about -- we are the professionals in this equation. As such we often tend to forget (at least I do -- and it's 13+ years for me here...) how EMOTIONAL people get about their cars. And while it can provide a chuckle (or several chuckles

), or provide a headache, it actually can be one of the nicer parts of our job: for every one of "those" people that just can't be pleased no-matter-what, there are many of those who actually "love" their new cars, become friends with their salespeople for life, and make this job fun. So Deb -- don't let the few bother you. You can see how the dealers on this string have attempted to factually, locically explain to the consumers (on this DEALER forum) what's really happening, only to be completely ignored by irrational, emotionally-charged thought processes. And that's OK -- I'm the same way at the Doctor's office: I hate sitting in that waiting room! Even though logically I know that the Doctor and his staff have no intention of frustrating me, and are doing the best they can, it's easy to get annoyed (emotional) and topical to "slam" the encounter when relating my woes to Aunt Betty. That's just the way we're wired, I guess. We're going to make our point, find the facts we think support our cause (twist them to fit if we have to), and complain. So at the end of the day, you (and by "you" I mean "we," "us," "everyone")can sit back and either be thankful for your good fortune, or complain about how unfair life is: we all know people on both sides of that aisle. So this is my last clunker post: at the end of the day, 700,000 consumers got a "freebie" from the government, dealers got their first decent month in almost 2 years, there were some problems, and some difficulties, it was tough, it was fun. There will always be the people that complain, but the majority of the people -- and I helped several hundred -- were thrilled with the program and couldn't believe their good fortune. I'll stick with those folks, and continue to bend-over backward when any of them ever need anything. Take care!!

Sep 11, 2009

I want to thank the car dealership people who answered my questions earlier in quest for understanding the program, what was right, what was wrong, how things work.

I still have great respect for those who did it right AND I must now add, showed respect for the customer behind the water cooler as well as in the showroom.

I am sorry my frustration at non compliant dealers caused Kim any further distress by the comments of Mr. John Quinn. Mr. Quinn, General Sales Manager, for me negated some of the positive attitude I had developed towards those who claim to have done it right-delivered the car on the first day of sales etc. I asked him to correct where I was wrong because I happen to genuinely want to know and have no problem admitting when I misunderstand or do not understand something. I have less patience for hiding ignorance as a means to what? A false impression? More bad information, or ignorance? I do not work in the auto industry. I don't expect all who do to know everything about any one else's profession or day to day procedures. I sought information from all the sources I could, including the manufacturer-at many levels, lawmakers in the government who crafted the C4C, the usual suspects in this program-NHTSA, the CARS hotline, the dealership I worked with, dealerships I didn't work with etc.

Unfortunately, Reed-Lallier dealership, who I have no cause to doubt followed the rules, now, in my mind has a bruise. Is there a dealership who doesn't claim the importance of Customer Service and Professionalism in describing their business and their employees? I thought and continue to think highly of my salesperson. I came to the conclusion that his dealership did not give him all the information he should have had, did not train him completely/properly on the program. However, that did not absolve the dealership and all the other management who, like Mr. Quinn, were in charge of submitting paperwork, were in charge of the program for their dealership, the owner and the finance manager -all who made statements and claims that were not in line with the program etc. They could have done things differently and chose not to.

Good luck to all those who do things right in the auto industry. You have a tough image problem to overcome.

My background happens to be in Customer Service for a Fortune 500 company. I have trained countless personnel to provide Customer Service to those who chose to do business with us. It is easiest to provide CS when the customer is happy. It is more of a challenge and telling of the quality of the individual and organization when the customer is not. Good CS can be had even when circumstances beyond your control come into play. Much of that lies in communication, education and honesty.

For those unjustly accused or included in negative comments you have my apologies and sympathy.
I have learned a good deal here.

Sep 11, 2009

Well Deb for the record both my husband and I work hard also. I have 3 children in college and one of them getting married next year. I do think about all of you and the work you do. But you don't know who or what we have had to deal with. I expected our dealership to tell us the truth, but each time we talked to them it was one lie after another, and the sad thing is they couldn't even keep there lies in line from one person to the next. So, if your dealership is different than that Great! and Thanks, I am sure that your customers must love you. I wish I could say the samething about ours. (Maybe it's because once there stock is sold they are down to only one line and possibly losing that also).

Sep 11, 2009

I wasn't going to comment any further but the more I thought about Kim and Ann's posts the more infuriated I became. Therefore I need to say briefly that ladies you are welcome. The fact that I work hard and can afford a newer vehicle did not give me the opportunity to take advantage of this program. However, again because I work hard, my taxes enabled you to purchase new vehicles. As my taxes go up via increase in income, utilities, soda(!?)
I'll be thinking of you far longer than you will be of a dealer that was trying to protect their business. I believe you owe your neighbors, employers, and family a thank you.

Latest activity

Latest activity

Filter