Are you still looking for a site Jeff?

What more could Dealer.com do? They have already created the worlds greatest dealer website. Before anyone has anything bad to say about Dealer.com you need to go to the Checkered Flag site… Now that is a site that says, “we believe in the Internet!”

But for you regular Joes like me, here are my thoughts..

First off, to the few above who claim to have problems, let me explain something. Every site I have managed from other web site providers has had problems. You know, Dealer.com is continually changing and evolving. You may not see it, but the platform your site sits on is changing daily, improving, helping your site for example, index better... If you prefer to have a stagnant site that does not keep up with current times, call Cobalt, I got their number if you need it…

Seriously, if you are having problems and something is effecting the efficiency of your site -like missing pictures, or something, it will all get worked out. They always figure it out. Have you ever thought of the possibility that what ever is wrong is originating from your inventory manger program? Having pictures of used vehicles missing on my site will not stop me from selling cars. I just put a good description in on each vehicle! I am being serious here. In this business you have to overcome obsticals. No pictures getting to your site? Be proactive and make it work in the interim.

But, if your rep is not handling your request in a manner you do not approve, ask for your issue to be elevated to a higher level, like your reps boss. You can even go around your rep if you want. Dealer.com has never ignored any of my complaints, issues, or requests. Heck, Mike D. is even at your disposal! Issues resolved!

I once had a problem with something (not my rep) and it was immediately dealt with. BTW be careful what you put in a blog, as they (DDC) are watching you! LOL

EVERY time I come up with something new for our site, my Dealer.com rep finds a way to make it happen. I could list 100 things, but no need.

I might also add that in my opinion the Dealer.com back end tool, the "smart site composer," is the best back end tool out there. Honestly, I have not seen them all, but I have worked with quite a few website providers over the years and Dealer.com does it right. And, I have to add again, my rep was excellent as he helped me learn the program. My rep is also continually letting me know about what changes are coming in the near future, and when new tools are available to me in the composer.

As far sales success? Our conversion rate was at 8% last month, not including our instant messages, and leads from Black Book which are both housed on our site. So with those included, I figure we were at more like a 10% conversion ratio. That is unheard of (I think)... Not to mention the phone traffic…. Funny, I had someone from another dealer who has a Dealer.com site say in delaerrefersh.com that my site is weak! Yeah right! Well maybe, sometimes when my spelling is off, but I got to spell pre owned three ways for Google… (If anyone does not know why you have to do that, start on this site from page one…) Anyway…

Our site indexes very well, as it is easily manipulated to move up the ranking with very few tweaks from our geeks (I do it).

Time spent by visitors on our site doubled last month from prior months, and is up to 10 min per visitor this month (must have something to do with video on my site). Yeah, we are getting a lot of traffic, a lot of leads, and a lot of sales!

As far as design goes, well obviously they can do just about anything. Just think about what all the other web site providers are doing, they are not even in the same league. I would say that Dealer.com wants to embrace anythng essential as fast as they can build it. They may not be all the way there yet, but they are years ahead of the competition.

And Jeff, if you are still looking for a site, and want to talk over Dealer.com with me again, I can give you an update from our last conversation. Call me…

Great comments!

Michael Lane, COO of Dealer.com, was the keynote speaker of Champlain College's "BYOBiz" entrepreneur series this evening in Burlington, VT.

Wow, Michael has passion to spare! Listening to his company's plan to innovate and grow while keeping their customers success job one was inspiring.

Thanks for your thoughts and insight Michael!

Gary, curious if we took care of all of your issues? I looked up your history with us and see over 30 pages of documented service, including tech support calls, issues resolved after hours, special email support, custom changes to our account and so on. I think that customer service can be a challenging thing for the client and the vendor sometimes because much of it relies not only on the service itself but the understanding of the parameters of the service itself. I am here at 11:30pm looking at your account and I see that we have done everything possible to continue to make your dealership happy.

If there are issues, dealers can always contact me and let me know if our team is not taking care of things. Every website marketing company has issues with integrations and inventory data and we pride ourselves on having the very least of them.

This can only be learned if you have had the experience of trying multiple services and experiencing them all. With that said we are always striving for perfection and will continue even if it may be "impossible"

I can be reached at Mark@dealer.com with any thoughts regardless of being a large client, small client or potential future client. I am here to help dealers succeed.

ps- Steven, please email me direct and I will make sure we get you all the info on the Chrysler websites as soon as it is available.

Mark Bonfigli
President, CEO
Dealer.com, Inc
Mark@dealer.com

Has anyone seen what Dealer.com has instore for the new Chrysler Corporation dealer pages that are to be launched in October 2008? I am very curious since 20-30% of my new car business is off this.

The saga continues... For the past 3 days I, and all other DEALER.com victims, have been unable to batch upload photos. Rest assured I could go in and upload one photo at a time but I choose not to. I'm sure their solution will be, once again, to just make the feature go away. If it doesn't work trash it.

Gary:

I just saw your post and if you're still having an issue, contact me directly and we'll work any issues out. We certainly don't want anyone to feel that we have non-existent customer service. We have an extraordinarily low attrition rate because of our award winning service and account management team. My direct e-mail is miked@dealer.com and direct phone is 888-807-9119

Before posting I read the rules so I'm going to "play nice". They say to add something positive. OK the positive is that I only signed a 2 year contract and only have 20 months remaining of this totally nonexistent customer service.
I have had issue after issue such as Technical specs being invalid, updates not being posted to AutoTrader and VIN decoding not working properly. It appears their solution is always to take off that feature. I can see it now a customer comes in because her A/C isn't working so we just take it out. Sounds like a solution to me.
I have yet to receive a phone call from and an individual I

Alex -

I'm not following you on your statement of "when I look closely there does not seem to be much of a difference between what you actually get in terms of what these sites can do for you."

There are HUGE differences between all the site hosts. Some only offer Flash sites, others have ways to incorporate Flash in a way that doesn't hurt your search engine standings. Some only offer template sites, while many will create something custom for you. Then there are tons of side products a vendor might offer: SEM, SEO, Video, Special Inventory modules, ILM, Inventory control with 3rd party pushing, and more! However, the most important difference is a site host's ability to innovate - this is where you really see some major differences when you look closely.

The big hot button for me is being able to control my own content on any part of the site. Dealer.com just moved to their V8 platform which allows a lot more flexibility in this area. I see you're on a Reynolds and Reynolds site - we used to be on their stuff because they bought AutoMark back in the day. It has gone way down-hill since the AutoMark days. We still have our Scion site with them, and I am pushing hard to migrate that away from Rey-Rey. Then I'd love to get to work on getting VW and MINI to give-up on force-feeding their dealers CoBalt.

If you're happy with your Rey-Rey site, then I understand your statement. But I've found the people who are happy with Rey-Rey or CoBalt sites are happy for two reasons:

1. It is cheap
2. They don't know any better

I will say you've done a much better job with yours than most! I like the colors!

Every Web Provider has it's "pitch" however when I look closely there does not seem to be much of a difference between what you actually get in terms of what these sites can do for you. It seems simple enough to me to use a simple platform, look around at the so called "conversion tools" that these Web Providers have, and ad them to your site. I think support is probably the most important because it would be tough to do this without support.

I would like to make some update on my posting on August 24, 2007 regarding dealer.com. In that posting I complained about dealer.com support but I never criticized their product. I would like to mention that their product is fairly good. I should say that their support line has been improved, it might not be the best but it is very good.

Brian & Joe,

I haven't moved over to the V-8 Dealer.com platform yet. It is going to be instituted on the newest rendition of Checkered Flag.com (coming soon). I've been working as closely as a dealer can with Dealer.com's staff to rebuild our current DDC site. They've been fantastic to work with! There are some technologically limiting things any automotive site hosting company will not be able to overcome, and I've experienced a few of those small issues in this rebuild myself.

Joe - I know you're looking for a lot of marriages between a site host and various parts of your daily business loads. I love some of your ideas (one's we've discussed over the phone) and hope they'll be used one day. I'm extremely excited about the future of all the technological marriages happening everywhere. The one I'm really looking forward to is the notion that CRM becomes CMS (Customer Marketing Software) and everything else feeds into it.....think of a DMS system becoming a plug-in to a CRM/CMS system instead of the CRM being secondary to a DMS. I have to thank Keith Latman of iMagicLab for opening my eyes to that realization.

Of all the site hosting companies out there, I have found Dealer.com to be the most open-minded and open-eared to my wishes and needs. There are limitations to how far they can go right now, but a little patience will open doors wider.....and a fat wallet will always open doors faster.

I hope you find the right vendor for your needs Joe. Like I said, I think you've got some amazing ideas, but they're years ahead of where things are today. One of my Navy SEAL buddies says he's the tip of the sword, but Joe - I think you're the first round in the clip that hasn't found a target yet. Yes, that's a compliment!

Joe,
V-8 is the new platform they offer. Allows you to embed video and is supposedly more search engine friendly then the older generation platform of my site. Alex could tell you more about the custom work.

Question:
New dealer.com platform coming?

Is there a summary of what changes are instore? I am about ready to pull the trigger on a new vendor. All I want to know is it more customizable than whats up now?

Joe Pistell
Marketing Director
UsedCarKing.com

This is an awesome company which just happens to have their headquarters located about 5 minutes away from our dealership. I know their employees personally, I have been inside their building, and I have seen the explosive growth they have achieved.

It is obvious to me that they will be on the leading edge of whatever technology develops...and that much of that development will originate inside the walls of their beautiful new building in Burlington, Vermont.

Great people...great customer service...great products and fair pricing. Plus, you know they are constantly working to upgrade the product.

I heartily endorse this company, and would be more than happy to speak with anyone about it.

John Kimel
Business Development Manager
ACURA-AUDI-VOLKSWAGEN

I've been impressed with their websites and SEM tool, and the tack-on cost of the ILM tool seems awesome. I'd like to try them.

James,

I invite you to contact me direct so I can ensure there is no issues with your service moving forward. It has been our mission to be proactive in our customer service approach and to help dealers drive new found success using our internet marketing solutions. You can reach me at mark@dealer.com and I will respond usually within 5 minutes. Once we touch base I will personally see to it that you are back on track like the thousands of other dealers we serve that are raving fans!

This truly is a different company and we will aim to change your opinion and earn your trust in the future.

Very sincerely,

Mark Bonfigli
President, CEO, Founder
Dealer.com, Inc

This is my old take on them: http://dealer.com/success-stories/checkeredflag/index.htm

I've just grown happier since!

I have set up three different dealerships with Dealer.com websites and have been happy all three times, especially since on average it takes them about two weeks to have me up and running after the contract is signed. I always shop around before making my final decision and Dealer.com always seems to give me the most bang for the buck.(I shopped TK Carsites and Dealerskins last time)

I am not a programmer like James, but the website is easy to update and change and the ILM tool is easy to use and track information in. If I was more advanced I might be able to see the shortcomings mentioned, but then again most of us doing this job don't have computer degrees or have the time to get them, we are just looking for something that is simple to use and update.

As for support, I have a great rep that helps with my lack of programming ablility, if I can describe or show him what I want from another site, we can usually get somthing worked out. I guess I look at it this way, the product wouldn't be rated in the top three by dealers in autodealermonthly if it didn't perform. I have also noticed they constantly improve and update their product and sites, the first site I had a couple of years ago was not even close to what I have on their newest generation of websites.

I worked at a other Dealership and had dealer.com and moved to a different state to work as a ISM and It has a different ISM tool as well as a web site provied and with much talking my new dealership has signed with dealer.com I am very excited to be back with a winner like dealer.com

James, this falls under the same idea that Jeff recently posted about -- customer service sucks in the industry.

We have been working with Dealer.com for couple of years, Initial contact with Dealer.com was not my decision, I was not working with that dealership at the time. About 4 months ago we renewd termes with Dealer.com which was not again my decision. I am advanced in computer technology and worked for 10 years as information system specialist and tech support so I know my basics. my experience with Dealer.com been one of the worst for the last 5 years working in automotive industry. Just terrible support, unexperienced crew...what else? the never return a call on couple of issues I had with them and where insisting that there is no problem at all. As an experience person in computer field I would recomend try your other options or at least dont invest too much on Dealer.com

Dealer.com is what our company uses, there have been a few snafu's but ultimately they're an up & comer company that will give you what you need.

I really enjoyed reviewing the question and comments in regard to inventory live or virtual. 15 months later I think it would be interesting as to how attitudes are changing and in which direction......

As 1 in 7 people in the US today are Hispanic, do any of the online systems allow for Spanish language content to be displayed in parallel? Is this an issue, or a non-issue?

To represent "We can get anything or only show what you have?"

Effective sales practice is to effectively manage consumer expectations. "Come on in, we have it" is a lie if you don't. "We can get anything" is a lie if you can not.

But the world is not so black and white. How about these:

1) Configure what you want.
2) Tell us where you have flexibility
3) We can get just about anything, so we can order what you want from the factory, dealer trade what you want in and here are the closest ones from our inventory to what you specified
4) Oh and here is one with more equipment, one with less equipment and the closest used vehicle we have to it for you to compare your options

Isn't that what you would do in the showroom?

Why would you do less for an Internet consumer? I'll give you a hint: because your dealership's use of the Internet is nothing more than an advertising medium.

Until you adopt a true eCommerce capability where consumers can actually do meaningful shopping on your sites, just stick to whatever your effective Internet advertising practices are.

I make no secret that my company has just such an eCommerce system for a dealer to provide to their consumers. It is also a hybrid approach - confirmed email to get in... so dealer gets more + better leads even if don't buy within system... but that is not the point of this post.

If you are a dealership and the point of your Internet strategy is to get consumers to call or email so they'll come in and buy, then set a true, effective expectation and support it with the "calls to action" on your website.

He (or she) who has the best experience wins with the Internet consumer (which is all of them these days).