DealerCom posting other dealers prices on our website - anybody else having this problem?

[csabatka1]

They can easily fix this by simple logical programming on your site.

if dealer = x
display price

else
don't display price

Simple stuff.



I'll stay out of the conversation of displaying prices online or not. Anything can be programmed onto your site, but if a vendor will actually spend the time doing it is another question.

 

[yagoparamo]

Chad,

I think it will be easier to do on the data collection side rather than writing an exception on the website. The data distribution company can just set that outgoing feed without prices.

As for prices/no prices. 1000 arguments pro and con, however just doing some but no others maybe if anything very confusing for the clients looking at the site.

 

[craigh]

I think it's up for debate where it is easiest to do.
As someone who generates inventory feeds for providers and works with inventory feeds from providers, I prefer to play with the feed after I get the raw information.

If it was me, on a Dealer.com site and knowing their turnaround/custom work costs, I would just toss a JS script in there that compares the stock number against our stock number patterns. If it doesn't match it hides the price. Would take 15 minutes to write it up and you don't need Dealer.com to help implement it. Plus, if you decide to remove it you just delete the one line.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Would take 15 minutes to write it up and you don't need Dealer.com to help implement it. Plus, if you decide to remove it you just delete the one line.

As far as I know, you can't place custom JS script on a DDC website. That is something that will have to go through production / custom work and there is a cost sometimes. At the end of the day, he will need an identifier to separate his vehicles from everyone else.

 

[craigh]

As far as I know, you can't place custom JS script on a DDC website. That is something that will have to go through production / custom work and there is a cost sometimes. At the end of the day, he will need an identifier to separate his vehicles from everyone else.

"You can't" is the way the system was built, but there are gaping holes in it.
You can load JS files in at least 5 different places. Most stores have unique stock number patterns, so that can be the identifier. If the VLP has the stock number, it's in a specific class.
$('.stockNumberValue') will select the stock number for each vehicle, so it's very possible to do if they just wanted to test it.

Mind you, JS is never a dream solution.. but it works.

 

[Chris Cachor]

This might run a bit deeper than display details (filter facets (0-10k, 10-20k, etc) that use inventory values) so simply masking the prices not in their inventory could be a problem. Plus, the price is probably displayed on the site in more places than you think, so having the raw data correct before fiddling around in code I think makes more sense in this case. The biggest issue I see would be sourcing. Does ALL the inventory come in one feed for the single store, or multiple feeds for multiple stores are added to one site? I imagine getting all of the inventory into a single feed for the one store would be a very expensive data feed. I imagine there's a bit more to this problem than we know..

 

[joe.pistell]

Craig & Chris, great detective work. I sooo wish Craig's idea was the solution, but, Chris wins the "whats behind the curtain" analysis.

IMO, the most important question remains, "what happens if I remove lower priced vehicles from my shared feed?"

Funny how we've got a parallell thread to this topic going on right now: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/prices-website-yes-no-3472.html

Timely finding: Webmaster: Increased My Conversion Rate & Google Rankings Improved

Dropped Prices, Increases Conversion & Google Rankings Improved
​

Think about it.

 

[craigh]

Agreed. I don't like the idea, but if I'm not mistaken he noted that he doesn't have a choice in whether or not the vehicles are there.

I would see what you can do about the feed itself.. it may not be the easier approach (especially if the feed goes elsewhere, etc) but it will likely be the more reliable option if you want to do it long term.

That said, my vote is still on trying it in JS. It fixes the issue of multiple data feeds, etc. Dealer.com sites have fairly standard locations for prices to be listed, so I don't see it being a huge issue. You could even have the JS randomly hide prices vs. show prices for A/B testing and prove to the powers that be that it's a terrible idea.

 

[ewalraven]

They can easily fix this by simple logical programming on your site.

if dealer = x
display price

else
don't display price

Simple stuff.

I'm backing this solution. Sure, there might be more behind the curtain, but eventually you'll find something unique that can be used to separate the vehicles ...
- What the stock # begins with/ends with
- How the vehicles are priced (yes, sometimes you can break it down because all will end in "90", "95", etc.)
- How it comes across in the feed from your inventory provider
- What "store" it's in within your DMS
- A field labeled one way or another in your DMS
- A field labeled manually from your inventory provider

Curious to know how this conundrum turns out ... somebody keep this thread updated please.