You can see it in form on sites such as Carfolks.com and AutoConverse.com and also with providers such as dealerMouth which strives to be a complete online operating system for sales professionals. The idea is that people buy cars from people, not dealerships.

Dealership websites today are effective at converting in-market buyers into leads, however they are not conversational and there is little ability to establish rapport which seems to be a growing demand in the car business. This explains why networks such as Facebook have become so readily adopted by dealers.

The problem with sites such as Facebook is that it was not designed for people to do business with car dealers, rather it was designed for people to connect, engage, and share their lives with other friends, however close or distant they might be. Therefore, it has limited use for car dealers who must be conscientious of getting a good return on their time investment.

Enter websites for sales professionals. On Carfolks.com an automotive sales professional gets his own page which is associated with his or her dealership and all other staff from that dealership that are on the site. Customers can rate individual sales people and entire dealerships. Sales staff can use their page as a communication point with customers entering the buying funnel. On AutoConverse.com, members have a profile and can create unlimited merchant sites which they can use to cherry-pick potential customers from forum discussions.

Now while this idea might appear new in automotive internet marketing, the perpetuating need for it over the past many years has been apparent. I recall back in 2003 working with a dealer who wanted us to build him this capability, but the timing for it was just not right. Today, with social media in its hey day and automotive sales professionals bumping head on into its limitations as a sales tool, the timing for technology designed specifically for dealership personnel to conduct business in an online social environment is ripe.

Which leads us to how and why new tools such as this are important. It boils down to a couple things…

a.) Brand building and online reputation management, or word-of-mouth advertising
b.) Transaction-equipped interfaces that give dealers and customers an even playing field

In the video below, Carfolks.com founder Mark Dubis dives into the idea of word-of-mouth advertising by looking at how the review capability accessible to people on Google and Yahoo!, and DealerRater do not create a level playing field for dealerships, plus how by offering space for dealers to truly manage their own online reputation as it pertains to their role at a dealership, more accurate depictions of positive customers experiences can be recorded and incentify customers to share these experiences with others.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not until dealers have and use tools such as this, designed specifically for staff members at auto dealerships to connect with and engage customers through time, will the process of selling cars be any different from a decade ago. It’s time to think outside the box to gain a true competitive edge in today’s automotive digital marketplace.

The premise behind this video is about how auto dealer websites consistently underwhelm visitors and what is required to change that. While preparing for the web cast we ran to record this, I found myself disagreeing with some of Brian’s position about car dealer websites.

“Not all dealer websites are inadequate,” I would argue. But Brian would kindly and firmly say, “yes they are”. “Some do a good job,” I would continue. “No they don’t,” he would say.

But now I agree with Brian. What literally just about every car dealer website lacks today is online work flow, which is a common characteristic of the big e-commerce sites out there such as Amazon.com and eBay. By online work flow, Hoecht means that there is no total online experience for visitors on a dealer site. You can’t actually shop like you can on true e-commerce sites.

Here is an example…
Today I was on Flavia.com ordering coffee. I logged in to my account, browsed the selection, placed items into my shopping cart, mistakenly moved some items from my shopping cart to my favorites list, then put them back into my shopping cart after I realized what I did. When I went to check out I didn’t like the idea of paying $9 shipping for one month supply of coffee so I added more to my cart to stretch that shipping expense out across more time. But my shipping only increased so I called to see why shipping was so expensive.

While the customer service rep on the phone was explaining that there is a per-item charge for shipping I had another call come in so I told the rep I had to go and would deal with this later. I closed my browser and took the other call. Then when I came back later in the day, everything was right where I had left it, e.g. in my shopping cart awaiting me to purchase.

Now this was a true shopping experience. Despite not buying the coffee on my first visit, the fact that I could return later and pick up where I left off was clutch. This is not something you can do on any car dealer website I know of.

So Brian is right. Dealer sites do underwhelm because you can’t do anything on them but get to the end of a cul de sac and then ask for assistance or more information. There is no true e-commerce on most auto dealer sites which typically want to “marry you on your first date.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The blacklist area is located in the Discussions section under your Settings menu. When you go there notice that by default we have a setting marked that requires a commenter have an approved comment before his or her first comment appears on your blog. This setting not only helps prevent spam from appearing on your blog, but also gives you the opportunity to ensure some level of trust with actual people visiting and commenting on your blog. It is recommended you keep this setting in place.

Once you are in the Settings > Discussions area you can insert any criteria such as email addresses, words or phrases, and of course IP addresses into the Blacklist box to prohibit content matching your criteria from appearing as comments on your blog.

After doing this, remember to save your settings and then also mark the comments as spam which you can do in the Comments area of the admin.

If you have any questions about this or want to dive deeper into this topic feel free to contact us or to leave your comments below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

First you log in to your WordPress site. BlogPro Automotive runs on WordPress so if you are in the auto industry and would like a free account on our system please sign up to receive your free account. If you are not in the auto industry you can visit our other WordPress system at www.autoburstwebs.com to to do the same.

Once you are logged in you will be at what is called the Dashboard. From there, select the blog you wish to work in by choosing the “My Blogs” link in the Dashboard menu section at the top left of your screen. Now you should see a list of all blogs to which you have access. On BlogPro, you can run as many blogs or sites that you wish with your same user account.

Now that you have select the blog on which you wish to work, look for the Pages menu section on the left side of your screen. Here you have two options – Edit or Add New.

To create a new page simply click Add New and to modify an existing one click Edit.

By clicking Edit you will see a list of all your pages on that blog. From here choose the page on which you wish to work and it will open up permitting you to make modifications.

If you want to create a new page then click the Add New link and you will load a blank page where you can insert a title and the contents of the page along with other parameters and settings related to pages. For an explanation of these things please reference the video.

Once you have completed your changes then click on the Publish or Update button to the right of your screen. You will see Publish if the page is new or saved as a draft. You will see Update if it is already published.

This pretty much covers it. Creating and modifying pages is literally that simple. For assistance with this please contact us on AC Assist. We are happy to help.

This technique is not limited to the use of iFrames as you can and probably should use Hana Code Insert to display any large amount of HTML, but this is a good use for Hana Code Insert. You will probably need to watch the video in addition to reading the instructions below so you have a visual reference.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To begin, look for the Hana Code Insert plug-in which is accessible from the Settings tab in your WP Dashboard. There you will see space for a “New Entry” where you can copy/paste your HTML code and label the insert. Then press SAVE or UPDATE which will create the instance of this Hana Code Insert and displays it at the bottom of all other Hana Code Inserts you have created. Now grab (copy to clipboard) the Hana Code Insert from bracket to bracket which should include the words “hana-code-insert” plus your label and looks like this:

[ hana-code-insert name='YOUR LABEL' / ]

Next you go to the Page or Post you wish to create or edit and paste the code from bracket to bracket into your entry. You can paste this code in the Visual editor or the HTML editor. Doesn’t matter. You can also insert text, images, and other copy as necessary above or below your insert.

Now press PUBLISH or UPDATE or SAVE DRAFT to finalize this entry and when you preview it you should see your code appear just like normal. It’s that simple.

1. The first step is to obtain the URL to your RSS feed. In this case, we went to a Nissan dealer on web2carz.com and obtained their URL.
2. The next step is to log in to your Wordpress site and go to the Widgets section under the Appearance tab.
3. Then, while in Widgets, add the widget for RSS feeds and click on the “Edit” link. Be sure to add the widget to the desired sidebar if you have more than one sidebar.
4. Now paste the URL feed in the appropriate field, give your widget a title if desired, and set any of the optional parameters. Most importantly set the number of items you wish to display.
5. Finally, press “Save” and your new widget is live.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have any questions regarding this you may leave your comments below. Alternatively if you require assistance or wish to schedule one-on-one training then please contact us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For questions regarding this new software and service you may respond below or visit AC Assist.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.