Automotive Marketing

I love question and answer sites. Yahoo! Answers is my favorite, but all of them fill the search-by-question void that the old Ask.com left behind. It feels natural to type some search queries like questions, and if your question hasn’t been answered yet you can get some responses within seconds. Even if your question is asking someone to give you a CARFAX report for free.

Free CARFAX Reports via Yahoo! Answers

A new sidebar widget for bloggers has made quite a splash, enough so that I’ve added it to this website. The reviews are mixed, but stats don’t lie. The traffic this blog has received from BlogRush this week is equal to the amount of visitors I’ve gotten from my comments on ShoeMoney’s blog. Five.

I have seen more than 30 articles about BlogRush, but not 30 hits to my website for using it. Usually, the buzz is mostly just that–buzz.

Here’s a screen shot of the Search Engines Goal Conversion tab on Google Analytics for a classifieds site I’ve been marketing since December 2006.  The goal Conducted Search is reached when a visitor to the site searches the vehicles for sale database. The percentages represent the amount of traffic from each search engine that searched for vehicles after arriving at the site.

I believe this is happening because the site was optimized for very few keywords per page, which resulted in something that MSN/Live.com loves: strong title tags. To find this report within your Google Analytics account, click Traffic Sources then Search Engines and then Goal Conversion in the middle of the page.

I had the opportunity to speak with Don of www.dealerclick.info last week about his new website venture. He is not the first angry DealerClick customer that I have met, and I am sure he will not be the last.

Don’s criticisms of the software were sharp and specific, and this is the least you can expect from someone who has put more than $5000 into a dealership software package. Here are the most common complaints that I hear from dealers about DealerClick. I have ordered them by frequency from the top.

1. I can’t find the inventory list. When you first load the program, finding the list is fairly simple. Clicking the Inventory icon in the top ribbon brings you to the vehicle details tab. To access the full list, there is an Inventory List tab way off to the right. I understand why this is a problem, though, because the navigation ribbon at the top is constantly changing and hiding the Inventory button.
2. Custom form creation and alignment is unpredictable. I have never printed a document with this program, but I hear this all the time. DealerClick allows you to create forms by laying out fields on top of a document image, and apparently the field alignment is whacky and doesn’t line up consistently.
3. I can’t get answers from tech support. This gripe is something I get less often, but a few horror stories, such as Don’s, earn this a spot on the list. I fear that support troubles might be the result of a sales rep promising something that doesn’t materialize down the road (what a surprise). I’m reminded of a funny bumper sticker I saw a few weeks ago: Government and Porn. Promising everything, delivering nothing.

I think without some programming TLC, the DealerClick software will be going out of style over the next few years. I believe this because the software is still not Windows Vista friendly; users have to jump through hoops to install the program, including disabling Vista’s UAC via a command prompt. I know very few dealers that can stomach command prompt manuevers, so unless DealerClick’s regional sales reps are handling the installs, I don’t see how this demo can promote sales.

Here’s a link to download the 120MB demo version of DealerClick. When running the demo, log in with user name “admin” and password “auto”.

There are features of this program that I like a lot.

1. Auto-resizing form controls mean no matter what size the DealerClick program window is, the controls on the screen automatically resize to fill the entire area. This means that no user will ever have to change their screen resolution to use the program, and I think its funny to make everything on the screen really really tiny.
2. Mega third party integration with KBB, NADA, Black Book, DealerTrack, etc. The list goes on and on.
3. Training tutorial shortcut is added to your desktop when you install the demo, complete with a voiceover.

Out of both the positive and negative lists that I’ve created here, there are 2 areas of interest that I feel make or break software. Usability and capability. DealerClick is a vastly capable application, but while some features support usability, other attributes may ruin the overall user experience.