Selecting the right Car Dealer Website solution for your business.

When setting out to choose your vehicle sales platform, one must be aware of the multitude of options available and the complexities that you will encounter when trying to manage potentially complicated and often overbearing systems.

Some systems have been in existence for ages, and offer very outdated technology and antiquated ways of navigating.  Many of these earlier systems were designed before web browsers were standardised, and have spent much energy focusing on workarounds to browser problems.

Other systems don’t offer enough flexibility, and require that you register on their website to upload your vehicles under their domain – such systems take a great deal of extra time to manage, and cost you extra to run each month.  Auto Agent is designed to be implemented on your domain, so no more duplicating your content – we’ll do that for you by promoting all your stock on the www.pickacar.co.za website – a multi dealer environment which Auto Agent promotes and which search ranking is improving daily.

The Auto Agent system is built using very modern browser and interface technology, and as it's linked to the www.pickacar.co.za website, your current vehicle stock is promoted for free. All leads generated from www.pickacar.co.za are sent directly to your leads management system, where they will be directed to the assigned sales person.

eMagazines and other such gimmicks

Many older dealer website solutions offer free online magazines, which are really just a spin-off from the diminishing paper based magazine era. In my opinion, online magazines that mimic their paper based counter parts are not worth the bandwidth that it takes to download them.  They do not offer search functionality, and so are almost as good as useless!  Quite a claim, but think about when last you looked at the average newspaper - getting quite thin aren’t they?! And it’s not like you’re going to go and look at the ePaper version either – no, you’re going to search using Google and find information on proper websites. So in reality, you find information on search friendly websites, not by paging through electronic replicas of magazines.

What about regular newspaper and inserts?

South African Internet Statistics for 2011 show that readerships are falling, and many magazines have become completely web based. This is a reality – more and more South Africans are (finally) turning to the web for their source of information (A total of 7.9 million South Africans access the Internet on their cell phones, the study found, while 6.02 million use a computer, laptop, or tablet. Of these PC and tablet PC users, 90% also use their mobile phones to access the Internet. 2.48 million South Africans use only their cellphones to access the Internet) – our connectivity may have been limited, but it’s on the increase. Mobile internet is a reality, cell phones have become pc’s in our pocket’s and as these devices improve and become clearer and easier to use, mobile web browsing is booming.  Auto Agent websites are designed to be mobile friendly, that’s why we have built our solutions using the latest web standards, with the simplest navigation possible and search friendly content.  Grab your phone and give it a try – it’s a whole lot better than our competitor offerings.

This is not to say that one should discard the print publications, they still drive sales and are very useful in the drive-to-web. In practice, we should be populating our websites with information rich content, and taking out smaller more affordable print ads in community papers, using Gumtree to promote etc. No website offers a complete solution, but Auto Agent certainly allows you to maximise on your clients needs - lots of pictures & quality information.

Value added services

It’s not just about loading cars onto your website, it's about bringing customers into your showroom through effectively managing the leads generated. When you use the Auto Agent website system, you are provided with a comprehensive (yet non intrusive) lead management system.  In the Multi Dealer version, your sales team are automatically notified via email and/or SMS if someone is interested in viewing or test driving a specific vehicle.  The sales manager is then able to keep track of all the vehicle sales leads and follow up if a salesperson does not respond in time. Future versions will offer reporting on these sales activities, meaning that you get a clear picture of who's following up and who's lagging behind.

Contact us now for a Quick Quote!

Author: Pierre Theron

Angie Alford - Concorde Cars

I am very impressed with the ease of using Auto Agent's system. The ease and efficiency of a product or service are the most important chararistics that any product must have to get my stamp of approval. This is what makes Auto Agent so exciting to work with. The leads from Pickacar are 10 times more useable than the rest of the sites we've worked with. My sales have increased by almost double and there is no wasting time by loading vehicles over and over into different systems. It's also always a delight to speak to Pierre Theron about anything you might need to know and his client service is definitely of the highest standards. Thanks Auto Agent and Pierre for making my life and business a lot easier.

Petrus Hayes
www.capeautocentre.co.za

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Selecting the right Car Dealer Website solution for your business

When setting out to choose your vehicle sales platform, one must be aware of the multitude of options available and the complexities that you will encounter when trying to manage potentially complicated and often overbearing systems.