How to Customize Your Website

In today’s market if you want to stay competitive in the automotive retail marketplace you will need a website/virtual showroom that will effectively market your brand, dealership and inventory to the world.

Until recently you either had to create a custom website from scratch which is both time consuming and expensive especially if you do not possess the necessary programming skills or you were forced choose from a library of pre-built cookie cutter designs (templates) that don’t offer the design flexibility needed to keep you ahead of the competition.

Autoxloo is proud to announce a new feature unique to the automotive industry that empowers the dealer to take control of the look, feel, content and layout of their website all without the need for any programming knowledge.

Its called Make-A-Page and it will give you full control of your website.

MAP (Make-A-Page) gives you the ability to design your website.  You can customize the layout of each page.  Choose what features you want to display like news, featured vehicles, different search variations and many more.  Now you can place these features in different areas of the page.  We have also created widgets that will make your website more user friendly.  If you ever run out of space for all your content just make a new page, in fact make as may as you  would like.

Everything in MAP is editable.  This means the sizes and colors can be adjusted to your needs.  You can change your websites look for any holiday or sale.

If you are thinking that this may be too difficult than you may be surprised.  MAP is designed to be very easy to use.  Anyone can use it with no experience necessary.  This means that you don’t need to wait for anyone to make changes to your website, since you can do it all.

If you want to see and try MAP, give us a call or contact AutoXloo today.

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The Web’s Growth and The Strain on Auto Dealers

Growing Internet traffic is straining dealers’ abilities to keep on top of it, and some experts advise dealers to establish a dedicated Internet sales staff. Since 2007, the percentage of dealerships with dedicated Internet sales staffs has stayed steady at just over half, says the National Automobile Dealer Association’s 2010 Dealership Internet Survey. Some dealers handle Internet leads with customer service employees who set up appointments for customers. Others may empower the entire sales force to field Web inquiries.

Autoxloo’s Dealer Management Systems simplifies these problems that dealers face in our constantly advancing technological world. With our services, dealers can have an interactive website that provides most of the required services to customers like inventory, credit requests, schedule test drive and sales, links to manufacturers’ Web sites, and contact information of every department. This greatly simplifies the work load on dealership staff and increases sales. In addition, our CRM provides the all the necessary tools to manage online leads, and our Live Help gives our clients the ability to contact Autoxloo’s support team any time of the day.

How to Successfully Post on Craigslist

Craigslist has become one of the biggest lead generators in the automotive industry.  Its very popular in the United States and can brings a lot of leads to your website.  As you may already know its also free!  So why is it so difficult to post an ad on their site?  If you have ever tried to post an ad and keep it live, then you know what I am talking about.  There are two things that can happen.  Your ad may go live and everything is good but then for some reason it gets flagged, now your ad is gone.  The ad may be flagged just because someone doesn’t like it.  The second scenario goes like this.  Everything is going well, you submitted your ad, now you go and try to find it but its nowhere to be found.  It even shows that the ad is live on your account page but in reality its not.  This is because your ad was ghosted.

Craigslist is constantly updating their ghosting protocol.  If your ad is similar to other ads or if you post too often then your ads may become ghosted.  This becomes very frustrating.  To find a successful formula for posting can take a lot of time.  Craigslist likes unique ads, but to create a unique ad for the same vehicle will also take time.  This is exactly why we created a solution for this problem.  Our solution allows you to successfully post your vehicles within craigslist terms of use.

Our new module allows you to post your vehicles directly from the DMS to craigslist.  There are also new features like Custom Random Text.

This feature stores a list of random phrases that you provide and then uses them randomly in the body of your ads.  This way your ads will always be different.

The random title phrases feature makes your titles different for each ad.  It stores phrases that you added and uses them randomly.  This will help make sure that your ads are always unique.

These are just a few of the features that are offered with this module.  You can fully customize your entire template.  This includes the title, body, different colors, different layouts, gallery and much more.  Our goal is to help you take advantage of craigslist’s massive traffic.  Just because its not easy to make your ads stay on craigslist doesn’t mean you cant do it.  Call AutoXloo today and get your ads to stay.

Cars on the chopping block?

Today’s auto makers are listening to the needs of others and although they have an inordinate amount of information, in essence they are trying to foresee the future. The younger generations are fickle and cannot really decide what it wants for the price range it has. The middle generations are looking to keep up with the “Jones’s” and the older generations seem to still be pretty stuck in their ways. As this year has passed and although the economy has not improved a lot one thing is clear, auto sales are starting to thrive again

With several companies completely dying and a few that are going to be discontinue but a few that might be able to be saved. It seems that the small compact car is just not really holding on now that gas is no longer making all of us sweat bullets. The Toyota Yaris and Scion XD have seen a substantial loss in sales as well as the Smart for two. The Mazda Tribute which seems to not be able to find its own niche in the crossover marketplace is not doing as well either. Two cars that really shocked me that are on this list are two sports coupes. The Mazda Rx-8 and the Porsche Cayman have seen a loss in sales as well. The rx-8 was released as a family sports car. It has 4 doors and a comfortable back seat. Porsche is on the verge of releasing the Cayman S which should help them boost some sales.

With Autoxloo’s Market IQ you can see what price a vehicle is selling at around the world and know just where you stand with the price of your vehicle.  Hopefully with a new year just around the corner, car companies are looking to be able to reinvent their automobiles that are on the fence will hopefully fall on the profitable side. With sales starting to rise, all of the automakers are looking up to get out of this hole that has been dug.

Smart and Resourceful Dealers Sell More Cars!

A quick shout out to Mike at Park Auto Mall for his nice (and unsolicited) comments about AutoXloo on his blog, Show Room Logic.

Car dealerships have always prided themselves on being resourceful sales guys, always with new ideas on sales promotions to entice customers to their dealership.

Internet marketing offers endless opportunities for these smart and resourceful dealerships to stretch their sales skills online.  Low cost, immediate results, and measurable effects, and quality leads.  What could be more compelling? Every car guy’s dream.

Mike recognizes this utopic vision does require some nuts and bolts, roll up your sleeve work, determination, creativity, analysis and adjustment as he works to increase sales for ParkAutoMall.  AutoXloo is up to the challenge of going toe to toe with him and other dealers in helping them creatively leverage AutoXloo’s software solutions to support their local car sales.

ParkAutoMall.com does a great job of leveraging the AutoXloo technology to increase their local presence and connect with customers when they visit their website.  Look at the ParkAutoMall.com website and some of the proactive things they are doing:

• An active, engaging blog
• Pictures, video introductions, complete contact information of sales staff
• Detailed information about vehicles
• Customer testimonials
• Search friendly, relevant content
• Information to help car buyers make decisions

The time invested in their website pays off on a daily basis.  A large percentage of their floor traffic comes from their dealer website, and this number has been growing for several years.

Automotive Retail Industry- Six technologies that will facilitate change

Consumers in the automotive industry have been asking for changes. Changes that can improve how they will shop, how they buy, and most importantly their overall experience and satisfaction.  Car dealers understand the changes their customers want and truly recognize the opportunities being created.   Showroom shopping, online browsing and customer relationship management abilities are becoming more congruent.  The six pieces of technology are positioned to speed up the historic change currently happening within the automotive retail industry.  Car buyers are a powerful segment, with a strong voice.  Dealers are wise to consider adoption these ideas sooner, rather than later.

Let’s list the six pieces of technologies here. First is Real-Time Search, for example, Google, Bing, Twitter, Facebook. Customers benefit is having access to real-time content which will help shoppers confirm a smart decision much faster.  Second, Geolocation Service which is GPS- style functions within mobile phones, social channels, and smart phone apps. Customers will benefit because they will have an opportunity to create better relationships with dealerships while having fun.  Third, Mobile Video, customers will benefit because it is very convenient. Shopping is what they want and where they want it. Forth, HTML5. Gives opportunity to improve online experiences, adding rich applications, video, animation, Flash, and Silverlight.  Customers will experience shopping online more robust as new content delivery methods emerge.  Fifth, Social centralization, direction of car dealer social networks and the value-added services they will provide automotive professionals.  Customers will benefit from the rapid increase in the sharing of best practices which is about to overcome the retail industry. Competition will increase as the bar is raised to prove a better, more impressive shopping experience. Last, Number six, is Social CRM.

The entire CRM segment will be shaken up in 2010.  Customer benefit will be greater communication and information flow with regards to items such as vehicle service and care care will become more important as ownership continues to increase.