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.

Is Your Website Navigation User Friendly?

Have you ever visited a site with a really bad navigation menu?  A site like this makes you lost and forces you to learn how to use it before focusing on the content.  Many website owners don’t know how important it is to have a good navigation menu on your website.  If someone is not comfortable with the navigation he can always click the back button and select the next site in the search results.  To take care of this problem we have developed a way for you to customize the navigation menu of your website.

Example of bad navigation

The Dynamic Menu module gives you control to display infinite combinations your navigation menu.  This includes pages with content, links to other sites or your standard menu selection.  The Dynamic Menu will come in handy when you need a link to third party credit apps, contact forms, IFrames or JSOP.  By activating this feature on your showroom enables you to showcase your inventory and specials in a unique display in helping buyers make the shopping experience more enjoyable. Dynamic Menu gives you control and clarity of navigation.

Don’t let bad website navigation scare away potential customers.  Explore the latest of what AutoXloo has to Offer by enabling you to be in the forefront of technology!

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.