Is Your Website Frontline Ready?

You spend countless hours making sure every inch of your dealership is clean, well laid out, informative and your staff is ready to meet and greet your customers all in an effort to close the sale. Shouldn’t your website provide the same feel good experience? The obvious answer is - YES!

There is a BIG difference between having just a website and a virtual showroom. Everyone has a brother, cousin, nephew or niece that has the ability to throw a website up with a few pages that may include your inventory and some contact information, but unfortunately the public has become a lot savvier and in most cases spoiled as to what they expect from an dealers website.

When you have a clean, well laid out, informative website that provides the customer with all the tools they need to make an informed decision its no wonder dealerships that utilize this technology consistently out perform their competition.Visitors are looking for a one stop vehicle shopping experience that only a true Dealer Management System can provide. Features like weekly specials, payment calculator, loan application submission, order a vehicle, make an offer, live chat, similar vehicle listings, video, testimonials, latest news and so much more are needed instill consumer confidence and produce qualified leads. Unfortunately a system that would provide such features would cost upwards of a $1000 a month and more just do the basics – until now!

 AutoXloo is proud to offer its clients a full DMS (Dealer Management System) that includes all of the features listed above and much more all for as little as $99 per month*. As a bonus we include a Craigslist feed that allows our clients to create professional looking ads all with a click of the mouse all for no extra charge! You can get a full years worth of service for under $1300.00 – that’s less than most companies charge for ONE month of service!

Take the first step in making your online presense “Frontline Ready” and call AutoXloo at  727-946-0788 today for more information about all of the products and services we offer and how we can provide you the most cost effective way to turn around your struggling dealership.

*requires 12 month commitment

The New Face of Technology!

A famous man once said “He who stops adverstising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time”.

It just doesn’t make sense, but everyday dealers are struggling to stay alive and unfortunately when they decide to make cuts, the advertising budget seems to make it to the top of the list everytime.

Little to they know that the most successful dealerships actually increase their advertising budget during hard times to attract the customers that still have the cash to buy. This combined with careful inventory management allows these dealerships to actually grow while others flounder and eventually go under. How do they do it?

Let’s start off with the later - Inventory Management:

• Don’t buy cars for the sake of having inventory- buying the car “right” is crucial to moving the vehicle quickly
• Buy cars that stand out from the crowd – fully loaded, Nav, Sport and so on
• Cars that don’t sell in the first 10 days should be flipped for cars that meet current market conditions (gas crunch, convertible top time, 4wd winter) to offer a better chance at producing a sale.
• Implement a system that allows you to track trends in the market to get ahead of the competition
• Showcase before you buy – list consigned vehicles from other dealerships to test your local market

Next - Advertising:

• Website implementation/ promotion is the first step to attracting your target audience
• Push to online listing services both free and paid – Ebay, Autotrader, Cars.com, Vehix and so on
• The success of overseas listings has grown exponenially as more and more foreigners are taking advantage of the weak dollar and are eager to snatch up bargains
• Dress up your ads to stand out from the rest of the competition – Etcha Word is a simple to use  drag and drop tool that allows anyone to create eye catching ads using already existing images.
• The use of templates is a must for anyone who is thinking about advertising on Ebay or Craigslist. Luckly AutoXloo makes it easy to create your own template in a matter of seconds.

As you can see we’ve only touched on some of the basics you as a dealer should consider when putting together your next advertising campaign, but one thing is certain technology is here to stay and those who don’t get on board will be left behind.

 Look for more indepth articles on how to get the most out of advertising online in the next few days.