I have been toying with the idea of using wordpress for dealer micro sites for quite sometime now and finally broke down today and set one up. It is designed to help a dealer generate leads the 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid and my friend Alvin Newton has one set up for the Saburu Impreza. After speaking with my programmer tonight about recoding a plugin to send adf/xml leads to a dealers crm/ilm we brainstormed on using wordpress as a full fleged car dealer website and may be real close in bringing this about.
This may be the way to go to offer dealers a very low cost way to build an online presence that does not require a contract or a monthly bill for the website itself. Basically it would just be some core file changes to wordpress to set different levels of permissions and to pull in inventory listings. Then the dealers only cost would be their inventory solution which if they use a lot service company or do it themselves it will be really easy but eventually we would look to use a solution like AutoWebEngine which can poll a dms or pull a feed from from a lot service.
So for a basic install with limited design work a dealer will be able to have a full functioning website for less than $1500 with minimal mothly cost for hosting less than $10.00 a month and if they want top end design work it could be done for around $1000. So they could get a high end website launced and ready to go for less than $2500.
The only downside would be content, they would have to do it themselves or hire it out as well. Still even if they used a content service they should be under $4000. I should have this ready to goto market by the end of first quarter 2009. This will be a huge win for the dealer community when it happens.
What will be great about using wordpress as the CMS is that once the site indexes the SEO will be instant as I proved with a post a couple weeks ago about dealer search engine marketing. Basically that post is still beating a website vendor for their name and product descriptions, which should be unheard of.
I have had a couple vendors approach me for white label SEO service for their dealers websites but none have entered into serious negotiations with me yet. One of the mid size players has even offered me a reseller agreement but I would not sign it because they also wanted a no compete, not going to happen. Now if they wanted to contract me to consult for them or provide white label SEO with a decent minimum then it may be possible for them to get a no compete out of me but without consideration I am not going to give up development plans just for the right to sell a product.
Another vendor did want me to consult them on thier platform but they wanted a NDA. Meaning I could not list them as a client or a reference. However they did not want to pay the fee I felt was warranted to give up that right.
I will give it until the end of the year before I start the development of an inexpensive website solution for car dealers to see if all of the cross talk means anything. I will either join up and help a vendor market themselves and their clients or go it on my own and take business from them. Either way it is a win, because my craigslist solution for car dealers is really catching on like wild fire and I am picking up clients daily, except over the holidays. The good thing is I will have a client list in place no matter which direction I go.
This may be the way to go to offer dealers a very low cost way to build an online presence that does not require a contract or a monthly bill for the website itself. Basically it would just be some core file changes to wordpress to set different levels of permissions and to pull in inventory listings. Then the dealers only cost would be their inventory solution which if they use a lot service company or do it themselves it will be really easy but eventually we would look to use a solution like AutoWebEngine which can poll a dms or pull a feed from from a lot service.
So for a basic install with limited design work a dealer will be able to have a full functioning website for less than $1500 with minimal mothly cost for hosting less than $10.00 a month and if they want top end design work it could be done for around $1000. So they could get a high end website launced and ready to go for less than $2500.
The only downside would be content, they would have to do it themselves or hire it out as well. Still even if they used a content service they should be under $4000. I should have this ready to goto market by the end of first quarter 2009. This will be a huge win for the dealer community when it happens.
What will be great about using wordpress as the CMS is that once the site indexes the SEO will be instant as I proved with a post a couple weeks ago about dealer search engine marketing. Basically that post is still beating a website vendor for their name and product descriptions, which should be unheard of.
I have had a couple vendors approach me for white label SEO service for their dealers websites but none have entered into serious negotiations with me yet. One of the mid size players has even offered me a reseller agreement but I would not sign it because they also wanted a no compete, not going to happen. Now if they wanted to contract me to consult for them or provide white label SEO with a decent minimum then it may be possible for them to get a no compete out of me but without consideration I am not going to give up development plans just for the right to sell a product.
Another vendor did want me to consult them on thier platform but they wanted a NDA. Meaning I could not list them as a client or a reference. However they did not want to pay the fee I felt was warranted to give up that right.
I will give it until the end of the year before I start the development of an inexpensive website solution for car dealers to see if all of the cross talk means anything. I will either join up and help a vendor market themselves and their clients or go it on my own and take business from them. Either way it is a win, because my craigslist solution for car dealers is really catching on like wild fire and I am picking up clients daily, except over the holidays. The good thing is I will have a client list in place no matter which direction I go.
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