The next step in Selling More Cars on the Internet is getting a great website.  This website will become many things to your Dealership.  First and foremost, it will become your Virtual Dealership and Online Showroom.  For all intents and purposes your website is an online representation of your entire business not just your Internet Department. 

Your website is your business card and the face of your business.  The website is your last chance to make a great first impression with your prospects.  Who would you rather do business with, the guy with the homemade site with incomplete inventory or the dealer who cares enough to provide his prospects with a robust website with complete and accurate data?

The better the website the more credibility you will establish with your prospects and customers. 

Let me give you a couple things not to do:

First, do not put flash on the home page, Flash is not installed on most corporate PCs.  Our company uses Java to obtain the same flash effect.  Secondly, just like in good music, less is more, if you clutter up the website with crazy spinning signs and cars squealing across the screen you are missing out on the opportunity. 

The purpose of your website is to present your complete million dollar inventory to your visitors with one click of the mouse.  If consumers have to click 4 or 5 times just to begin searching your inventory, or get distracted by singing monkeys or dancing elephants they will bounce out of your site and quickly move on to your competitors' site.  

Do not get caught up on pleasing your ego when building a website for your Dealership.  The people you are building this new great website for are the prospects that you want to convert into customers.  Remember you have exactly two seconds to connect with a visitor before they bounce, so you must make it very easy for them to find your inventory. 

There are several companies that build websites but I would recommend you let Dealer Car Search build your Dealership a website.  I truly believe the fact that Dealer Car Search is owned and operated by a car dealer gives our company a unique perspective on your challenges and successes.  Why would you let a technical geek build your online car business if he has not first walked in your shoes?

The next thing a great website must do is act as a landing pad for all of your inbound Internet traffic.  We will get into how to create an Effective Internet Marketing Strategy on the next page.  For now let’s stayed focused on capturing these extra leads on your new great website.  A correctly designed website needs to have several portals to capture leads.  Dealer Car Search’s websites all have several forms on many pages configured in an easy to use platform. 

The quality of our leads is much higher than your AutoTrader.com and Cars.com leads.  I can say this with confidence because the whole goal is to drive traffic from your paid advertising sites where shoppers are looking at five million cars to your new website where they have pin pointed their search and landed on one of your specific cars. That is the reason the leads we provide you are the hottest leads you can generate.  Our websites generate more traffic, more leads, more test drives and more sales than your current website.

So, now that you have bought the right inventory, priced the cars right, taken several excellent photos of every car, and have a great new website to display your inventory, you are now miles ahead of your competition.