The Dealer Impact Blog

Best Practices in Web Design

With more than 10 years of experience designing web sites specifically for auto dealerships, Dealer Impact knows how to drive online traffic. Unsure whether your site meets our best practices? Here are three basic rules for a well-designed web site:

1. Less is More

Websites are for the user, not the designer. Adding a lot of bells and whistles to a site is meaningless if the user can’t find what he/she wants. Keep your site clean and simple, with the most important information front and center. Customers don’t want to jump around a site to find current inventory or dig through several layers to locate contact information, specials and inventory.

2. Search-Engine Friendly

Clean, uncluttered sites not only appeal to users, they are more likely to be indexed by the major search engines (sites that use Flash design can’t be read well by search-engine spiders). If you want users to find you first, be sure to incorporate common SEO (search engine optimization) elements, including tags, keywords, fresh content, and shortened URLs for optimized inventory links.

3. Support Systems

Attracting customers to your web site takes more than good design. You must be ubiquitous on the Internet, with multiple points of presence. To do this, build a trail of breadcrumbs that leads back to your site using such tools as satellite videos, blogs, Youtube, Facebook, and other social media

Every web site Dealer Impact designs follows these best-practice principles. If you are interested in having us create or improve your dealership’s site, call our sales reps at 877-334-9638.

3 Reasons to Go Mobile

Experts predict that by next year the majority of mobile phones in the U.S. will be smart phones. That means that more consumers than ever will have on-demand access to the Internet. Despite this expanding market, most auto dealers don’t yet have mobile web sites. Here are the top three reasons they should:

1. The future is now

The statistics on mobile web use are astounding. One-fifth of Americans already access the mobile web everyday. In less than a decade, half of all web searches will happen from a mobile device. The mobile generation is already here and it includes your customers.

2. A regular site isn’t enough

Traditional web sites are designed for people surfing from the comfort of home using a full-size computer. Mobile users are on-the-go and limited by small screens; they are looking for specific information and they want it quickly. To satisfy these users, dealers need simplified sites designed specifically for the smart phone platform.

3. The competition is already there

Picture this scenario: A consumer is driving around looking for a new car. As he drives by dealers’ lots, he uses his smart phone to search inventories before deciding where to stop. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile web, he’s likely to move on to the next lot. Can you afford to lose out?