The AWA review team recently had the opportunity to get a firsthand look at the upcoming TK Carsites technology roadmap as well as some of the new features that will be released in Q1 of 2011. Their new platform will give dealers unlimited design and layout choices, which seems to be a direction that the industry is heading. That said, their current platform was impressive.

It is exciting to see the wave of change that will be coming to automotive websites in 2011 and TK Carsites is part of that Tsunami.

TK Carsites was a dual award winner in the 2009 ASMA Awards and so we were very interested to see how they have improved on their website platform. This article is not a full review of their technology however TK CarSites will be evaluated in the 2010 AWA Whitepaper that will be released on October 12, 2010 when the award winners for Search Marketing, Design and Technology are announced.

Readers of my blog know that in recent weeks the concept of POD Score™ has been developed to place score on the control a dealer has on Google Page One for a search on their name. This score was developed to help car dealers understand the importance of managing Page One results since it impacts all car dealer advertising investments.

We had a chance to see the latest updates and strategies on the TK CarSites Power of Five technology which gives car dealers a primary website and four additional microsites. These microsites can be created to increase fixed ops revenue, used car sales, car financing, or any profit center the dealer wants targeted. Car dealers using the Power of Five technology control more Google Page One listings because all sites are also optimized for the dealer’s name.

Power of Five in Action

A popular example of the Power of Five in action is to conduct a search for “Marlboro Nissan” in Google. In addition to their main TK website appearing one Page One which is www.marlbornissan.com, you can also see other TK sites that include www.nissan-service.net, www.nissancarsmass.com, and www.usednissanboston.com. The control of Page One is shown below in red:

TK Carsites is not the first to utilize microsites for car dealers but they are the only vendor we reviewed this year that has a pre-packaged microsite solution offered as a standard marketing strategy for car dealers. In this example, Marlboro Nissan controls Google Page One with the remaining spots being taken up by the social media accounts, blogs, and their Dealerrater page that show hundreds of positive reviews.

In the past year TK Carsites has continued to update their inventory listing module which is search engine friendly. Years ago TK has a framed inventory solution that was not search engine friendly so for dealers that have not looked at their technology recently, there has been many changes worthy of a second look.

One of the other things that impressed our team was their move away from custom flash sites which has two benefits. One, flash technology is not support on all mobile devices and secondly, it has lowered the costs of TK Carsites products to car dealers. According to TK, their websites which once had a premium for custom flash programming, are now streamlined to give dealers flexibility of design and a much lower cost.

Keyword Targeted Home Page Banners

Another feature that we liked on the TK Carsites home page was the ability to have customer banners based on what the consumer searched. For example, if a consumer typed into Google “2010 Altima Boston” and arrives on a TK website, the home page banner can show the dealer’s current Altima sales promotion or lease payment. According to TK, this has increased page views and lead conversion by taking consumers right to the offer page and inventory listings.

As we reviewed a number of TK CarSites examples, we found that the navigation was clean and the quote forms required minimal data from a consumer. Studies by PCG Digital Marketing has shown that putting too many fields on quote forms reduces conversion so we liked the simplicity of their website designs and their efficient use of space.

TK Carsites has a reputation of building websites that leverage the power of Automotive SEO strategies to generate unparalleled search visibility . From what we have seen with their current platform, anyone looking to upgrade their Page One visibility should keep TK Carsites on their short list of vendors to call.