Once the industry darling of automotive websites, back when car dealers raced to purchase Flash based websites, Dealerskins has had a challenge recently re-energizing their brand.  In fact you might say that the company has been laying low for the past year and I think I understand why.

Over the past two years I have witnessed the industry move away from 100% Flash websites and this has impacted Dealerskins’ cutting edge moniker.

In the early days of Flash based websites, the Adobe technology was a hindrance for obtaining strong organic search visibility.  In effect, the original Dealerskins Flash websites were not easily optimized using proven Automotive SEO strategies.

In the past, my reviews of the Dealerskins platform from an SEO perspective have not been flattering to say the least.

Today, I will be the first to raise a toast to the website “Phoenix” that has risen with renewed focus that will surprise its former critics.  This bird is hungry and hunting!  Existing Dealerskins clients are in for a nice surprise and according to company executives; Dealerskins has a great new story to tell!

This is not a full review of the Dealerskins SEO architecture and search marketing strengths of the new platform but a peak at what is coming.  The latest technology from Dealerskins will be included in the 2010 Automotive Website Awards, which will be presented on Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am at the Mirage Hotel.

Moving Towards A Primary HTML Platform

The first point to acknowledge is Dealerskins’ willingness to rebuild their CMS platform and technology while keeping their existing customers in business and thriving.   That is not an easy task! The platform that we reviewed in August is a bridge to their full Content Management System (CMS) release that will be announced in the coming months.

The development team at Dealerskins should be congratulated. Their current hybrid Flash and HTML platform actually performed better in our search marketing architecture analysis this year than many of their peers.  In short, this is NOT your parent’s Oldsmobile.

Automotive Inventory Optimization

The current Dealerskins website technology fixed the biggest complaint that I had in the past; their inventory module was practically invisible to the search engines and not in conformance with my SEO best practices.

The new Dealerskins platform has optimized website pages for every car in inventory with unique page titles and META descriptions for each car.  I also liked their breadcrumb menu on each inventory page shown below:

You can see an example of their new inventory page by visiting this link for a 2009 Volkswagen Routan.  The final version of their optimized inventory technology will be unveiled in their next CMS release but the current version is performing very well in our testing.  I would like to see more car details integrated into the inventory URL string.

In an interesting balancing act, the Dealerskins design team kept the Flash navigation menus to add some sizzle while adding HTML navigation links and editable text areas on key website pages.   In the near future, the Dealerskins homepage will be 100% Flash free which will resolve any complaints of operating systems that are not Flash friendly.

The addition of HTML content pages will also increase the search visibility for existing Dealerskins customers.  According to the company, approximately 50% of their existing customers have been converted to the new platform.

Website Administrative Tools Lagging For Content

The administrative tools for car dealers do not currently allow dealers to add their own content pages on the fly.  A call to customer support will create as many blank pages that a dealer needs and then a dealer can add or edit content.    In the final version of the platform, more robust content editing tools and a blog are scheduled to be included.  As car dealer focus more on content writing in 2011, a robust content publishing platform will be a requirement for success.

The Dealerskins platform includes their own analytics technology that provides an independent audit for car dealers who have hired third party companies to run their Adwords or SEO campaigns. Their development team addressed a common concern of dealers who are paying thousands of dollars a month only to trust their vendors are being truthful about traffic, clicks and lead reports they send.

Marketing Intelligence and SEO Ranking Tools

The Dealerskins team also demonstrated some of their impressive digital marketing tools which included built-in SEO ranking reports and something that dealers should look at called the “Psychic Sales Tool” (PST).   The tool shows dealers all the pages and cars that the consumer visited on the Dealerskins website prior to submitting a lead.  PST gives the dealer more information about any shopper before they contact them.

HTML 5 Mobile Sites

Dealerskins has also created attractive mobile websites that are based on the new HTML 5 standard.   You can see their slick mobile technology by visiting www.gentiliniford.com from your iPhone.  The mobile interface is one of the best that I have seen and very fast.

The Silence Is Broken

The previous silence from Dealerskins?  They were hard at work surveying their customers and getting their new release out the door to customers.

Car dealers using the old Dealerskins platform are encouraged to give their account manager a call and see about the upgrade path to this more powerful website technology.

Hats off to Dealerskins for moving to address the most immediate needs of their user base.  According to the Dealerskins team more features and enhancements are coming, so listen up when your Dealerskins representative calls.   SEO pundits will not have the DS dog to kick anymore!

The PCG Digital Marketing team was given the opportunity to see the latest features and functionality of the VinSolutions platform and we were impressed with the breadth and depth of the integration they have achieved over the past year.  In 2009 VinSolutions was recognized as one of nine companies to receive the 2009 ASMA Award for Industry Leadership.

This article is not a full review of the latest VinSolutions platform but in just a few weeks the 2010 Automotive Website Awards will be presented along with our 150+ page report on the search marketing strengths of 45 website platforms.  The awards ceremony is scheduled for October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am.  The awards will be presented at the Mirage Hotel in  Las Vegas at an industry breakfast hosted by PCG Digital Marketing.

The VinSolutions Website Platform

VinSolutions is a juggernaut; adding new functionality to their platform at a blinding pace to stay ahead of the competition.  The demonstration that we sat through showed our team just how busy VinSolutions developers have been over the past year.

The first thing that hit our team was the home page design and the ability to configure the page to meet the dealer’s marketing objectives.  We liked the way the home page was divided into regions and how simple it was for the dealer to change the home page banner and calls to action.

Since the majority of organic searches deliver consumers to the home page, the VinSolutions design templates seek to direct traffic to the right place with the least amount of clicks.   The home page quick links felt “just right” to satisfy the most common search tasks that consumers have when shopping for a car.

Search Marketing Architecture

Since the 2010 Automotive Website Awards (AWA) will focus on design, technology, and search marketing, we took extra time to delve into the foundations of our work which is the Automotive SEO architecture of the website.  We were pleased to see strong URL designs for all pages on their website and their inventory detail pages were some of the best that we have reviewed this year.  Hats off to the VinSolutions design team.

One of the most exciting developments to witness was how each car detail page was targeting up to three local cities.  We are a firm believer that car dealership websites need to be optimized for the key towns in their PMA.

The VinSolutions inventory module was ahead of its peers in achieving an automated solution for targeting multiple local communities for search.  We also liked the clean design of the car detail pages which are the primary pages visited by ready to buy consumers.

Where VinSolutions broke new ground was to integrate customer sales and service data to automatically create website pages optimized for the town where the customer lives.

This was a very impressive content feature and has powerful potential for content publishing.  Without any extra effort from the dealer, content pages can be created that target popular geo-based keywords for sales and service for cities that surround the dealership.

VinSolutions Mobile Integration

VinSolutions also demonstrated an attractive mobile application, which was easy to navigate, and integrated with their backend CRM tools.   The VinSolutions development team has been hard at work to create a seamless consumer shopping experience, whether they choose to access a dealers website via their mobile device or desktop computer.

One of the strongest aspects of the VinSolutions digital marketing platform is that it is a complete end-to-end software suite.   VinSolutions provides software and technology that starts with the dealer’s ability to photograph their inventory and load it in real-time all the way through the lead management, sales, and customer service.

VinSolutions Summary

VinSolutions is a comprehensive website platform that stands alone in its ability to deliver an integrated digital marketing solution for car dealers. Automotive retailers who seek the simplicity of having a single point of contact for their digital marketing needs will find that VinSolutions has the potential to make them smile.

I had the opportunity to participate in a two hour review of the latest features in the Dealer.com platform in August and it is clear that the Dealer.com development team in Vermont has been busy.  Last year Dealer.com was a 2009 ASMA Awards dual award winner so this year they had big shoes to fill.  They did not disappoint our review team.

This summary is not a full review of the SEO architecture and search strengths of the new platform.  A full review will come when PCG Digital Marketing presents the 2010 ASMA Awards and Study Report on October 13, 2010 in Las Vegas. 

It is hard to improve on a product that has so many strengths but Rick Gibbs, CEO of Dealer.com, has managed to inspire his team to greatness.  One of the highlights of the presentation was the demonstration given by Eric Mayhew who is the chief architect behind their TCD Platform (Total Control Dominator).  The Dealer.com TCD platform is truly one of the most important automotive advertising tools that car dealers can utilize for digital marketing success.

TCD is best described as a car dealer’s personalized digital advertising dashboard. TCD directly communicates with Google, Yahoo and Bing paid advertising networks so car dealers can adjust Pay-Per-Click budgets and targets without being a Digital Marketing Geek. 

TCD is Google Adwords on steroids! 

(If I had to rename the product I would call it Total Competitor Domination.)

Dealer.com TCD digital advertising platform takes business operating rules and translates them into actionable tasks in Google, Yahoo and Bing’s paid advertising network. One rule could be to advertise all off-make used cars as soon as they come into stock.  

Another rule could be to start a weekend advertising campaign which offers a $2,000 reduction off of MSRP on select new models starting at 5:00 PM on Friday. Google Adwords out of the box is not designed for the average Internet Sales Manager to operate proficiently and in many cases, self-managed Adwords campaigns can be very costly to dealers.

In the screen shot above, a dealership executive or Internet Sales Manager can easily see their current cost per lead and current balance.   Need to make a change? Slide the $ button to increase or decrease spending.  The Marketing Focus panel allows high level adjustments of spending by marketing focus.   Do you want to increase the distribution of spending in your current budget to include “Used Vehicles”?  Simply click on stars 1 - 5 to activate those keyword goals.

Innovative Phone Number Tracking

Dealer.com has integrated phone number tracking with all Pay-Per-Click campaigns.  You may not be impressed by that fact since other companies offer similar services.  However, Dealer.com takes it to the next level by scraping all pages on the dealer’s website that has a phone number and replacing it with the PPC tracking number.  This includes all custom text content pages created by the dealership staff or advertising agency that may have embedded different phone numbers.

This creates more accurate PPC campaign metrics so more calls can be attributed to their true source of visitor engagement.

What is brilliant with TCD is that once campaigns are setup, these high level executive controls can really keep the dealer engaged with digital advertising success.  I could write a 20-page report on the unique benefits of TCD but that is not the focus of this overview.  Suffice to say that Dealer.com clients have a distinct advantage in automotive digital advertising if they choose to leverage the power of TCD.

Automated Integration of Dealer Inventory

TCD is the leader in integrated car inventory management that is seamlessly connected to Google Adwords as well as Yahoo and Bing PPC services.  Pay Per Click advertisements can utilize information in the dealers DMS about any new or used car in stock.  (See graphic below) Dealers who use PPC campaigns for used cars will save significant setup time if they compare the time it takes to create campaigns for individual used cars.

Behind these well-designed executive level controls is an amazing drill down user interface that can control every detail of a Google Adwords campaign from inside TCD.    In the graphic above, dealers can decide what time slots to allocate their paid advertising dollars.

This panel also provides check boxes to turn on or off their powerful integrated inventory advertising features. Other automotive website providers can operate Google Adwords from inside their administrative panel but offer little in terms of user interface and integrated business intelligence rules.

Dealer.com has even enhanced the Google Adwords platform by adding new geo-targeting functionality that even Adwords does not provide.  Dealer’s ability to create custom advertising “bands” could not be easier with the custom interface provided by TCD.  What this means to potential critics is that TCD does not “dummy-down” Adwords so proficient PPC experts will not be held back.

It is hard to capture my excitement for the TCD platform because there is nothing on the market more perfectly designed for car dealers who believe in paid digital advertising, aka Pay-Per-Click (PPC).  I tip my hat to Eric Mayhew, TCD’s chief architect, because not too many people can claim that they reinvested Adwords functionality for the automotive industry.

One more kicker that Eric added to TCD put a smile on my face.  Dealer.com looks at the top organic search phrases that bring consumers to a dealer’s website and that produce leads.  If these keywords are not in the current Adwords campaigns, they can be automatically added.  Slick!

 Those that don’t believe in the benefits of PPC will be out of business shortly.  Why?  Because Automotive SEO strategies cannot place a car dealer on Google Page One for broad search terms like “Toyota Camry,” “Used Cars,” or “BMW Dealer.”  As long as consumers continue to use broad search phrases, dealers will need to invest in Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns to stay on Google Page One.

Managing OEM Incentives

Dealer.com announced a new integrated Incentives Manager package after the 2009 ASMA Study was completed. This month we had the opportunity to drill down into the features of this add-on product.  Car dealer websites are notorious for having “specials” pages blank and clumsy integration of manufacturer incentives.  Normally, these incentives are not listed on inventory pages where consumers spend the majority of their time on a car dealer website.  Go figure!

With Dealer.com Incentives Manager, dealers can leverage direct incentives data streams to their dealership website.  These incentives can be controlled to integrate with car inventory listing pages as well as car detail pages.  Attempting to integrate incentives manually is impossible and that is why this feature is a great value to Dealer.com customers. Since consumers “shop price” as part of their online purchasing decision, having the lowest price in real-time can make a big difference in lead volume.

Not to dwell on the TCD platform again, but Dealer.com can also take the real-time OEM incentives and create PPC campaigns that advertise their current programs.  This is another innovation that is ground-breaking and a time saver for dealers who like to advertise OEM incentive programs and be first to market.

Automotive SEO Architecture

Once again, the Dealer.com administrative management tools show careful consideration to the skill levels of car dealer employees. The user interface to change SEO Page Titles and META tags continues to be a breeze.

One of the nicer elements of editing pages in Dealer.com is that once you are in editing mode, you can navigate through the website using the same menus that visitors use.   This may not seem important but it is a time saver. Try matching website pages to cryptic back-end file naming conventions and before you know it, you can waste hours of your time.

The Dealer.com Page Builder tools continues to grow with more widgets (see graphic on right) to create pages on the fly.

The Page Builder tool is intuitive and customers do not need to call technical support to create a blank page to edit. 

One limitation in the current version of the software is that custom pages cannot be placed more than two levels down in the navigation tree.

Content is King

Consumers search for answers and recommendations for the questions that are top of mind and car dealers need to build content on their websites to meet this need.  Dealer.com has a multi-pronged approach to adding content; video blogging, integrated car reviews, and consumer reviews. 

The video blogging feature creates optimized blog pages for each car in stock with unique text and META tags based on the audio script for the vehicle.  This feature creates a large number of content pages that are indexed by Google which has many benefits from an SEO perspective.

Consumers who purchase a car from a Dealer.com dealer can add their comments on the car that they purchased.  Dealer.com will compile and leverage these positive consumer comments on similar cars in stock.  Over time, this feature will allow car inventory pages to have more content and targeted keywords to increase the authority of their website pages.  This is another example of Dealer.com’s leadership in applying proven Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies.

Dealer.com offers a blog with their base platform which is a customized WordPress installation.  This was also added after last year’s ASMA Awards.  This move further reinforces the automotive industry’s growing love affair with content building tools.  I’ve been preaching that all dealers need to have content writers as part of their advertising budget.  Dealer.com’s latest platform offers many ways to leverage content writers and third party SEO companies.

Fixed Operations Marketing

Lastly, Dealer.com and DriverSide made an announcement in April 2010 which an excerpt has been included below:

The two companies are partnering in an exclusive agreement to launch a series of products for new and used car franchises, the first of which will add robust fixed-ops content to Dealer.com’s industry leading platform. A full line up of further Fixed Operations and service marketing products will follow in coming months.

We agree with Dealer.com that the next area of opportunity for car dealers is in Fixed Operations SEO and digital marketing. Dealer.com has tightly integrated customer data into their product offering for targeted direct marketing.  The Fixed Operations package can also be integrated into TCD to drive more service revenue via PPC.

Summary

We look forward to testing the new content management features in the latest Dealer.com platform as part of the 2010 ASMA Study.  The product development team at Dealer.com should be recognized for not resting on the laurels and delivering a cutting edge product.  Bravo!

Dealers searching for a well integrated digital advertising platform that masters Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing and integrates a powerful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) infrastructure should get a demo of this stellar performer.