The quick pricing overview:

There are specific 3 price changes for listing on eBay Motors.

• $40 insertion fee is being lowered in half to $20.
• $50 Final Value Fee is going up to $100 (this is only for listings that end successfully on eBay ie: someone clicks Buy It Now, or a successful Auction).
• $5-$10 Reserve fee is being fixed at $7
• If one of those 4 listings ends successfully there will be a $125 Final Value Fee.
• Also, everyone seller will receive the first 4 listings per year for free (rolling 12 months).

All other fees are staying the same for now.

My thoughts?

(more…)

The 5th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition will be held at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Conference Center in Grapevine, Texas, just six minutes from the DFW airport on October 6-8.

Great chance to listen, meet, and mingle with the industries top companies and minds - oh yeah… I’ll even be speaking. Hope to see you there!

Coke Zero may fail, the Coca Cola Company will not.

Most startups go into business thinking they’re defined by one single product. And usually, that turns out disastrous. The reason? Most products fail, and all eventually will.

And when products fail, “one-trick-pony” businesses will shut down. The difference between your business and it’s product can be defined by your relationships, your understanding of your customers needs, and knowing the position and direction you, as a business should be headed.

So how does this relate to your dealership?

Forget “product” as a vehicle - vehicles clearly have succeeded and failed many times over. For this discussion, you the reader, most likely cannot control product (vehicle) development directly. Let’s look at this “product” as your marketing, your management, and your connectivity to your customer.

(more…)

When ecarlist begins the integration/training process with many of our larger dealerships, the number one issue we almost always encounter is the clutter of companies that seem to have their hands on so many pieces of the dealerships activities and wallet. One company manages photos, one company manages the website, another might manage feeds and inventory distribution to 3rd party sites, another handles market pricing/analytics, and so it goes…

It’s harder being a dealership today, there are many more details to tackle - so where do you begin? In this post, I want to address the need for a dealership to embrace all aspects of online marketing. Specifically, I want to address online inventory management.

The Dealership should control it’s inventory, where it goes, the quality and content of their ads, and oversee photography – stop “farming out” control.

I think the biggest issue hampering the success of the franchise dealers’ exploits online today is the fact that they don’t know what they are selling. Most franchise dealers have fallen prey to outsourcing almost every step of the listing process. Dealerships are paying anywhere from $17 to well over $20 (per vehicle) to have their vehicles pictured, tagged with a window sticker and sometimes even (more…)

Oh how the acronyms flow from software/website companies, however, none seems to flow more today than SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Question: What exactly is search engine optimization?

Answer: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” search results for targeted keywords. SEO can also target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

First, I want to address the “snake oil” salesmen boasting to be SEO experts and guaranteeing page ranking and traffic results. ecarlist sees these claims everyday in un-solicited emails and from our clients that have (more…)

To do it well, you need good talent. Many of our creative team started their careers in video and commercial production. We look at a dealer’s website as not only an opportunity to communicate inventory, hours, and contact information - but also, as a ‘direct marketing’ piece to a captive audience. Great video integration can increase a site’s “stickiness” and create an “experience” for your user that can ultimately generate more qualified leads and deliver increased conversions.

Is your website offering high-impact video - if not… why?

Check out some of the latest videos we’ve created for ecarlist and for client’s websites:

(much of this post is re-produced from articles found online and from Google.com)

One technique, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indices.

The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

(more…)