AUTOTRADER

[P118 3]

I refuse to pay auto trader there prices for the website and to be moved onto a basic contract  £500 a month i was told? I am a home trader and i want to set up a website will auto trader allow me to drop the links in to my adverts? 

[David Horgan 564]

Auto trader websites work the other way round don't they ?

Did when we had a Razor web site 

You load onto a dealer portal and then the adds go to your Razor web site .

We now have a click dealer web site were i load onto web site first they it feeds onto Autotrader . 

Maybe you need a website supplier that does that for you 

[P118 3]

do you no anyone? I cant find much online about a website supplier that does that and auto trader seem to be saying £500 is the min i can pay a month and that's way to much for me, I was thinking of getting a company to build me a website and just drop the links into my auto trader strap line and add google analytics to monitor traffic.  

[NOACROSS 414]

Click Dealer. Great company and the staff can’t do enough to help. Free feed to Autoraper etc.

Edited September 4, 2018 by NOACROSS

[Arfur Dealy 823]

I cannot recommend cardealer5 highly enough. Fantastic value for money

[P118 3]

Thanks guys really appreciate the help, what sort of price is a basic package for click dealer or car dealer 5.

I have asked them both to contact me but I am just curious.

  

[Arfur Dealy 823]

2 minutes ago, P118 said:

Thanks guys really appreciate the help, what sort of price is a basic package for click dealer or car dealer 5.

I have asked them both to contact me but I am just curious.

  

https://www.cardealer5.co.uk/ 

 

[FHP11 8]

We also use Cardealer5 and have been very happy.

Can get it looking exactly how you want it and the pricing is reasonable.

[EPV 631]

31 minutes ago, NOACROSS said:

Click Dealer. Great company and the staff can’t do enough to help. Free feed to Autoraper etc.

This. 

Just be aware that you need a certain level of package to have your website linked. You can’t do it on a PAYG advert. 

Also, AT won’t put up with you putting your website link on your strap line. You may get away with it for a while but eventually they will make you take it down. 

One thing I would add to this is you seem keen on keeping your advertising costs to a minimum and almost begrudge paying for marketing. I’d suggest you spend as much money marketing as you possibly can whilst working out what advertising is expensive (the kind that doesn’t work)

people make a business outside of using AT on here, it can be done. Just don’t cut corners in the wrong place. 

[P118 3]

6 minutes ago, EPV said:

This. 

Just be aware that you need a certain level of package to have your website linked. You can’t do it on a PAYG advert. 

Also, AT won’t put up with you putting your website link on your strap line. You may get away with it for a while but eventually they will make you take it down. 

One thing I would add to this is you seem keen on keeping your advertising costs to a minimum and almost begrudge paying for marketing. I’d suggest you spend as much money marketing as you possibly can whilst working out what advertising is expensive (the kind that doesn’t work)

people make a business outside of using AT on here, it can be done. Just don’t cut corners in the wrong place. 

Thanks EPV

so do you mean a pay and go dealer on AT if so that's a pain because I am pay and go traders club, AT keep telling me they can put me on contract for £500 per month min thats just way to much for me at the moment or are they just trying to rip me off

[It's me 615]

theres more to life than autotrader

open the box

smell the fruit

[NOACROSS 414]

Oooh, oooh, is it time to have the Autoraper debate again? Is it? ;o)

[justina3 518]

Can feel a page bet brewing 

[EPV 631]

1 hour ago, P118 said:

Thanks EPV

so do you mean a pay and go dealer on AT if so that's a pain because I am pay and go traders club, AT keep telling me they can put me on contract for £500 per month min thats just way to much for me at the moment or are they just trying to rip me off

Yes I do, as a pay as you go dealer you can't expect to put your website link on the adverts and for them to put up with it for very long. Understandably, that's a dealer package only privilege so far is fair.

For around £425 per month you could get an eBay Motors Pro package which a few on here manage with. Me? I couldn't make it work so I pay whatever AT want to charge me and still think it's good value. I hope you can make it work without AT but I personally can't. Do whatever works for you.

It's a long raging debate on here, AT or no AT but ultimately no one is right because what works for some doesn't work for others. 

[Dealer 54]

I'd be interested to see who does and who doesnt use AT on here and stock levels and average sales for both. 

[EPV 631]

1 minute ago, Dealer said:

I'd be interested to see who does and who doesnt use AT on here and stock levels and average sales for both. 

Me. 

I stock between 9 and 11 and 90% of my sales come through AT with the other 10% Car Gurus. 

Oh and I sold 7 in July and 8 in August. 2 this month. 

[whitestone679231 113]

7 hours ago, Dealer said:

I'd be interested to see who does and who doesnt use AT on here and stock levels and average sales for both. 

I don’t use AT and haven’t done for 2 years, stocking up to 60 cars average price £10k. I have a click dealer website and use e bay, motors.co.uk, AA cars, exchange and mart, car gurus, and have a page in local rag, biggest spend is £1000 a month for SEO and PPC, one thing I have learnt since cancelling AT is that customers look everywhere, they live on the internet trawling all sites.... with that in mind I am not frightened of cancelling a site if it gets expensive or doesn’t work, find and fund was cancelled after 4 months and CarGurus sent me a letter last week with a 27% increase so I sent my cancellation back.. Without car dealers these sites cannot operate, but we can operate without these sites. 

[Dealer 54]

9 minutes ago, whitestone679231 said:

I don’t use AT and haven’t done for 2 years, stocking up to 60 cars average price £10k. I have a click dealer website and use e bay, motors.co.uk, AA cars, exchange and mart, car gurus, and have a page in local rag, biggest spend is £1000 a month for SEO and PPC, one thing I have learnt since cancelling AT is that customers look everywhere, they live on the internet trawling all sites.... with that in mind I am not frightened of cancelling a site if it gets expensive or doesn’t work, find and fund was cancelled after 4 months and CarGurus sent me a letter last week with a 27% increase so I sent my cancellation back.. Without car dealers these sites cannot operate, but we can operate without these sites. 

What's your average monthly sales please? 

[RH Trading 80]

12 hours ago, P118 said:

I refuse to pay auto trader there prices for the website and to be moved onto a basic contract  £500 a month i was told? I am a home trader and i want to set up a website will auto trader allow me to drop the links in to my adverts? 

That sounds expensive! that will also include putting your stock on the AutoTrader which you'll need to do anyway. I have a Click Dealer site and moved away from the autotrader razor one about 4 years ago. Click Dealer is great, loads of functionality but I still need all my cars on the autotrader. You can pay a fortune for the best website in the world but if no one visits it, its not worth a penny, you might as well stick a postcard in the local newsagents shop window. you're paying for the audience that'll see your cars, Looking right now at August website traffic from my google analysis tool and website tracker I see 91% of the people that came to my website where as an autotrader referral apparently, 7% from google and the rest came direct. looking at the cars sold 85% came as a result of finding my car on the autotrader - that to me isn't an expense, its an investment, as EPV says above, spend money on marketing but measure it and make sure it works. I used to spend around £6000 a month back in the 90's for the midlands autotrader, and about 3 other local newspapers, and only if I asked did I know where a sale came from. now I spend about half of that because being online means I can see exactly what's working and get rid of what isn't, its only expensive if it doesn't work. many people on here get by fine without them but for me I need to be on the biggest and best generator of sales. whatever you choose to decide P118 make sure you measure your return, sales and net profit and make every penny work hard for you. Jobs hard enough without throwing money away

Theres another thread on here on findandfundmycar, they charged me £2000 earlier this year to get on their website which returned me zero, in same time I was on the autotrader which cost me £8000 but resulted in nearly 90 sales - which was the most expensive?

[whitestone679231 113]

15 minutes ago, Dealer said:

What's your average monthly sales please? 

Average 25, As has been mentioned B4 what works for some won’t work for others, I think AT didn’t work for me because as anyone who knows us will tell you we are never going to be the cheapest, I buy the best spec/condition/pedigree and prepare them to death etc and that costs, therefore I could never be on page one, I don’t cater for bargain hunters but I will sell a good car and wipe customers arse after they have bought it. 

[RH Trading 80]

27 minutes ago, Dealer said:

What's your average monthly sales please? 

Stock 40 cars, from January this year been selling consistently around 32 per month on average sales from AT around 25 per month

[trade vet 702]

We have signed up to Click Dealer and they are building our new site.They have already spent a couple of hours with us providing relevant info.They appear switched on as people have said on here.We are doing a min Autotrader deal to get our new pitch started as we are on a main road and have a highly visible pitch .We intend to rotate the stock on Autotrader.We have been offered a 5+2 deal which appears to workout at just over £2 per day per car.We will see how it turns out.

[NOACROSS 414]

51 minutes ago, whitestone679231 said:

I don’t use AT and haven’t done for 2 years, stocking up to 60 cars average price £10k. I have a click dealer website and use e bay, motors.co.uk, AA cars, exchange and mart, car gurus, and have a page in local rag, biggest spend is £1000 a month for SEO and PPC, one thing I have learnt since cancelling AT is that customers look everywhere, they live on the internet trawling all sites.... with that in mind I am not frightened of cancelling a site if it gets expensive or doesn’t work, find and fund was cancelled after 4 months and CarGurus sent me a letter last week with a 27% increase so I sent my cancellation back.. Without car dealers these sites cannot operate, but we can operate without these sites. 

My story/set up is almost exactly the same. Life goes on fine without Autoraper. 

[EPV 631]

Great mixture of replies here for the OP. Fantastic free advice that plenty on here have paid tens of thousands to find out. 

What a forum this is. 

[Huw@Tipstrade 0]

It is a brave move to step away from Autotrader, but I do know quite a few dealers who have done so and remained successful whilst saving significant amounts of money.

The first step is to get a good website!