The web has now become part of daily life and consumers have made it a key part of the car buying process, particularly in the early stages when they are carrying out their research.
This makes it an increasingly challenging environment for dealers, consumers are more demanding and less forgiving. Dealers have to work harder to attract and keep customers, and first impressions make a big difference.
The face of a dealer is no longer just the showroom but the website too. In the majority of cases, before a customer visits a dealer's showroom, they will visit the website, so an effective website holds the key to a good first impression.

Website potential
Research by Experian has found that more than 41 per cent of secondhand car buyers who used the internet to research a potential purchase used the dealer's own website.
While dealers have spent significant portions of their marketing budgets to build their online presence over the years, the quality and effectiveness of these websites have varied.
An informative and user-friendly website is vital but a key factor in its success is the ability to keep the site up to date. This is currently an area that is often ignored and can have a significant impact on a dealer's reputation and ability to use the site to sell more cars.

Take control
One way of addressing this issue is for dealers to take more control of their own websites. This can be achieved by implementing a content management system. However, the solutions available in the past have been complicated and expensive, so it has been an option only really available to the larger groups.
One of the website development solutions recently developed by Experian, in partnership with Box UK, enables dealers to make changes and updates to their own websites instead of having to rely on external support.
It is a flexible solution that saves them a great deal of time and money and gives them
more control.
However, having a great website is not enough. Online channels continue to evolve and a dealer's internet development should be considered as a multi-layered and continual process. Online presence does not stop simply at a new website.

Starting the search
For customers who have an idea of the car they want, but are unsure of where to start looking for one with their particular requirements, the first stage in the buying cycle is quite often a simple search on the internet. This usually leads them through to a third-party website, such as AutoTrader, What Car?, Parker's, Fish4Cars and many more.
These sites are well known household names for consumers, so being able to link into them provides dealers with a powerful tool, placing them at the fingertips of millions of potential customers.
However, once again, accuracy is key. Most dealerships have a continually rotating stock of thousands of cars and there will be many vehicles in their systems with missing details.
Sifting through them can be a mammoth and costly task so a reliable, sophisticated automated system is needed. Experian's AutoLocate service can take information from a dealer management system, update records where they are incomplete and present them in a suitable format for integration with these third party websites.

The future
Although the used car market looks positive for 2007, the fear of further interest rate rises means dealers have to be on the ball and make sure they are making the most of this ever-evolving marketing tool, the internet.