Car Dealer Website Examples - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

Dealership Website Examples that Internet Sales Managers and Automotive Digital Marketing Professionals have identified as being case examples of the best in class, the worst in class and then there is the just plain ridiculous... Always good to know what the pitfalls can be!

THE GOOD:

G1. www.DriveTheBest.com from Schumacher European of North Scottsdale

G2. www.AutoAves.com combined with www.Automotive-Avenues.com (eCommerce/Community) of Denver

G3. www.HerbChambers.com/ou/Boston-Honda from Herb Chambers Automotive in Boston

G4. www.SouthBayBMW.com from South Bay BMW in Southern California

G5. www.SouthBayBMW.org is the South Bay BMW Social Network and Community serving BMW owners, employees and suppliers in Southern California

G7. www.ModestoToyota.com combined with www.ModestoToyota.org/ (eCommerce/Community) of Modesto, California and the surrounding Northern California and Central Valley areas...

G8. www.ParagonCars.com combined with www.NYHonda.net for a eCommerce/Social Network presence serving New York City and the surrounding New York, New Jersey and Connecticut NYC Metro areas...

G9. www.PenskeCommunity.com from Penske Automotive Group serving as a content hub with feeds to www.PenskeSocial.com and http://Facebook.com/PenskeCars

G10. http://www.WorldHyundaiReviews.com from World Hyundai of Matteson, IL (a suburb of Chicago).

G11. Rick Case Honda is one of the rare examples of a car dealership firing on all 12 cylinders.  The high performance dealership management team at this location have it all going on.  Just as them about the "JFDIN" motto that appears on many walls and signs throughout their dealership.

G12. Lou Fusz Reviews is another great example of a dealer using the "You Have A Voice" portal tactic as a key component of executing their automotive reputation management strategy.

THE BAD:

B1. In the past we had dealers listed here who have improved their sites tremendously and we think that we need to do a better job of recognizing them...in the future we will be asking our editors to do a better job of monitoring these sites and justifying why they think they are sub par websites. Currently we have taken down sites that were listed here in the interest of fairness.

B2. www.RipOffReport.com is notoriously dealer unfriendly

B3. www.DealerRater.com - As much as I truly admire Chip Grueter and Matt Lamoureux from the DealerRater organization, I object to their unwillingness to allow consumers to post dealer reviews while at the dealership... And, it is very selfish that they do not allow search engines to index the links from their DealerRater profile pages to the dealership's website.  This attempt to defeat any SEO benefits from being a DealerRater Certified Dealer is something I have expressed concern about previously.

THE UGLY:

In this department we may showcase ugly vendors who do not represent the best interest of our dealers.

U1. Car Dealer Check...enough said...we don't even recommend that you visit this site to give them any credibility...any site that lists the WORST CAR DEALERS is not someone we are interested in talking about.

U2. Ripoff Report...need we say more. The original anti car dealer, anti business site on the net.

U3. Again, here is another non dealer friendly site.

U4. Social Network Site Disaster - While not a vendor site we thought this was an example of an issue that dealers should be aware of...When Spammers attacked the "Phil Long Community" social network site, the managers at Phil Long in Colorado Springs who elected to "Do It Themselves" instead of paying for a full time monitoring and management service, were not paying attention... When customers and employees visit www.PhilLongCommunity.com it looks like a Canadian Pharmaceutical Superstore! Very Ugly... After six months, Phil Long Management had not done anything about booting the Spammers and their Pharmaceutical Drug promoting blog posts, forum posts and image uploads. So check it out, as of 10/2/2010 the Phil Long Community was still a classic case study to look at and see what happens when a dealer does social media the wrong way!

Attention ADM Professional Community Members: Please submit your recommendations for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly automotive industry and dealership websites in the comment sections below...