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Vehicle dealership website development

For dealer principals and sales managers who want one stock record driving the website, the marketplace feeds, the reservation deposits and the sales team, rather than three systems each a day behind the forecourt.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A used-car dealer buys a car at auction on Tuesday.

  • It sits in prep for a week while the workshop sorts the advisory items and the valeter does the interior.
  • Somebody photographs it on the forecourt when the light is right, somebody else types the specification into the website, and a third person uploads it to two marketplaces.
  • By the time it is live everywhere, the price has been changed once on the forecourt board and nowhere else.
  • On Saturday a buyer rings about a car that was sold on Thursday and is still showing on a marketplace, because the salesperson who sold it did not have the login to take it down.

Where it gets harder

Reservations are taken by phone with a card payment that is written on the deal file.

  • Two salespeople can take a deposit on the same car on the same afternoon.
  • Part-exchange valuations arrive as emails with a registration and a mileage, and the appraisal happens whenever the sales manager finds the time.
  • Test drives are booked in a diary on the sales desk, so nobody can see from home which cars are out with a trade plate.
  • The dealer principal knows what has sold by counting deal files, not by looking at a screen, and has no idea which marketplace actually produced the enquiry.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom dealership build normally covers:

  • A stock record for every vehicle Keyed by registration and carrying make, model, derivative, year, mileage and VIN, with an optional lookup from a vehicle-data provider the dealer already pays for
  • A stock status flow of in prep Live, reserved and sold that drives everything downstream
  • A listing page per vehicle with the specification Ordered photographs and any finance example fields supplied by the dealer
  • Search and filters on the public website
  • An online reservation deposit That marks the car reserved for everyone at the same moment
  • A part-exchange valuation request form That lands in a queue for appraisal
  • Test-drive booking against the sales diary
  • Stock feed export to the marketplaces the dealer uses In the format each marketplace specifies
  • An aftersales enquiry route for buyers who come back

How discovery works

Discovery follows one car from auction to sold with you: who photographs it and when, who sets the price, how many marketplaces receive it, how a reservation is taken and refunded, how part-exchanges are appraised and how a test drive is recorded against a trade plate. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: stock in, prep, publish, enquiry or reservation, test drive, sale, remove.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Finance underwriting and the finance house's own portal, vehicle history checks beyond what a configured provider returns, workshop job cards for the prep bay (which belong to the repair workshop topic), and accounting

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A two-site dealer group with ninety cars in stock, a central stock administrator and salespeople who move between sites needs one stock pool with a site per vehicle, reservations that lock a car across both sites, and a feed to three marketplaces with a different subset of stock in each. That is a different build from a single-site trader with twenty cars and one marketplace, and the scope document says so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following one vehicle from purchase to sale through your current process
  • A written scope document naming each stock stage, the reservation rules and what is out of scope
  • Design of the public listing page, the search, the stock administrator view and the sales desk view on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of current stock, photographs and open enquiries from your existing website or stock tool, where practical
  • Marketplace feed set-up for the marketplaces you name, tested against their specifications
  • Training for the stock administrator, the sales team and the dealer principal, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts and a look at your current website, stock spreadsheet or tool, marketplace accounts and how deposits are taken today.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the dealer principal, the sales manager and whoever loads stock; the stock stage model and scope document are agreed with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the listing page buyers see, the search, the stock loader and the sales desk reservation view, checked on the phones the sales team use on the forecourt.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: stock record and status first, then the public site and search, then reservations and part-exchange, then feeds and test-drive booking.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team loads real stock, takes a test reservation and runs a week of enquiries through the system, telling us where it does not match the forecourt.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Status rules, listing layout and feed mappings are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Stock migrated, feeds accepted by each marketplace, deposit payments tested with the provider, redirects from old listing URLs in place, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The dealership runs on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Vehicle-data providers for registration lookup of make, model, derivative and specification
  • Marketplace stock feeds in the formats each marketplace publishes
  • Card payment providers for reservation deposits and refunds
  • Finance calculators or finance house widgets supplied by the dealer's finance partner
  • Email and SMS providers for enquiry replies, reservation confirmations and test-drive reminders
  • Image storage and processing for forecourt photographs
  • Accounting software for deposit reconciliation and sales ledger entries

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A two-site dealer group with one stock pool and three marketplaces

The situation

A dealer group with two forecourts and around ninety cars kept a stock spreadsheet per site and uploaded to three marketplaces by hand, so cars sold at one site stayed live for days and deposits were occasionally taken twice.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build rather than a template website because the stock status, not the website, is the system of record, and the feeds and reservations hang off that status.

The scope we would propose

  • A single stock record per vehicle with a site attribute
  • A status flow in which marking a car reserved or sold at either site withdraws it from the website and every feed within the next feed run
  • A reservation deposit flow that refuses a second deposit on a reserved car
  • A part-exchange queue that the sales manager works through each morning with the appraisal recorded against the eventual deal, and feed rules that send retail stock to all three marketplaces but trade stock to only one

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of sites and whether stock moves between them
  • Average stock size and how many photographs per vehicle are stored and processed
  • Which marketplaces receive feeds and whether each has its own stock rules
  • Online reservations with deposits, the refund rules and the payment provider
  • Vehicle-data lookup provider and whether specification is imported or typed
  • Part-exchange valuation flow and whether appraisals are recorded in the system
  • Volume of stock, photographs and historic sales to migrate, and old URLs to redirect
  • Reporting for the dealer principal, such as enquiry source and days in stock
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Dealership stock package

Stock loader with status flow, public listing pages and search, online reservation deposits, part-exchange requests, test-drive booking and marketplace feed export for dealers.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Would the package do, or do we need a custom build?

A single-site dealer with a straightforward stock flow and one or two marketplaces is usually well served by the dealership stock package configured around your stock. Custom work is the honest answer for dealer groups with stock moving between sites, unusual reservation rules, bespoke finance presentation or a marketplace with a feed format we have not met. Discovery settles it before anything is quoted.

Can the system look up a car from its registration?

It can, through a vehicle-data provider you hold an account with. We connect the lookup during the build so the stock administrator types a registration and the make, model, derivative and year are filled in for checking. Which provider, and what each lookup returns, depends on your contract with them rather than on us.

How do the marketplace feeds work?

Each marketplace publishes a specification for the stock file or feed it accepts. We build an export per marketplace from your live stock, run on a schedule, with rules for which stock goes where. Acceptance of the feed is the marketplace's decision and is tested with them before launch.

What happens to the old website's listing pages?

Every old vehicle URL we can identify is redirected to the matching new page, or to the search page if the car has sold, so search engines and saved links keep working. The redirect list is part of the launch checklist.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code, stock data, photographs and enquiry history are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and nothing stops you moving to another provider.

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Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

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