Development Process
Kick Off Call
The Dealer Specialties "Kick Off Call" Specialist will help you gather the necessary information to get your new website(s) under way. During the kick off call, we will determine domain names (URL’s), DMS type (ADP, Reynolds, etc…), Email Accounts and the sites look, feel, and functionality. We will walk you through a process of analyzing our design styles and the different types of personalization that can be done to each to give you a site that has the color scheme, sections, and imagery you want.
Design
You may view all the design styles at http://www.dealerspecialtieswebsites.com/websites. Each design style has several themes, so be sure to click on each to view the different themes. Choose the style and theme that you like best. Some of the questions to ask yourself when looking at the styles are:
- Do I want top or side navigation?
- Do I want inventory search on my home page?
- Do I want stock images or will I be forwarding photos for the home page?
- Do I want to push customers towards coupons, forms, vehicles?
- What type of color scheme do I like?
The styles are very flexible. We can build your site using the colors of one style, the navigation of another and the look and feel of a third.
Also, please keep in mind that the design styles are essentially an image, so they are not going to act as a live site would. The sections of the design styles that contain photos, may have 4-6 rotating photos of either stock images that you request or photos that you email to us.
Please Note: We prefer to receive logos in EPS format and photos in JPG format.
Inventory
Once the kick off call is complete, our designers will begin building your site to match your preferences from the design styles. While your site is being built, we will contact you to begin acquiring your inventory and domain names.
New & Used Inventory
Dealer Specialties can handle inventory from these sources:
- DMS Extraction – Pull data from the dealer management systems (DMS) and download vehicle inventory based on dealer-specific criteria.
- FTP (from DMS) – We pull your inventory and update your site multiple times per day depending on your inventory source.
- FTP (from third-party or dealer) – Any third-party company or dealer can send or provide standard delimited or database file format via FTP.
Dealer Specialties is also authorized to accept files from hundreds of other providers. An additional fee may be charged to the dealer by their DMS or data provider.
Once the data is collected by one of the above methods, Dealer Specialties enhances the data with information provided by DataOne Software and eVox and sends it to the final destination. A step-by-step description of the process is set forth below:
- Data Delivery process collects all necessary inventory fields using one of the four methods above.
- The process attempts to match the vehicle with DataOne Software data using a detailed four-step process. If the process returns one trim-level specific match, it uses data from the DataOne Software tables to populate its database. If no match occurs the process uses the data from the DMS for all fields.
Used Inventory
Dealer Specialties works with numerous third party used vehicle and data providers. Typically, we receive a file from the provider and then post the data and photos onto the website through Dealer Specialties' Inventory Tool, our searchable inventory database.
Domain Name Transfer
We will work with you and your existing provider to transfer any domain names into our registrar. The ownership of the domain does not change at any point. Transferring the domain name simply allows us to manage the domain name for you, eliminating the potential for a domain to expire or to have downtime in the case of network changes.
Staging
Once the site has been built and your inventory has been downloaded, you will be able to see your site in a staging environment. This will give you the chance to see exactly what your site will look like before it becomes available to the public. At this time, you will let us know of any changes/edits you would like us to complete. We will also begin the admin tools training during this time.
Go Live
Once all changes/edits are completed and approved, we will take your site live to the public so it is available to your potential customers.