What is the most cost effective way to deploy your automotive website?

Before we get into this article you should be aware of the cost of a typical website project for the automotive industry. The cost for a typical automotive website ranges from $3000 to 15000, let's take an average of $9000 to develop a website in this example. That is $9000 many new dealers don't want to invest into, especially in the beginning of the operation. The biggest complaint I hear from the dealers today is the turn around production time. Assume you have the initial investment of a well develop website, but how about the wait time of 30 days to sometimes 90 days. There are many frustrated dealers who have paid a hefty deposit on a project just to wait for 30 days to find out the project hasn't even been touched. What about your grand opening is in 2 weeks and you need your website ready to go before you commit to tens of thousands of dollars in advertising and inventory. You do not have the luxury to be patient, trust me! The obvious answer to this problem is to use a web template instead of fully blown customized website. Because a web template can benefit you as a dealer in many ways.

First of all a web template is much quicker to deploy, it can be up and running in literally hours instead of weeks even months. Second of all a web template is much more cost effective, because the development cost is shared by many clients rather than just one. However there are things you should look out for before foolishly commit to a web template. A poorly developed web template is a completely waste of money and energy. For dealers you should look for common features that are found on most of automotive websites, such as inventory listing, contact us page, maybe about us page, with forms pre-built for contact, finance applications or book a test drive. Make sure your web template company is willing to offer you customization on the template itself, because there is nothing more frustrating for you to purchase a template just to find out there will be a hefty fee for another designer to modify the code.

You should also ask questions like "what is the hosting fee?", "is there a contract?" as well as "what kind of service do you offer in terms of SEO". These questions are important enough for you to find out ahead of time. Remember hosting fees from the big name design companies can cost from $200 to $400 per month. And there are stipulations and contracts in place for you to be locked in for certain term. It is also important to find out if your service provider offer such service as SEO or "search engine optimization". It is always a good idea to find a service provider who is well rounded to provide you the full list of service rather than splitting the work with 3 different firms.

Thank you for reading this article, it is brought to you by Dealer Template Canada, your ultimate web solution provider for Canadian dealers. Find us online at http://www.dealertemplate.ca or http://www.dealerelites.com