How Our Used Car Tool Helped Another Customer

Dale,

Thank you and your team for adding the used car merchandising area on vAuto. I had such a great experience, I wanted to share how the merchandising tool found a significant problem (which I didn’t know existed) and then, after it uncovered this problem, the tool saved me hours of time fixing it.  That’s ROI I understand!

So, here’s my detailed Merchandising tool experience…

I’ve been exceptionally busy, (aren’t we all!?!) In the last few weeks, I’ve noticed my Cars.com lead count was way off (vs Autotrader.com). This problem forced me to finally take some time to look into the vAuto merchandising feature in greater depth. At the top of the Merchandising page is the  “Site Summary” table. In the column titled “Missing Images” I noticed Cars.com had less pictures than Autotrader.com… a LOT less. Cars.com was off by 20%! Not good, but, what a discovery. This could be why my lead count was soft!

OK… now what?
Because both classified sites receive the same export, the number of vehicles with pictures should be nearly identical. I don’t care about ALL units missing pics on cars.com (because we all get behind in our picture taking), I just care about those that should be there. I needed a master list. After a quick check, the AutoTrader.com count looked right. So, if I use the AutoTrader.com list as the master pic list and compare it against the cars.com pic list that would do it! I vividly remember saying, “Naww… can’t happen… that would save me hours and hours of time.”

Can it be?
A couple of clicks later and I got it!!! Yesss!

On the “Site Summary” table, I simply clicked the Cars.com missing images link, it took me to a table of “Vehicles retail and without images on Cars.com”. Great, but I need the master list, I need to see which units have pictures on AutoTrader.com.

It was easy!!
I clicked the “Reports” button at the top and it automatically sent me a Spreadsheet with the stock#’s  missing pictures on cars.com PLUS, it included the picture counts from AutoTrader.com (and the other sites we export to).

Wow.
I got it all with just a few clicks!  I cleaned up the list, sent the list of stock numbers to my webmaster and in 24 hours it was fixed. All tolled, 184 units with no pics… discovered and fixed in 30 minutes. Nice.

Like every good manager, I make my rounds walking the online inventory; I look around and see a missing picture here and there, but I’d NEVER connect this to a larger problem! By far, the best 30 minutes I’ve spent in a long time!

Thanks again!

Joe Pistell
Marketing Director
UsedCarKing.com