www.carshowonvid.ie - A new way to advertise your car

keefg

Firstly, many thanks to the motor forum Mods for approving this post.


Hi,

I have been working for the last few months on a group of video advertising sites, the first of which went live yesterday.

It is a new car website.....(yeah, yeah...another one ) but unlike anything available at the moment.

Please check out my site at www.carshowonvid.ie to see what you think.

All feedback, comments & questions welcome.

There isn't a great deal of content up yet (site only went live Monday night) but this will improve over the coming weeks.

Just a note, this is a membership based site but you do not need to sign up to view any clips. If you do decide to sign up (there is a chance on there to win an ipod nano ) I can guarantee you will not receive any spam from my site - nor will any details be passed onto any 3rd parties. The reason we went down the membership route was to try to avoid any messers posting dodgy clips on the site.

This site will also be launched in the UK soon and members will have full access to both sites.

Thanks for looking

kluivert

Not a bad idea at all. Great way to see a car before travelling half way across the country, only to be disappointed with the end result.

Need to work on camera skills though, not professional enough.

You should use train tracks around the car for a steady shot, there's too much hand shake. Same for the interior, use a mounted camera to the windscreen or roof lining.

keefg

kluivert wrote: »

Not a bad idea at all. Great way to see a car before travelling half way across the country, only to be disappointed with the end result.

Thank you. With traffic the way it is it beats driving half way across Dublin let alone the country.

Hopefully sellers will use the voiceover feature to detail the car as much as possible.

kluivert wrote: »

Need to work on camera skills though, not professional enough.

You should use train tracks around the car for a steady shot, there's too much hand shake. Same for the interior, use a mounted camera to the windscreen or roof lining.

I must admit, I am no Stephen Spielberg but I don't think it looks too bad considering all videos were taken with a cell phone.

I did consider a more professional production for this site but after talking to a lot of dealers during the development stages it was deemed too expensive and time consuming for their needs. I do have better productions planned for one of my other sites though.

Hence the camera phone option, it is a very cost & time effective way for both dealers & private sellers to film & upload their clips directly to the site and it's not too technical which makes it a much more accessible advertising medium.

Pretty much everyone has video capability on there phone so there's no need to buy expensive camera equipment.

gaa fan no1

Class site...
Love the video idea. Much better way to view a car vs static images like other car sites!

Really dig the Integra on the home page ! WOW.

keefg

gaa fan no1 wrote: »

Class site...
Love the video idea. Much better way to view a car vs static images like other car sites!

Really dig the Integra on the home page ! WOW.

Thank you for your comments.


For the more cynical among you in Boardsland :rolleyes:, I would just like to mention that although this is gaa fan's first post, I do not know him/her and they are not a planted stooge just to post nice comments.

cormie

Have thought about this myself before, good to see someone do it

I wouldn't worry about the camera skills and steadyness, if you're going to expand and get people posting their own videos, you will get the odd crap video, but you'll also get a lot of good ones, a crap video is better than a crap photo;)

Good luck!

What other sites will you be running?

Grainy video with a droll voice listing the features listed in the add seems to be a bit of a gimmick. Don't get me wrong, its a great looking site with some useful features but in a packed online car market you are going to have to be very useful indeed to get ahead.

Why not combine it with high quality pictures to get the edge on carzone. This is really a weakness they have and would be a good way to be a more helpful site to the user. The option of large sized pictures to me would be very useful indeed.

keefg

cormie wrote: »

Have thought about this myself before, good to see someone do it

I wouldn't worry about the camera skills and steadyness, if you're going to expand and get people posting their own videos, you will get the odd crap video, but you'll also get a lot of good ones, a crap video is better than a crap photo;)

Good luck!

What other sites will you be running?

Thanks cormie.

I will be concentrating on the car site for a while as I have a UK launch to set up as well.

After that will be a (motor) bike site, same deal as my car site really but as an ex biker myself I know that bikers like their own thing rather than be just a page lumped onto the end of a car site. That way I can offer bike and car specific promotions, news & reviews on each site.

I am not sure how popular the bike site will be here but I know there is a large market in the UK & NI for bikes.

I have several other video sites planned....but I will announce them nearer the time

cheers.

mike65

Good luck to Kildare Car Outlet selling the '89 320 for 4.5k

Interesting idea in terms of selling power, though I'm not sure it will actually tell potential buyers any more than a set of well taken photographs. Still many cars are advertsied with crap pix and probably sell a bit quicker cos of greater visibility.

Mike.

smash

video is too low res to see any details, photos are handy because you can print them out. God knows what kind of video people will end up putting online soon too.

And I don't really think it will take off because it wil be hard to get dealers to do this for all their cars when the result doesn't show the car as good as a photo will.

Matt Simis

Really like the idea. One note, http://www.carshowonvid.ie/tips_&_tricks.php says "God" luck, instead of "Good" luck!

Ill probably put the Beetle up later when I borrow a Digital Camcorder.

cormie

I reckon a private seller would put in more effort trying to sell their car than a dealer, so you could get a few videos with people revving the engine, opening the bonnet up while it's on and maybe even doing a run around a track (or their estate:D) which would be a nice feature over just a few photos.

keefg

Thanks for the comments folks.

I can understand that the site may not be to everyones taste and some people will just prefer photo's.

The reason why the clips are not higher resolution is to keep the upload time down. The video player has the capability to show HD clips but it would take an age to upload them, so we had to keep the resolution to a manageable level. As well as that, not everyone has access to HD quality camera equipment and a lot of sellers will use a camera phone.

The idea behind the video is to enable the seller to take a 360 view of the car and the interior as well as the bonus of including a voiceover or the ability to start the engine up or show off their ICE etc. That's something you just can't get across in a static image.

mike65

True I guess viewers can make a judgment not on what they do see but on what they don't - ie exhaust when engine is running!

Mike.

keefg

ronoc wrote: »

Grainy video with a droll voice listing the features listed in the add seems to be a bit of a gimmick. Don't get me wrong, its a great looking site with some useful features but in a packed online car market you are going to have to be very useful indeed to get ahead.

Why not combine it with high quality pictures to get the edge on carzone. This is really a weakness they have and would be a good way to be a more helpful site to the user. The option of large sized pictures to me would be very useful indeed.

Sorry about the droll voice , I am hoping that if/when the site gets a bit more popular seller will be a bit more creative with their clips. Or maybe some enterprising car dealer will use good looking models (and I don't mean the cars).

There is a rating system built into the site and members can vote for a clever/funny/unusual clip and the clip with the highest votes will be displayed on the home page.

keefg

ronoc wrote: »

Why not combine it with high quality pictures to get the edge on carzone. This is really a weakness they have and would be a good way to be a more helpful site to the user. The option of large sized pictures to me would be very useful indeed.

Sorry ronoc, I forgot to reply to this part of your post.

I did consider combining video & photos but was worried that some people might just post pics (of varying quality) and not bother using the video function which kinda defeats the whole object of the sites.

But....I never say never and as this is just the first version of the site I will always look at ways of improving in the future.

Thanks for your feedback.

cormie

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to limit the advanced search to only members. I was checking the advanced search to see if there was an option to "only show results which include the following words", this was a feature I wished they had when I was searching for a Ford Transit "High roof", can be very annoying trawling through the same ads every time you want to see if there's any new additions for your criteria.

Anyway, I didn't register to see if you had that function. It's tough to get people registered for a site. I have no need to register just to look for a car. If I want to sell one, fair enough, but if I'm asked to register, I'll probably just go to another site.

JHMEG

Another week, another car site, as you said yourself.

Video is gimmicky, and for the purposes of selling cars, where detail is required, a 0.07 megapixel video is less than quarter the size of a still image on carzone etc. What you need is 2+ megapixel photos, and ditch the video.
(Aspect ratio of videos on the site is wrong. Eg the 320 is wider than it should be.)

Secondly, getting a video of a car onto a website is hugely more difficult for people than getting a photograph on. Digital (still) cameras are designed to be easily hooked up to your PC. Your analog camcorder is not. Your digital camcorder can, only if you have firewire and buckets of patience. This is going to limit the amount of ads you'll get.

Thirdly most people don't sound like James Earl Jones, and will sound bad on video. Offputting even. Eg you see a nice Integra, but the seller is "storeeeee bud".

Sorry to rain on your parade but I think you should use your obvious talents on some other project.