Car selling websites: Market full?

Sully

Evening folks. Hope you are all having a relaxing Sunday.

I have been considering for sometime now to launch a decent car trading website. The second hand market is probably going to be more popular during the recession times and I think that perhaps the market needs an extra player or two to increase competition and value. I understand from reading over similar threads on this forum that some went ahead and did it and others suggested not because CarZone are top and cant be beaten simply due to their power. Also, dealers would not consider moving. Nobody can remain on top for ever btw regardless of their power. But that's not the point.

Being honest, I am not going to set it up to topple any other car selling website. I want to offer a website thats easy to use for everybody, has excellent features to help both the buyer and seller and is highly ranked on search enignes. I want to offer more competition and value to the market.

My question to you guys and gals is: Is the market full? Is there room for another player in the market? Would you consider advertising your car on a new website if you felt it was cheap and reliable? Would you simply ignore another player? The website would start medium sized and work its way depending on popularity and I would prefer to keep it open to the day to day sellers as you would see on Adverts.

I have not decided either way what I will do as I have a few other tourism projects I am going ahead with over the next few months. It was a thought and I might give it more thought if I felt people would give it a go.

I would plan on working with you guys on building the website that you would like and you would of course be my lab rats Obviously usability and features is important and a decent website wont do much unless its promoted. Its unlikely I would bother carrying out TV ads as I feel print and internet advertising would be more affective.

Thoughts? peasant has given the nod for this thread btw so thanks again peasant

Feelgood

Dunno sully, theres a lot of sites on the go at the moment, which are cheap and reliable. Could end up flogging a dead horse to be honest.

Again you get the functionality right, get the word out it could be a good few months. Most cars are bought and sold at the start of the year so ideally you'd really want the site up and running by now to get a good head start.

You would also most definitely need someone to work full time in customer services for the site and some sort of helpline which most of the popular names have at this stage along with dedicated photographers which they send out to you for free.

Its a much bigger undertaking than just lashing a site up there, if your charging users for a service its going to be a lot cheaper and better than the competition. If its not and you don't have half the services that the competition does, then I can't see it taking off.

I'll think you'll find that you'd need a small team together to get this up and running.

Sorry just my honest opinion, theres always room for one more of course but I would seriously put a lot of research into the online cars sites work first rather than just looking at it as a bunch of code and a database..

BlackWizard

I'd never pay for a single website. So unless you somehow get your website in with the likes of Carzone, CBG, RTE etc , then I don't think I'd pay for it.

If you decide to make it free, then I probably still wouldn't use it because I like http://www.carsireland.ie/ and Adverts.ie. So you'd have to become more popular than them and not just have better features.

mickdw

Well I see carzone are advertising their website on the tv now. They must be finding a drop off in useage due to the crap job they did on the new site. If you throw enough money at it, it could work.

woop

with carzones new look you might be some way succesful but to be honest you might be better off if you found a way of getting rid of the cars on youre site because the problem at the moment is they are not selling

maybe a type of auction site what with all the repossesions just a suggestion

keefg

Setting up a car website is not an easy task (trust me, I know).

In the current climate you will need to be able to attract as many sellers as possible.

Despite carzones faults and the amount of dealerships that are unhappy with the service many of them just don't see any alternative.

I know from experience that you will find it difficult to get a foot in the door to see any dealerships - unless you have a big wad of cash and are buying a car - otherwise most dealerships just won't talk to you no matter how good & cheap your site is.

Also, you talk about making a cheap site, that just isn't good enough as there are so many free sites available to dealers & private sellers.

I had a huge grant and support from Enterprise Ireland to set up my site and it was still a struggle (still is). I spent months visiting dealerships all over the country as part of a feasibility study and the reaction to my site was very positive then.....bang.....the recession hit and dealers have many other more important issues to take care of rather than supporting (yet another) website.

That's the dealership side of it, to get your site into the private sellers radar then you will need to either spend a considerable amount on advertising or come up with some very creative marketing campaign.

However, if you feel you can make a go of it then I wish you the best of luck.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Stephen

Top feature request: some way to filter out cars that don't have VRT paid.

drunkmonkey

Sully wrote: »

CarZone are top and cant be beaten simply due to their power. Also, dealers would not consider moving. Nobody can remain on top for ever btw regardless of their power.


My question to you guys and gals is: Is the market full? Is there room for another player in the market? Would you consider advertising your car on a new website if you felt it was cheap and reliable? Would you simply ignore another player?

It would be an almighty (but possible) job to take on carzone / autotrader simply because of their size (Guardian Media Group) . if you became a serious contender i would expect them to buy you out, The logistics alone of running a similar website would require a lot of manpower.
I wouldn't consider launching a similar website, I'd consider launching something completly different...

One of the OP's suggested being allowed to comment (like adverts.ie) or make an offer on a car, I think that's a good idea, I would also like to be able to list a car for swap....
If the site offered something unique that carzone can't offer (naked chicks is probably against company policy:)) which increaced the chances of a car been sold I would be prepared to pay extra, what you've got to figure out is exactly whats the niche or extra service..

have you tought of a name yet? best I could think of was tradeup.ie;) (not sure how much google would like it though). Best of luck with it Sully....

F-Stop

Great idea, but huge competition. I guess you would need a big advertising budget to have a chance breaking through to the market. Perhaps if you focus on the private market and could provide an easy way for people to list private sales and find them you could have some chance as this seems to be the biggest failing in the established sites.

Comments section is a good idea, also forums and useful info for the non-expert used car buyer (people like me) who need a resource that offers info on what to look for when buying a used car, what are the implications of insurance test driving a privately owned used car, etc. Check the sort of topics that are posted up in the forum here; if you can provide a source of info that adequately covers these (most people google before posting a question) then you might have a chance at building up a following that will use the site to sell or buy cars.

I'd imagine that something like this would take a lot of manpower, or a lot of hours anyway, but with a year or two of hard graft could pay off. I do think that the market is nearly completely blanketed, but there are a few gaps which could be exploited.

Good luck with it.

Tipsy Mac

There's plenty of room for a site offering a superior service. Worst will be startup where you would realistically need atleast 10,000 cars on the site in order to generate enough interest in it, to do this you will likely need to offer the service for free initially. The problem with offering it for free initially is people will tend to put up lots of take the pi$$ adverts and garages may be inclined to not update their stock listing as they are not paying for it. If you basically built the old version of carzone and glossed it up abit you would have a vast market for it, that site worked well, new one is rubbish. Best of luck with it.

Sully

Thanks for the comments so far folks. I had planned to give a free listing and more price based listings but monitor each listing for quality control.

With regards to comments/aution based - nice idea.

Just a reminder - its only an idea. Ill decided later with consideration to the Feedback given here.

BlackWizard

I think it's only fair that everyone above this post is on the board if it's successful and has an evenly distributed share value in the company :cool:

niceirishfella

Sully, theres a site in the uk called desperatetosell.co.uk - dreadful site tho'.

An irish variant of this may be worth looking @ - as there is a lot of desperate people out there.

-Chris-

I do think it's worth trying, software and web services seem to be much more of a "meritocracy" than other enterprises. If you can develop a killer app, then the sheer excellence of it will propel its success and viral distribution.

As the others said, I think you'll have to launch as a free service first, and once you've reached critical mass you can add in either ad-based revenue or a pay-per-use model.
Possibly you could have a two tier model - a free service that gets 4 photos and no customer support, and a paid service that gets more photos and has assistance.
A third tier is the dealer customer. As keefg will attest to, dealers are very "tight", and even more so now. You'll need to be able to demonstrate a consistent ROI before they'll give you a foot in.

Think about how it scales and how it will tie in to other companies's websites and services. As said above, one of the greatest strengths of carzone.ie is that when you list your car there, you are automatically on rte.ie etc.

Make the design beautiful (design is everything), make it extraordinarily easy/intuitive to use, make it all about the content, rather than any marketing plan or internet fad.
On the internet, nothing's more important than content.

Good luck!!

cbyrne

drunkmonkey wrote: »

One of the OP's suggested being allowed to comment (like adverts.ie) or make an offer on a car, I think that's a good idea, I would also like to be able to list a car for swap....

look at www.carforecourt.ie for this.. swapping/trading, comments on cars and feedback (like ebay) on sellers, plus not displaying contact numbers to discourage cold calling

drunkmonkey

cbyrne wrote: »

look at www.carforecourt.ie for this.. swapping/trading, comments on cars and feedback (like ebay) on sellers, plus not displaying contact numbers to discourage cold calling

don't like the search, you can only display 10 cars at a time, painfull to use if you get thrown back 1000 search results....
carzone is pretty good for detailed searches with images, 200 cars per page....

pistonheads has a simple but effective search page... http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/

Sully

Just want to get in a bit earlier and ask that people not plug their sites in this thread? The last threads were closed because of people spamming and I would like to hear peoples opinions and views without people filling the thread with spam and the mods having to close it.

(Not saying anybody has, but the links above reminded me to ask for this )

BostonB

Be nice to have a site where I can filter on AC for example. Or towbar. Or 7 seats. length of warranty. Etc.

cbyrne

drunkmonkey wrote: »

don't like the search, you can only display 10 cars at a time, painfull to use if you get thrown back 1000 search results....
carzone is pretty good for detailed searches with images, 200 cars per page....
QUOTE]

There is an advanced search option on carforecourt too, sorry sully - just responding to the quote

drunkmonkey

BostonB wrote: »

Be nice to have a site where I can filter on AC for example. Or towbar. Or 7 seats. length of warranty. Etc.

don't forget the Remote start, heated leather and snow chains:)

Sully

Some nice ideas.. I think if I did go ahead with it the site would be very useful to people. I would probably not go with the "bog standard" car website and move out of the box a little encorperating suggestions here.

victor1

cant seem to find a thread but what are curretly the main car search engines in eire - free ones specifically, as think carzone is s F*(kin joke chaging per month when it was one off fee before, carlist.ie/adverts.ie what else?

Big Nasty

It's a great idea Sully but not the time for it just now. The vast majority of dealers are suffering at the moment so are keeping their expenses to an absolute minimum. I.e: they'll weigh up what gives them the most response for their buck and leave it at that. Short term, that means Carzone is a defo for every dealer, whether they like it or not. Some of the more affluent dealers will continue to use CBG / Whatcar, etc. to give them added exposure.

That said, this will give you plenty of time to design and test your site and have it ready to go when the market picks up in a couple of years time!

Two points though:
1.) Keep it simple and easy to use with at least 50 search results per page.
2.) If it is for the Irish car market and you expect Irish dealers to advertise on it do not allow any UK/NI companies / private sellers.

BostonB

drunkmonkey wrote: »

don't forget the Remote start, heated leather and snow chains:)

Well if you know what you want? Why waste with all the crud?

BostonB

Stephen wrote: »

Top feature request: some way to filter out cars that don't have VRT paid.

problem with this is people list their ads deliberately incorrectly to increase their exposure. It would be great if people could flag ads for the admin to check.

BostonB

I don't see anything wrong with starting a small site and letting it grow. If you're better than the other sites it will get around in time.

Big Nasty

Was just thinking to myself of how to promote a new site like this without having the massive marketing budget that Carzone / Autotrader have. If you could use some 'talking point' / gimmick that would attract people back to your site that would be good. E.g. adding a motoring forum (sorry boards) or competition or something?