Another Car Website...

JohnThomas09

just posting this here to get the opinons of all the MotorHeads.I'm thinking of setting up a Online Website for selling your car,i want it to be easy and cheap for all customers to use.My question is not on buisness advice but simply would you think another Car website would be beneficial,i know there's a lot of competition with Autotrader,DoneDeal and Carzone.I'm just looking for your view?

_Buck Rogers

It COULD work with the right backing and advertisment. Autotrader (website) and carzone are frowned upon as the amount of scamming that is attempted is beyond ridiculous.

Donedeal seems to be solid at the moment, with people claiming to have sold cars within 8 hours of placing their ads.

So, yours could work, depends on price etc.

Good luck with it mate.

smash

Carzone.ie
Autotrader.ie
Donedeal.ie
Carlist.ie
Carhost.ie
CBG.ie
Carlot.ie
carsforsaleireland.ie
carsireland.ie
funkymotors.ie
autonet.ie
buyandsell.ie
usedcarsforsale.ie
whatcar.ie
adoos.ie/l/car
adverts.ie
carcity.ie
justcars.ie
autoweb.ie
gumtree.ie
carprowl.ie
micksgarage.ie

and many more... the market is saturated!

zac8

don't forget irishrides.ie :eek: what were they thinking?

2 Espressi

I voted Yes in error, there are already waay too many of these about, and people will only post on a handful of sites.

JohnThomas09

_Buck Rogers wrote: »

It COULD work with the right backing and advertisment. Autotrader (website) and carzone are frowned upon as the amount of scamming that is attempted is beyond ridiculous.

Donedeal seems to be solid at the moment, with people claiming to have sold cars within 8 hours of placing their ads.

So, yours could work, depends on price etc.

Good luck with it mate.

thats no urban myth,i sold a car on DoneDeal within 24hrs.Thanks for your advice.

smash

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

thats no urban myth,i sold a car on DoneDeal within 24hrs.Thanks for your advice.

was it the only site you advertised with?

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

Carzone.ie

carsforsaleireland.ie

and many more... the market is saturated!

i would agree that the market is saturated but a lot of these sites are boring and plain.I would like to set mine up simliar to DoneDeal,easy to use,easy apymeny,you dont have to fill out loads of registration forms and cheap.Its aslo very atrractive for users and the name is easy to remember.

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

was it the only site you advertised with?

ya it was,the likes of Autotrader and Carzone are too expensive and aren't that user freindly.I woul like to base mine simliar to DoneDeal.

Gary ITR

2 Espressi wrote: »

I voted Yes in error, there are already waay too many of these about, and people will only post on a handful of sites.

Fixed that for you

smash

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

ya it was,the likes of Autotrader and Carzone are too expensive and aren't that user freindly.I woul like to base mine simliar to DoneDeal.

Donedeal is not deal as it works by keywords and there aren't too many adverts. I'd rather be able to drill down a search with more criteria and compare cars that are advertised.

Donedeal is basically the new buy and sell, there's a lot of crap on it.

How good a site works will depend on what you're trying to sell.

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

Donedeal is not deal as it works by keywords and there aren't too many adverts. I'd rather be able to drill down a search with more criteria and compare cars that are advertised.

Donedeal is basically the new buy and sell, there's a lot of crap on it.

How good a site works will depend on what you're trying to sell.

i agree that it is nice to be able to compare.i was thinking of selling Cars,Commerical,Motorbikes and Farm Machinery.i was thinking of having the usually links of searching Make,Model,Fuel Type,Shape,Location,Price,Age.

Saab Ed

steve06 wrote: »

Donedeal is not deal as it works by keywords and there aren't too many adverts. I'd rather be able to drill down a search with more criteria and compare cars that are advertised.

Donedeal is basically the new buy and sell, there's a lot of crap on it.

How good a site works will depend on what you're trying to sell.

But so much of it is down to price. Carzone where the dominant figure for so long in this market but really shot themselves in the foot with the new pricing structure. €40 for a month versus €3 for 2 months. Donedeal is on the up IMO and while it does have its search flaws its pricing alone will bring in the punters. Ironic really that carzone are actualy helping donedeal by being too expensive. OP price is key. Im sure lots of IT guys here can advise you which formats etc etc you should be using ( I wouldnt have a clue ) but IMO the cost of the ads will determine your success.

but43r

The amount of cars on your database will determine your success. If there are only couple of hundred cars on your site people wount bother checking the site. Starting off would be very hard.

keefg

but43r wrote: »

The amount of cars on your database will determine your success. If there are only couple of hundred cars on your site people wount bother checking the site. Starting off would be very hard.

I can vouch for that from personal experience.

JohnThomas09

but43r wrote: »

The amount of cars on your database will determine your success. If there are only couple of hundred cars on your site people wount bother checking the site. Starting off would be very hard.

that is definetly a major obstacle.I wonder if you offered it as free then first few weeks and then charged after you have a few thousand cars on the site.All the other websites out there had to start somewhere.

but43r

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

that is definetly a major obstacle.I wonder if you offered it as free then first few weeks and then charged after you have a few thousand cars on the site.All the other websites out there had to start somewhere.

Only few of them are successful and they are probably the ones that started off when there was very little competition. Even if you let advertise for free it would be hard to pull off. Most of the people wont bother putting their cars up because they know there would be very few people that would view them and the people that are looking to buy wont bother visiting site as they know there would be very few cars for sale.

smash

Saab Ed wrote: »

But so much of it is down to price. Carzone where the dominant figure for so long in this market but really shot themselves in the foot with the new pricing structure. €40 for a month versus €3 for 2 months. Donedeal is on the up IMO and while it does have its search flaws its pricing alone will bring in the punters. Ironic really that carzone are actualy helping donedeal by being too expensive. OP price is key. Im sure lots of IT guys here can advise you which formats etc etc you should be using ( I wouldnt have a clue ) but IMO the cost of the ads will determine your success.

But isn't carsireland free? They're carzone's biggest competitor and they couldn't even get funding on the dragon's den...

JohnThomas09

but43r wrote: »

Only few of them are successful and they are probably the ones that started off when there was very little competition. Even if you let advertise for free it would be hard to pull off. Most of the people wont bother putting their cars up because they know there would be very few people that would view them and the people that are looking to buy wont bother visiting site as they know there would be very few cars for sale.

that is very true but i was hoping if i invested in advertising and once people started using the site it is bond to build momentum.DoneDeal started out despite major competiton.Look at their story http://help.donedeal.ie/info/our-story

smash

donedeal lists a lot more than cars though!

If you think you can take on carzone then fire ahead, but they have the dealer network tied up so you'll only be getting classifieds really, and that's not a lot.

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

donedeal lists a lot more than cars though!

If you think you can take on carzone then fire ahead, but they have the dealer network tied up so you'll only be getting classifieds really, and that's not a lot.

i think that their is more Private car sellers nationwide that trade Sellers.

JHMEG

1. Borrow 50 grand and run a sustained advertising campaign on radio, newspapers, billboards etc.
2. Give out several thousand vouchers to entitle people to free ads.
3. Undercut cz's rate to the dealers by 90% to 100%

Within 12 months you'd have the #1 car site in the country.

Big Nasty

There isn't!

Carzone have 45k cars, 4k of which are private.

CBG have 60k, 8k of which are private.

Yes CBG and Carzone have most of the dealers tied up. Almost all the dealers on Cars Ireland are Indy. Done Deal is mostly Private.

It doesn't matter if your site is the best in the land and free - if the public don't know about it it's not gonna work. The amount of marketing it would take to compete with either of the big two would cripple most.

Also dealers would need to update your new system - another hassle that their sales staff wont do. Look at Cars For sale Ireland - huge amount of obsolete / closed dealers on that site.

smash

JHMEG wrote: »

1. Borrow 50 grand and run a sustained advertising campaign on radio, newspapers, billboards etc.
2. Give out several thousand vouchers to entitle people to free ads.
3. Undercut cz's rate to the dealers by 90% to 100%

Within 12 months you'd have the #1 car site in the country.

That didn't work for carlot.ie and don't forget the thousands you'll have to spend monthly on google keywords, and believe me - it would be about 20k monthly!

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

That didn't work for carlot.ie and don't forget the thousands you'll have to spend monthly on google keywords, and believe me - it would be about 20k monthly!

thanks for that advice.i didn't realise it cost 20k a month to advertise on the likes of google.

smash

it would by the time you're finished bidding on keywords.

JHMEG

steve06 wrote: »

That didn't work for carlot.ie and don't forget the thousands you'll have to spend monthly on google keywords, and believe me - it would be about 20k monthly!

Who? I've never heard to them (which kinda says something).

I do believe the best place to advertise that kind of thing is the ways I've mentioned. Donedeal had a billboard ad in Pearse Station last time I was there.

The one rule of competition in business is: no matter what you do someone else can always do it better. The other rule is when you're at the top you can only go down. I think CZ is at the top as it has never been seriously challenged.

smash

carlot.ie ran a massive national radio campaign, and had a price of €25 - they've now slashed it to €3 because their campaign didn't work!

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

carlot.ie ran a massive national radio campaign, and had a price of €25 - they've now slashed it to €3 because their campaign didn't work!

there's a big mistake there,starting out by charging €25,start small and feed all. :P

smash

catch 22 - you need money to put into development, advertising etc. To put the money in, you need to make the money. Can't do that with free or very small advertising money!

JHMEG

I have to take your word for it steve, but I don't recall ever hearing of them before.

smash

they used to have a graphic on their homepage saying "TV ad campaign coming soon" - guess they ran out of money!

JohnThomas09

steve06 wrote: »

catch 22 - you need money to put into development, advertising etc. To put the money in, you need to make the money. Can't do that with free or very small advertising money!

ya thats true.you dont have the six numbers for saturday night.

smash

If I did, I wouldn't suggest investing the winnings in another car website.

StuartC

I started my first business a few years ago on one of the sites mentioned earlier.

It is without a doubt one of the hardest businesses to run online. They only upside was that I learnt a hell of a lot in a year.

1. Dealers wont upload cars onto your site, no matter how free or good looking your site is. Its time consuming and they are already uploading all of their stock on several different websites. Unless they are getting a large amount of calls from your site it just wont work.

2.Throwing money at it doesnt always work.
Look at carlot.ie, they have spent a ridiculous sum of money on online advertising and have a huge amount of staff and have been stuck on 8000- 9,000 cars for months. Its a pretty decent site even.

3.Dealers wont pay money to be on your site, theres so many offering for Free, they'l laugh you out the door.

Theres so many more things that stop this market being inviting.

I wish you all the best If you proceed with it, but it simply wont work..

fredk

Hi, this is Fred Karlsson from DoneDeal. Great to hear that you guys like our site.

Donna & Emer, our help desk, work really hard to keep DoneDeal scam free. As soon as we spot a scam ad it is removed. So if you spot any strange ads on DoneDeal, click the "Report Ad" link and we will investigate it straight away.

For steve06: I know some people prefer to drill down to the different cars, instead of searching for keywords. Three weeks ago we hired a new web developer, Declan, and he is adding new features to DoneDeal already. The drill-down is on his ToDo-list, so hopefully you will see it on DoneDeal within a few months.

As for starting up a new car site, there is definitely tough competition out there. Google advertising for cars can be very expensive. Already in 2005, when we launched DoneDeal, it was way too expensive for us to advertise our cars section on Google. Instead we advertised other sections where there was less competition, e.g. furniture, dogs, horses, etc. The car section just grew by itself. Now that we are bigger and make some money we advertise our cars section a little bit on Google, but it is still the most expensive section to advertise by far.

We have chosen to focus on private sellers, because we feel that the traders can quickly take over a web site. At some time in the future we will probably try to get the traders on to DoneDeal as well, but we will plan it carefully to make sure people who are only interested in private sellers can easily find those ads.

If you want to go down the trader route you should check out carlister.ie. It is a web site where traders upload their ads, and that site then feeds the cars into your site. They have many thousand cars to feed into your site.

DavidCarroll

Actually very few dealers still use carlister and nearly all the stock
left on it is out of date. It relies on a back door hack into the carzone control panel which makes it very vulnerable as carzone could close it down at any time. John I dont think you will be able to persuade the dealers to list on another site and reckon your best bet would be to try and negotiate an affiliate deal with CarZone, CarsIreland or CBG

galwaytt

...well, I used to use Carzone, but when they got taken over, and then changed their pricing policy, I stopped using them.

Problem is, it's usually the first place people look...........but for now, they're pricing is an obstacle. I was contacted by them lately, they having spotted my ad somewhere else. I told them the price was fine, but a renewable fee (of that amount), in an age with no repeat publication costs (online) meant I wouldn't advertise with them, that it was just an opportunistic rip-off.d

They haven't called back.

Have used, and sold, from Done Deal myself, but I do find the chronolgical order thing means your ad can very quickly slip into obscurity. Good site though.

Big Nasty

As a matter of interest galwaytt who do you use now (I presume you are a dealer), or is it just done deal?

Eoin

I voted No. There are just too many sites out there, and I'd prefer to see the existing free ones get bigger, rather than diluting the market further.

http://www.carsireland.ie/ is a nice site and free.

I'd like to see carswap get bigger, because I absolutely love the idea. I'm not actively selling my car, but open to swapsies if something interesting or different comes along.

Barr

It would be great to have another website to rival carzone. Their pricing is excessive to say the least . For 6 weeks + 2 ad publications I paid €90 :eek:

Done deal I reckon is second best and its €3 which is good value.

sk8board

carsireland gets my vote. Hard to argue with free, and the drill-down makes browsing for the car you want easy.
I know Fred from donedeal said a drill-down is on the way, and its none too soon. For example if I sarch for 'gti' in the cars section I get 243 results, for everything including (I assume, I didn't go through all the results) some vw gti's.
On carsireland, I can see there are 46 gti's listed before I even click search.

I notice autotrader.co.uk have the same functionality now, where it shows the results total for that search criteria before you search. very user-friendly, especially if like me, you are after a specific car, not looking to browse '000's of ads.

On a related note, I like the latest release of CZ (from a few months ago) but what were they thinking not allowing you show more than 10 cars per page? It slows down the user-experience no end. I use driving.ie now instead, same old CZ functionality, but less hassle.

Atomic Pineapple

The only option that will get you in there is to do what donedeal has done, focus on private sellers, make it cheap or free but simply make it easier to search than donedeal.

Donedeal is a great site but its got a woeful search function and the search function it has also leads to your ad quickly getting pushed back and off the first page meaning you have to pay another €3 to get it back up to where people actually browse.

So I reckon a similar site but with a better search function thats useful but not time consuming or hard to use, free or cheap advertising, aimed at private sellers and nicely designed could become a success story over a few years like donedeal.

You could also tap into the online forums like this one to offer discounts, or free to get it going and get the word spread.

A web 2.0 style app may be something to look into also, carzone has tried this but has failed big time in my opinion

Eoin

draffodx wrote:

A web 2.0 style app may be something to look into also, carzone has tried this but has failed big time in my opinion

I'm actually in two minds about this. It's a pain for web-savvy people who have a very good idea of what they are looking for, but I think the new interface might be quite good for a lot other people - although it's still not quite right.

If they had just left the old interface available as well, and the ability to bookmark particular searches, it might have been the best solution.

The pricing is an issue, though I have also come around to the idea of having an end date on adverts.

TJJP

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

just posting this here to get the opinons of all the MotorHeads.I'm thinking of setting up a Online Website for selling your car,i want it to be easy and cheap for all customers to use.My question is not on buisness advice but simply would you think another Car website would be beneficial,i know there's a lot of competition with Autotrader,DoneDeal and Carzone.I'm just looking for your view?

I don't think so; there are probably enough sites already.

For me the deciding factor will be if this new site uses punctuation or if the spacebar is ignored thereby rendering the entire site ineligible. If it’s the latter then it’s definitely a no.

sk8board

draffodx wrote: »

do what donedeal has done, focus on private sellers, make it cheap or free but simply make it easier to search than donedeal.

i agree, thats why carsireland is my favourite (this week).

but then some fella called bendunne.com has been blanketing the airwaves at the moment, specifically targetting the donedeal market "half the price of donedeal"

Will be interesting to see how much of the market he can get.

Atomic Pineapple

eoin wrote: »

I'm actually in two minds about this. It's a pain for web-savvy people who have a very good idea of what they are looking for, but I think the new interface might be quite good for a lot other people - although it's still not quite right.

I agree that its the way forward, I done a module on Rich Internet Apps/Web 2.0 in my final year at college there this year and its definitely the thing to be looking into.

Its just that I think Carzone have done it very badly in my opinion, as someone who is "Web Savvy" I find it much slower, less responsive and harder to get what I want quicker which is the opposite of what a "Web 2.0" website should be.

Theres so much potential for improvement in the carzone website I feel

smash

draffodx wrote: »

A web 2.0 style app may be something to look into also, carzone has tried this but has failed big time in my opinion

draffodx wrote: »

I agree that its the way forward, I done a module on Rich Internet Apps/Web 2.0 in my final year at college there this year and its definitely the thing to be looking into.

Its just that I think Carzone have done it very badly in my opinion, as someone who is "Web Savvy" I find it much slower, less responsive and harder to get what I want quicker which is the opposite of what a "Web 2.0" website should be.

Theres so much potential for improvement in the carzone website I feel

Erm what?

"The term "Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web applications which facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content"

Carzone is not a web 2.0 website. If I was you, I'd get a refund from your college for teaching you incorrect meanings of marketplace terminology!

I'd like to add regarding irishrides.ie - they have sent me a total of 6 unsolicited text messages over the last few months telling me to advertise on their site. I'm going to report them to comreg!

cascade35

Donedeal is one of the best sites ive used.
Always room for another site.

stevenmu

I'd welcome another site, I don't think any of the others have got it perfect yet, BUT you would need some kind of major hook or advantage over existing sites for it to get off the ground. I doubt you'll be able to compete based on price, there's currently carzone at one end of the scale being expensive but full featured and strongly advertised, then there's donedeal at the other being much lower price and being slightly less featured and less strongly promoted (and I presume Ben Dunne's new site is doing cars too), and there's a myriad of other sites covering everything in between.

To have any chance of competing you really need to have some kind of killer feature(s) that will really differentiate you from the crowd and will make either sellers or buyers flock to your site. Ideally both, but if you get one the other should follow.

Cookie_Monster

bambi408 wrote: »

Very expensive and they called me and offer there services dam 75 euro for ads Wow, Wake up we r in resession.

:rolleyes: