I recently read 2 great books. “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis and “Free – the future of a radical price” by Chris Anderson and they have given me many fresh ideas on web based marketing strategies for my clients.

One thing that was itching at me the whole time I was reading these books was the importance of transparency and how it relates to your website.

When you compare automotive web solutions companies look at what the company has to offer and how transparent are they with providing you raw data (analytics or web traffic). We review the information with our clients so they can make informed decisions. We even educate them on the importance of any data they may not be familiar with.

After speaking with a few client and discussing how some vendors just won’t open up and discuss numbers I began to wonder why. The truth is either the person on the other end doesn’t completely understand the numbers or the vendor has something to hide. This shows little attention to some of the most important details as well as a lazy attitude of care toward your client.

Fresh Input will be transparent with you and discuss with you the importance of such numbers as bounce rate, pageviews, pages per visit & time on website. We are recently delighted to see yet another one of our clients double the amount of visitors to the website, increase their pageviews by 190% as well as increase the time of their visitors from a 3 minute avg. to a nearly 5 minute avg.

Fresh Input is sprung from the ashes of what I call HCS-HD or Horrible Customer Service – Horrible Design. Its a tad long winded and with HD being such a popular word these days I figured why not.

It has become apparent that in this day and age the big auto web solution companies have become complacent. After all, they have landed deals with the corporations and forced cookie cutter designs upon the dealers. The user interfaces by some of the biggest auto web solutions companies have become so difficult to navigate, so time consuming with waste and such lack of efficiency that it is no wonder people aren’t shopping online at the American automotive company websites.

I personally have tried using websites for GM, Chrysler & Ford having struggles even as a seasoned veteran of the internet. Ford by far takes the cake (as the most user friendly) over GM & Chrysler but still I wonder who is actually guiding the ship when it comes to user interface. It isn’t until recently that Ford departed from the maddening Flash campaign that has been going on for the last several years.

Ideas are good, but board members, VP’s & CEO’s should not have the final say on the design solutions for their automotive websites. I run into the same issues at the dealer level but go the extra mile to educate my clients as to why things do and don’t work on the web. Just because it sounds like a good idea, doesn’t mean it is. The clients that work with me understand and trust my judgement, after all I have 15 years of experience running the gauntlet of being formally trained and have 10 years of hands on experience in both a dealership and automotive web solutions.

Ask yourself when you are talking to other automotive web solutions companies, no I take that back, ask your sales person what formal and on hand experience they have. If they need to think for even a second or ask someone at the company for an answer, you should be running in the other direction. Fresh Input has dedicated professionals that are in the trenches working day in and day out with many years of experience to make your dealer website work for you and provide a return on investment (ROI) that few other automotive web solutions companies can match.

We take pride in real world results and real numbers to look at. We don’t sell, we get the job done!