Show me the CARFAX….at the auction.

Time and time again we’ve seen hoards of dealers crawling the auction lanes on their cell phones to get a vehicle history report check on cars. Not only does it take 2 people to accomplish this (1 at the auction and 1 back at the office), but more importantly it puts your dealership at a disadvantage not being fully informed of a cars history prior to bidding without a VHR.

AutoRevo and CARFAX are here to change just that. To highlight the situation I’ve compared Old School vs. New School. Check it out.

Old School:

You’re a dealer standing at the auction in a lane looking over a car 5 minutes before it runs. You make some frantic and stressful calls back to the office (not to mention they didn’t answer the first 2 times you called) providing a VIN to your partner on the other end of the phone. By the end of the call you have repeated the VIN 3 times just to find out this car does not have a clean CARFAX record. Now you have numerous other cars to go through the same drill with.

New School:

You’re relaxed standing at the auction in a lane looking over multiple cars 5 minutes before they run. You have taken pictures of their VIN, decoded them, and run CARFAXs on each. The full history of this car is now known before you bid and in fact you know this car is a One Owner.

The stress of the auction is enough to work with. Make your life easier by running a CARFAX easily prior to bidding.

For more information on AutoRevo Mobile visit http://www.AutoRevo.com/mobile or call 888.311.7386.

To learn more about CARFAX Unlimited accounts visit http://www.carfaxonline.com/

AutoRevo Releases Auto Industry’s First iPhone Inventory Management Application Integrated with Carfax

DALLAS, TX – October 29, 2009 – AutoRevo, the premier provider of auto dealer websites and on-demand software for automotive dealerships marketing and selling cars online, today announced the release of AutoRevo Mobile, an application that allows dealers to manage their inventory on their iPhone.

“The technical barriers to a true mobile solution for dealers have now been removed with the latest iPhone. This is a great opportunity for our industry to flourish with a drastically increased speed of business,” said Chad Polk, CEO of AutoRevo.

AutoRevo Mobile allows dealers to decode a VIN from a photo of the VIN barcode, edit vehicle information, update prices, shoot and upload unlimited photos, run Carfax Vehicle History Reports™, and manage leads, giving dealers the ability to manage their inventory from anywhere, at any time.

“We had several dealers buy out their existing contract and upgrade to the iPhone in order to be an early adopter of AutoRevo Mobile,” continued Polk. “That tells me we have a game changing product that will move the industry forward.  You can literally have a car advertised on your site before the ink dries on the bank draft.”

AutoRevo mobile dealer has a car for sale online before he got back to the office.

As you know our team here at AutoRevo has been working tirelessly on the new dealer mobile solutions. Since we are the first in the industry to release an iPhone product for dealers inventory management, we are charting new territories… So when we got an excited dealer on the phone telling us his iPhone story, we had to share.

An AutoRevo Mobile early adoptor program dealer was in a customer’s dealership working to buy several trade-ins when a new car trade in arrived. They asked him to price it for them. The AutoRevo dealer went to the car, took a photo of the VIN which was automatically read and decoded, checked the CARFAX Vehicle History Report from his iPhone through AutoRevo, and made an offer on the vehicle. Minutes later at 5:36pm, our dealer was given the keys to the car that he now owned. He returned to the vehicle, took additional photos, and saved it into AutoRevo. It was on his website & eBay Motors at 5:45pm.

Do you realize what just happened? The ink on the bank draft hadn’t even dried yet and he already had the car online being advertised!!! We probably need instant replay:

1. Photo of VIN to decode and check Carfax.
2. Made an offer on the trade-in that was accepted.
3. With his iPhone, took additional photos of the vehicle right away.
4. Had the car online in under 6 minutes and he hadn’t even paid for it yet.

AutoRevo Mobile is a game changer for auto dealers selling cars online! Find out more at http://www.AutoRevo.com/mobile or call 888.311.7386 today.

Here’s a quick runthrough of our product updates that were released last week:

SEND US MORE QUESTIONS! We need some tougher stumpers for Erik the Intern! No matter how random or off-the-wall it is, send it on over! Email your questions to askerik@autorevo.com.

In case you didn’t get our October Newsletter today, here are a few of the highlights:

• • Targeted Vehicle Descriptions – create different descriptions for website, eBay, craigslist, and classifieds
• • Inventory Intelligence Reporting – if you haven’t checked it out yet, call your AutoRevo Dealer Consultant for a walkthrough – these reports will change the way you do business!
• • other exciting enhancements:
  • • Search vehicles by body style
  • • Optional website MPG display
  • • Craigslist one-click renew
  • • Several new classified exports
• • eBay motors Listing Enhancements update has been delayed until April
• • most popular recent blog posts:
  • • Best Sick Call Ever
  • • Dealer Profile – American Auto Brokers
  • • Get Rid of Lot Services
  • • Filming a Vehicle Video

If you didn’t get it in your inbox and you’d like to view the full newsletter, please click here.

This week’s tip is a quick walkthrough of creating a bookmark to the application login page so you can log in quickly and easily

We need some tougher questions for Erik the Intern! No matter how random or off-the-wall it is, send it on over! Email your questions to askerik@autorevo.com.

I was reading a very interesting blog post (that I found out about on Twitter) this morning. Thought all of you AutoRevo-ites would find it an interesting read as well.

Revamp Your Website for 2010

A few highlights, and and my thoughts on them:

“The first thing that dealers need to realize is that the Internet has become the first, and sometimes only, place that consumers go to research and sometimes even buy their new vehicles.”
It’s amazing, but there are still a ton of dealerships out there who aren’t embracing the Internet yet. As one of our dealers said in a recent interview, “you can have the best inventory in the world, but if it’s not exposed to John Q. Public, it’s not going to do you any good”

“If you want to stay in front of consumers, you have to keep your website and Internet marketing up-to-date.”

“if your website doesn’t have the features consumers have come to expect, you can hurt your image in the eyes of the consumer”
Your website is a reflection of your dealership – take a look at your competitors… if their sites are nicer than yours, or have more featuers, or are easier to navigate, then potential customers will most likely do business with them instead of you…

“don’t make the mistake of focusing on what [you] want and what [you] like personally on the Internet, and not focusing enough on what the online auto buying users want and need”
This is vitally important. Every so often we have dealers who insist on certain “questionable” design elements in their sites… trust our design team, their ONLY job is to make our dealer websites look amazing.

“One thing that almost all internet marketing experts agree on is the importance of tracking the results of your Internet marketing.”
This is what our TruLogic reporting system is all about, and our recently released Inventory Intelligence reports are a vital addition to our already robust reporting and analytics package. Now you can really slice and dice your data to see exactly what’s selling, what’s not, and why…

Have a great week, and as always, let us know if you have any questions!