Comments on: Dealership Internet Department Photo Process

By: Brian in Etown

Brian in Etown — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:48:34 +0000

the first email bounced the second one I sent to sales at hendrick atlanta dot com

By: Billy

Billy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:35:22 +0000

Don’t mind sharing at all.

Send me an email to sale at hendrickatlanta.com and I’ll reply

By: Brian in Etown

Brian in Etown — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:33:24 +0000

Good work Billy! email me at btucker at swope dot com
we are working on that very thing right now!

By: Curious George

Curious George — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:39:01 +0000

Billy,

That’s impressive. Do you mind sharing how this is done? It looks like you have designed a room totally one color to create the look of stock photos. I’m curious about the lighting, staging, etc…

By: Billy

Billy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:59:50 +0000

Brian and others.

Feel free to take a look at what we do

http://www.hendrickatlanta.com

the differences in leads and phone calls generated since we first established these processes and before are tremendous.

Will be glad to help anyone wishing to get this started.

By: Brian in Etown

Brian in Etown — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:08:39 +0000

anybody else using ecarlist?

By: Gerald

Gerald — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:32:06 +0000

Going back to an old post, my dealership is now using a new program called ecarlist, which allows us to view & manage inventory by new/used, pre-owned, make etc., manage photos, comments, print window stickers and buyers guides, prepare all paperwork for print/emailing to distant customers, push to Cars.com, Autotrader.com, Craigs list and eBay, while tracking inquiries on each vehicle. With the photo tool, we can re-arrange in any order we like, add & delete, etc. Very impressive tool.

By: JoE Drosen

JoE Drosen — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 03:17:32 +0000

I know this is a pretty old Blog entry (the link to Jake’s article doesn’t work anymore), but I recently ran into this problem with a dealer group that uses my company’s inventory tools to take pictures of their cars. Very similar to this article, they had the ability to show many pictures (20+) through cars.com, but only 9 pictures through Autotrader (due to their subscription level.) This led them to an important decision: they could take photos out of order (so the first 9 would have an even mix of exterior & interior shots to export to AutoTrader) OR have them take the photos in order & only show exterior shots. Neither of these solutions seemed to work for our customer.

The solution we came up with was to use some technology to re-arrange the photos depending on where the photos were being exported to (to my knowledge we are the only one to have such ability) Below is the list of shots that they take:

1)Front DS 1/4
2)Straight Side DS
3)Rear
4)Rear PS 1/4
5)Straight Side PS
6)Front
7)Wheel/Tire
8)Front Seat DS
9)Front Seat PS
10)Back Seat DS
11)Stereo
12)Steering wheel
13)Odometer
14) Window controls
15)Trunk
16)Engine
17)VIN
18)Special Feature 1
19)Special Feature 2
20)Special Feature 3

Note: The Special Features are for dvd players, navigation, or any other unique equipment on the vehicles. (DS = Driver’s Side & PS = Passenger Side)

The list of photos is in the order that made the most sense to take them (process wise) and by having the order of the photos shot the same in every case, this would allow us to automate the order that the photos are exported (ie: Cars.com will have all the photos sent in the order 1-20, where as, AutoTrader would have photos 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 sent).

If you aren’t using CarSpot for your inventory, this doesn’t mean that you couldn’t achieve similar results, you would just have to take the photos out of order (ie: you would take shots 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 And then take shots 3, 6, 9, 13-20)

If you have any questions about this process, feel free to email me.

Thanks,
JoE Drosen
National Sales Manager – CarSpot
joe.drosen@carspot.com
888-698-7768 x124