TK Carsites – Dealer Website Services Profile and Reviews

It's common knowledge that Inventory is the biggest source of leads for Dealerships. Many website providers focus on building elaborate "flashy" inventory listings and detail pages while losing site of the end user.

I challenge anyone to compare TK Carsites inventory listings and detail pages to other providers from the END USERS POINT OF VIEW. I'm confident you will see TK Carsites inventory is the easiest to use.

Check it out at http://tkcarsites.com/list_inv.html

What so special about TK Carsites inventory module? It not even TK's, it is a framed in Homenet inventory module that BZ Results and many more web development companies use.

Richard, I disagree. Your company is decent at SEO, but to say that your inventory system is the "easiest to use" is way off target.

I went to one of your featured dealers, Ryan AutoMall (http://www.ryanautomall.com/Used_Cadillac_Chevrolet_Cars.html). Here are the problems that I encountered...

1. It takes 4 clicks to even find cars for sale. I have to first close the pop up window. Then click Find a Vehicle, then Used Inventory. You should look into what some of your competitors are advertising as "one-click" inventory.

2. How many pictures does this car have? I don't know unless I click the car and count them myself. Your competitors will tell me before I even click on a car.

2. If I click any vehicle, it loads into a frame on the right hand side of the page. The vehicle page is too wide for this frame, and I can't see the "New Search" box. If I widen my browser to eliminate the horizontal scroll bar, the top of the layout breaks.

3. I can't read any of the text under the heading "Vehicle Inquiry" because of the choice of colors used on this part of the page.

I challenge YOU to compare TK Carsites inventory listings and detail pages to other providers from the END USERS POINT OF VIEW.

Todd,

Every company has suppliers. Even manufacturers get many components for their cars from the same suppliers yet you would not be able to tell unless you worked for a manufacturer.

For example, many manufacturers use the same software for their navigation systems yet the look, feel and navigation is different because each of them has different specifications. You may find certain ones are easier to use because of these specifications.

Because you are in the industry, you are aware that many providers use Homenet, yet from an end users point of view, they all have a different look and different navigation. This is due to the specifications provided by the website provider to Homenet.

The problem with many providers is they forget about the end user or they test products on individuals in the automotive industry. We are confident our display and details page is the most user friendly in the industry and we challenge anyone to test ours against our competition with users outside the automotive industry. Thats what TK does prior to releasing any product. TK tests with individuals using a company that focuses on people from all age groups, occupations and education levels.

Corey,

Thank you for the SEO compliment.

You are right with Ryan Auto Mall inventory, it is a TK site but they are not using TK Inventory. However, you can check out our inventory solution at: http://tkcarsites.com/list_inv.html

We are custom, and do offer zero click inventory but it is ultimately up to the dealer to make that selection. Call us at 714.937.1239 if you would like a tour of zero click inventory.

We do appreciate your comments.

No thanks. If your system is the best than you should be able to provide live examples instead of that fake in-house inventory page.

I found one at http://www.monsterautocredit.com/browseinv.html that looks like the one you're talking about, and here are issues that persist.

Still too many clicks to get to the cars. Although this particular site doesn't create popups, I still had to click 3 times to find the cars.

How many pictures do you have available for this car? I'm forced to click around and count myself.

Sure, your fake inventory page (that you've linked to twice already in these comments) might look nice by itself, but what happens when you wrap it with a website? This inventory also uses a frame to show me the content, and I must use both veritcal and horizontal scroll bars to see all of the vehicle details page. If I resize my browser the page layout breaks just like the other did.

While looking at Monster Auto Credit's inventory, I decided to sort by Make. The page doesn't tell me how many BMW's are instock, so I click BMW from the Make drop down list. At this point, the page breaks in Mozilla FireFox. The first BMW X5 series listing is way off to the right beside the Body box, making the horizontal scroll bar even longer than it was before. Now that the page is mangled I want to go back to unfiltered results. There's no button to go back to the default view now, and I must rely on my browser's back button.

While this system is a little better than the first I saw, I still won't call it the "easiest to use".

Ok..lets simmer down here a little. Nothing wrong with some constructive criticism, but lets not bash too hard. Remember, we are all supposed to be here for the same purpose.

No problem. Your site, your rules. Mod me out if you think I'm being too cynical. All I am looking for is accountability in the statements that are made in this industry.

Every statement I have made here is accurate.

Corey,

Thank you for the information. However, Monster Auto Credit chose to add the browse inventory/search inventory page.

We develop websites exactly the way the dealer wants it.

We appreciate your comments.

While I think everyone here has valid points, I'd like to say that I do at least know first-hand what some of the problems are that TK faces. While industry professionals may know what's best for ease of use, SEO, etc., the dealers sometimes do not. In the event a dealer insists on having things their way, regardless of how bad their ideas might be, as a website provider we sometimes just have to accommodate. Our company has been forced into this situation on a few occasions. After being advised against it, one dealer insisted on using a third party inventory management platform and having us frame it into their site. Another dealer insisted on so many custom elements to his site that go against all web design conventions that it's truly the epitome of a bad site design. It makes it tough when you know the site you design isn't set up the way you think it should be, but since the customers pay the bills it's ultimately their call. At the end of the day both of our example dealers are happy with our services, and more importantly, happy with the amount of leads they receive. I think the "easiest to use" comment is a bold statement and don't necessarily agree with Richard, however TK has made a name for themselves in the industry, so they must be doing something right.

I worked with TK Carsites in my prior position as Internet Sales Manager at Gary Rome Hyundai in Holyoke MA and found them to be very helpful in every aspect. Andy is superb and right on top of things. Some tools we used worked, some did not (based on customer type) but they always gave us a free trial and were incredibly helpful...and available! I plan to contact them when I start my new position. You can't beat the 30 Second Credit App for success. We had a 70% closing ratio with that.

Thank you for the feedback Sharon. Keep in mind, the 30 day free trial is still available on many of our products. We have some new stuff coming out in June I'm sure you'll like. Call us when you're ready.

I am very glad that TK Carsites is on here with Dealerrefresh! Our Dealership has been with them for quite a while now. The most impressing part of them is Customer Service! I have never been so pleased with Vicky Perkins during the time of her customer service position. Very quick and accurate. They have a large variety of tools and easy to navigate for my on line customers. I am again pleased to have the TK CARSITES recognized for what they can do and offer!

They will go out of their way to help fix a problem if any. The very nice thing on the TK Carsites has is the Digital Brochures. I send a digital brochure on the first email to the customer so it is there for them to further their purchasing needs!

You Rock TK Carsites!!!!

Jennifer Schrader
Williams Honda of Traverse City

No Jennifer, you rock! I'm sure Vicky will be happy to see this.

I had stopped considering TK because of some of the comments here, then I was looking through the April Auto Dealer Monthly which had their Dealers' Choice Awards. TK not only won, but has done so 3 years in a row.

I'm starting to wonder if some of the negative comments were posted by competitors.

"Auto" - If you read the rules I usually do not allow anonymous commenting and since it looks as if you are posting to push your own website I'm not sure if your comment or question has any validity to it.

BUT since I you brought up something that strikes a cord, I'll let it fly.

I'm sure TK offers plenty of valuable products to many dealers and does well for those dealers. We all have our own experiences and opinions.

As for the Dealer Choice Awards..that's total crap and nothing more then a marketing ploy of you ask me. I'm not knocking TK here, I'm sure it generates a lot of business for them and since most of those magazines are basically nothing more then advertisements then who why not leverage it?

I just personally hate all these &quot;AWARDS&quot; that all the dealer magazines have. Read my posting <a href="http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2007/05/2007_dealers_in.html" rel="nofollow">
2007 Dealers’ Internet Sales Choice Award for Favorite Blogs they Really Like…Alllot!</a>

Again, I can't speak for TK or their products since I have never used them but I do give props to Mr. Valenta for taking the time to participate in the comments here on dealerrefresh.

So many of these web site designers today are using this "cookie cutter" approach they all begin to look the same. It is like being at the super market check out counter and you see all the "trash
magazines."

If a dealer wishes to make a statement to the comsumer then they need to develope their own image and design to seperate themselves from the competition just as they would their physical property.

Take a look at Jeff's dealer site and it makes a statement, it seperates itself from the competition.

When you look at BZ and many of the other "cookie cutters" the only thing most of these dealers are able to compete on is the price. The site is inpersonal and indifferent. The clients; most opt out because they are bombarded with emails they do not want and then you have lost the client

These dealers have forgotten why they embraced the web in the first place.

The funny thing is they pay through the nose ($5-6,000.00 a month) to all have the same look and feel... Go figure.

Lao,

Thanks for the props.

I do want to take a second here and try and defend some of the vendors. From my experience, I would say 99% of the dealers out there are NOT willing to spend anymore then $700-$1200 a month on a dealer website. What do you get for that? Templated websites!

The vendors have had to find a way of streamlining their process of building dealer websites. Unfortunately they have gotten so used to this way of business that it's hard to find a company that wants to think outside the box and do anything custom past the homepage.

Dealers would rather continue to spend thousands on newspaper ads while cringing at the thought of spending $3-5000 a month on a truly effective dealer website. I'm sure this will change with time though.

You said - <i>"When you look at BZ and many of the other "cookie cutters" the only thing most of these dealers are able to compete on is the price. The site is impersonal and indifferent. The clients; most opt out because they are bombarded with emails they do not want and then you have lost the client"</i>

Very well said! And this brings it back to the dealers not wanting to spend the money on an effective website. But too the vendors have been and continue to take advantage of dealers with their subpar products.

It took me over a year to decide on who I wanted to go with for our new DriveMB.com website. It's no where near where I want it to be but it has all the right elements from the admin side with the flexibility that I need to push forward into the future. My overall conversion has more then doubled and my SEO is stronger then ever!! Just Google "Mercedes Dealer" and you should see it in the top 4. It changes as Google dances between #1 thru #4.

If we could just get rid of that damn Automotive.com (the search engine spammer of automotive websites).

Jeff,

I am suprised at your comments regarding the Dealer's Choice Awards because you obviously have not looked into how they are derived. If you took a minute to find out, you will see that they're not crap. It all depends on how well you treat your clients and how well you get out the vote. You have to do both right to succeed.

Had it been a result of ad dollar spending, BZ would have beat all of us every year but they never even placed the past 3 years! At least not in the website category. Furthermore, TK had the highest score of all vendors in all categories including names like Toyota Motor Credit and Auto Trader.

With all due respect, I would suggest some fact finding before just making a blanket statement that they are all crap.

Auto Dealer Monthly puts out a good magazine and they do not have bias on this award. Trust me on that. They called many of our clients to confirm the votes. Harlene is one tough cookie on this one.

By the way, when can we advertise on Dealer Refresh or would you consider that a "sell out"? I want to place a big banner on the top of your site. How about a Dealer Refresh I Hate These Awards Award? Better yet, The Crappiest Awards Award? You can rank the awards from the crap to the crappiest.

Richard,

You are right, maybe I have not looked into how these magazine awards are derived, but only because I have never seen that information in print. You have to admit all the magazines have some type of "Awards Issue" and after so many they start to read like nothing more then an ad. Especially since each magazines award winners are totally different from one another.

Thanks for your comments Richard. I truly appreciate having you here and taking advantage of DealerRefresh and giving back to the readers.

As for advertising; with time I will have a new redesign and will have a small area for advertising. I would love to have you on board.

Thanks again Richard.

I recently started working with TK, and I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with Richard and his team. Great websites, great conversions, and incredible SEO.

(then again, I'm biased, as SEO is what I do)

First off I know I am a little late to start in on this. However, I wanted to voice my opinion. Second I just found this site from a article in Wards Dealer Business and have to say there is a lot of great info on here! Hats off to Jeff!

I have been with TK for about 3 years now. Almost on a daily basis I look at the competitors to get new ideas and keep up with this ever changing technology. Since my switch to TK from Cobalt I have never looked back! Richard and his team are second to none. They added a new SEO/SEM guy that is probably one of the industry leaders in this field a few months back. Find me another website company that converts CONSITANTLY over 10.5% of traffic to leads and I may take a second look at them.

I would recomend TK to any dealer!!! (Well as long as they are not my direct comp...) =)

Just my $.02

Again Jeff great website! Probably to much info for my little brain….

LOL - i brewed my own website for my families dealership, and conversion has never been under 16% in a year. I once replaced our entire site with nothing but a header graphic and contact form - and had a 30% conversion! With a ONE PAGE site. So much for 'engage your visitor', video tours, 360 degree inventory shots, keeping up with technology, keeping up with the dealer down the road, blah blah blah...

People coming to a dealership web site are NOT looking for an info portal. To many of my fellow iternet directors and ISM's seem to make their website a monument to their ego, when it really should only be for one thing - getting people to call, email, or drive in.

The key is NOT convincing the web surfer to sumbit a lead. The key is staying out of their way long enough so they can contact you.

pop-up coupons: Annoying? yes. Effective? very. I expiremented with them for several months, and our conversion rate went from the high teens to the twenties. Fact: actual shoppers like/want coupons. Unfortunately, I had to yank them from our site because sales staff were printing them off for walk-in customers AFTER the manager desking the deal - the sales manager was going nuts!

## begin rant ##

I spend hours every day pouring over analytics and web logs for our dealerships internet endeavors. Something I have learned doing by this: based on what they say in the mags, most vendors and so-called 'expert' ISM's really don't know what they are talking about. I guess this shouldn't surpise me - as pointed out already by the TK rep, dealers seem to always insist on doing things to their sites that actually hurt them, and vendors are in the business of providing them with what they want.

Framing in another vendors inventory module instead of developing your own - LAME. I expect it from a small 1 man shop w/o a real programmer - not bigger vendors with an actual staff. It only took me 1 week to build an 'inventory module' from scratch. Another day to get it to feed autotrader.com. It took 1 month to build an internet lead management application. Granted, up until a year ago I was an IT consultant (ie, 'programmer for hire' ), but every city is FULL of guys like me.

Most of these companies do nothing more then make a flashy home page - yet charge out the NOSE for it. For one days labor. They whip something up in photoshop over a few hours, import it into adobe flash to make the mouse-over effects, etc; then ftp it to a web server a few hours later. Come to think of it, maybe I need to get into their business!

oh, I can't stay quiet about this -
We all get email every month from TK.
How many of us actually opted in? We didn't.
Have you tried to opt out, like we have tried doing unsuccessfully for years?
Do you know that's a felony, with an $11k fine per occurance? CAN-SPAM www.ftc.gov/spam

Jason- Interesting points you make, and with regards to the customer using your website for an information portal, I would agree, with qualifications. What I have noticed over the last several years is a pronounced movement from 3rd party websites to the manufacturers, to the dealers. In other words, as people have come to trust the content of the manufacturer and then the dealer, I have seen an increase in "fresh" shoppers on the website vs. a couple of years ago. I think it is also essential to consider what make you are selling. Most everyone knows Accord and Camry are among the highest for inquiries on the Internet. But what about the other makes? I would submit buyers like GM and Ford customers are where Toyota and Honda customers were 2-3 years ago. We very well may see a change in the dynamics of domestic customers in their research.

Pop-up coupons are VERY annoying, and that is why I use mine as a pop-behind. It is an effective tool, and is less annoying for the customer.

How are you two measuring conversion rates?

Jason,
Love your scrappy attitude. Ya gotta put your URL in your comments (I want to see your efforts in action!)

Joe

Highly considering the switch from Reynolds and Reynolds to TK can someone please give me some good advice? I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE COMPETITION TO TK BASHING THEM (REMEMBER: THAT IS NOT PROFESSIONAL). Thank you for the support!

whats your motivation to switch to a new vendor?

what made TK rise to the top?

will this switch SMC? (Sell More Cars?)
-SMC for your store?
-SMC for you personally?

I HAVE BEEN DOING SOME RESEARCH. OF COURSE I AM CONSIDERING MANY OPTIONS, BZ, STAYING WITH REY REY, DEALERSKINS, DATA ONE SOFTWARE, ETC. I AM JUST LOOKING FOR SOME IN PUT FROM THOSE WHO ALREADY USE TK. PROS AND CONS, ETC....

THANK YOU!

Consider It,

The fact that you are considering us is great news. Hopefully someone will respond to your request. There are many companies out there and I'm confident, with proper research, you will find the best fit for your dealership.

Good Luck & Thanks!

Richard Valenta
President & CEO
TK Carsites

Consider it -

Here at TK Carsites are more than happy to provide you with references to speak with personally and for they can tell you first hand what TK has done for them.

Good Luck with your research!

One of the things that is wrong with this industry is that vendors will let dealers dictate what they need even though it has been proven to be ineffective. It is time for vendors to stand up and not sign clients if it means swaying from their companies standards. It is easy to blame the dealer, but the real blame is on the vendor who sold something he/she knew or thought wouldn't work.

Sorry for the late post but I find it hard to find time to read all these and post to:

I have used TK Carsites with great success not only with the site itself IE: look and feel, conversions, etc but with the customer service they provide, and the SEO that comes with the product, I have to agree TK has some of the best SEO out there as one of my competitors has picked up TK and has climbed the organic ladder and is right on my $$$, I have to say that many dealers have ideas on what will work in the market they are in and the people at TK will listen and implement what dealers have to say all with letting the dealer know what TK thinks is best. What is great is everyone working together for that common goal "sell cars" My questions is "wouldn’t you agree that you have to always explore the possibilities to achieve the best results?" everything matters when it comes to Internet sales and marketing and with TK you get that. My hats off to Richard and his great team.

Frank- Any idea what your conversion rate is solely on the pop-ups?

Hello Alex

I had 168 people print a 500.00 coupon for the month of March 2008. Just like most ISD I have many reports to choose from, I use Bold chats visitor report for a benchmark, I have 11,291 unique visitors for the month of March. That high number is because of a promo we are running for fathers day (giving away a truck) we collected over 3,000 e-mail addresses in March also.

Frank Davis
[email protected]

Can someone at TK oversee the SPAM machine?
How many REMOVE requests do I have to make to be REMOVED? Case in point:

Remove request for customer# 2838xx (all sent to same email address)
---4/09/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
---4/10/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
---4/22/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
---4/22/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
---4/30/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
Next TK dumps me to a diff email system, REMOVE requests:
---5/11/08, REMOVE to [email protected]
---5/22/08, REMOVE to [email protected]

Now TK wants to push its new TK5 platform (SPAM sent to me on 6/05/08)

Dear TK marketing manager,
I visited your new TK5 intro site and I have to call you to see it? Do you think I am going to give your team 02 seconds of my time? Not a chance.

May I suggest that you revisit lessons learned from reputation management. Defend your brand at all costs, Improve your strategy. If someone sends you a REMOVE, honor it and place that accnt into a special folder for future use.

Sorry to air out the dirty laundry, but after 7 REMOVE requests... C'mon!

Joe Pistell
Marketing Director
UsedCarKing.com

p.s. I recall even more REMOVE requests like the SPAM from worldclassautosite.com (assigned with same client#)

I'm with Joe on this one - please stop the useless spamming!

I should also give you guys a hand in figuring out how to take me off your list. You send stuff to a whole lot of people at Checkered Flag (@checkeredflag.com) and those people all forward your message to me - I'm the only one who should be getting stuff from you anyway. I have no idea where you got email addresses on some of these other folks. When you send one broadcast, I see it at least 10 times - usually more than 20 times. I generally have something colorful to say about you everytime I hit delete. Joe's a little more attentive than me because he's actually reading the emails. When I see TK in an email, it goes straight to the trash - no need to read anymore.

SO - REMOVE ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES WITH @checkeredflag.com as the domain FROM YOUR SYSTEM.

Richard Valenta,

I am glad you have so much time to post since you will not return my calls. I have numerous problems with my website that has been live for 9 months now. I have had customer complaints that they could not find what they want in the inventory (your sort by price feature did not work), my traffic to the site is almost all derived from SEM because you are way behind the curve in SEO even after 9 months and numerous calls with Jim Rucker, and most recently, I had a customer blow up in the box about their 0% financing that is shown on my incentives page that you created and framed in and I have no access to change. We haven't had this offer in months. The list goes on, but I'll keep it short.

You think you would get it right after it took you 6 months to create my website to begin with. I want you to give me a call because I am a very dissatisfied customer. And to handle me, you put me off to your dedicated "Customer Retention Officer" who had been there for less than a month. Why do you need someone dedicated to "retention"? You have my number or you can get it from Chelsea.

Here is a snapshot of our webstats and SEM efforts:
www.southfloridadodge.com/webstatsUD.pdf
www.southfloridadodge.com/DominatorUD.pdf




Ali Ahmed
Vice President
University Dodge

Ali,

I certainly apologize if you feel I have ignored you. This is not my intention as I do not hide from anyone.

I sincerely appreciate every customer's business as if it were our only customer and will always pick up the phone whether you have 1 location or 30 locations.

I have no idea how this has happened. I just tried to contact you at the store but you but you were gone. I left my cell phone number with Osiris and you can call me any time this weekend.

Richard

Update:

Richard Valenta called me yesterday and personally apologized for the errors. He was genuinely concerned about the SPAM issue and assured me that he'd be following it up personally. He finished with an offer to "make good" on the error by offering me a gift certificate of some sort.

I didn't expect a call from the RV, the apology was genuine and the gift offer was unexpected.

Kudos to RV,
THIS IS A CLASSIC ACTION PLAN FOR INTERNET REPUTATION MANAGEMENT.

#1). Quick Personal Response by highest management/owner
#2). Sincere empathy from management on breakdown
#3). A promise to fast track the repair
#4). A peace offering

I recall a survey of auto buyers on their likelyhood to be a repeat buyer. One of the highest repeat buyer scores was to a customer that had a problem that was corrected to their satisfaction. Amazingly, this problem customer had a higher loyalty score than the customer that had no problems at all. In retrospect, this makes sense becuase you've educated the customer on how loyal you are to him which makes the customer understand how things will go in the future.

I can't tell you how many management meetings I've been in telling them that policy is NOT a negative, it's a rock solid investment and should have a dedicated/written action plan complete with ROI tracking.

Thnx for the lesson RV!
Joe

Richard also called me and left an apology voice mail for all the spam - sorry I missed you Richard. Thanks for the voice mail though!

I agree with Joe - it is a big step in the right direction.

Sorry for not being available, or on DealerRefresh, lately - I'm the point man on a new CRM install and it is taking some time.....but all for the good!

The rep at TK that contacted me was top notch BUT I just could not use them because the graphics and inventory was just not good enough.

It's too bad that they have a really great system in ease of doing business with them but are stuck on not remodeling their product and services.

In the website business you truly get what you pay for and I crack up knowing when multi-million dollar operation don't get it that if your willing to spend $$$$ on that waterfall in your showroom but $.02 on your virtual one.

Hey tkcarsites, stop the spam. I am not a customer and I have sign-up for anything on any of you sites. I have asked twice that you stop emailing me.

Stop the spam

Here's the latest example (I get these daily). Trust be Barbie doesn't delete my name. Stop spamming!

"If you want the automotive industries best websites and search engine optimization, but are currently under contract with someone else, we can help. Simply reply to this email.

For an immediate response, contact our marketing coordinator Barbie Turner.

Barbie Turner
Marketing Coordinator
714.937.1239 x 270
[email protected].

If you wish to be removed from receiving future emails, please reply requesting us to do so. If you have already requested to be removed but you are still receiving emails, feel free to contact me direct at [email protected] or 714.937.1239 x230. Chris Christiansen, Controller

TK Carsites, Inc.
1940 W. Orangewood
Suite 106
Orange, CA 92868
714.937.1239

E10066"

Even after talking to Richard, I still get that junk too. I setup an email rule to have anything mentioning TK Carsites going to the junk mail. I don't even read it anymore - it is always the same message.

I am looking at this company and all of you are giving conflicting stories. Who is telling the truth? I would like to hear a real honest story and it can be bad or good but the truth would be nice. I know that you all are car salesmen so truth is not in the vocabulary but give it a try you might even like it.

Scott

Scott,

If you are looking at TK Carsites or any other website provider, you should do your own research before listening to what other dealers tell you. Although there are many savvy people on this forum, doing your own research works the best, because you can focus on what is important for you.

What is your primary reason you are switching from BZ Results?

Do you feel like you are getting the traffic you should get? (Is it SEO related)

Do you want a website that converts better?

Do you want a website that has a better GUI?

Or a website that is easier to manage?

If SEO is your hot topic, then search the search engines for your brand or other brands and see who the dealers use that are on top of the rankings. Also use google's advanced query searches to find out how many of their pages are indexed (you can type site:www.yourdomain.com for this)

If you want a website that converts better, then find out what other dealers' websites are converting at and how they measure it (compare apples to apples.) You can also add a popup form to your website instead of changing providers (we saw an increase of about 2% in our conversion ratio by adding the famous popup/popunder script to our front page)

Do your research then ask questions that are to the point...

Scott,
Thanks for your subtle approach to getting a truthful answer by insulting those of us who actually work in the retail selling environment. Though a TRUE sales professional will obviously let that slide. Honestly, I have been reading this post in detail too. I believe the TK team is doing its best to answer questions and respond to constructive criticism. I am sure BZ and TK and many others are tweaking the way they do business to build custom sites for dealerships. Jeff made a good point about "cookie-cutter sites". JEFF: "I do want to take a second here and try and defend some of the vendors. From my experience, I would say 99% of the dealers out there are NOT willing to spend anymore then $700-$1200 a month on a dealer website. What do you get for that? Templated websites!" Though Scott this is "input" I do not have a specific story to tell about TK. BUT, Because they customize a website; I would like to recommend that you keep your conversion rate as your top priority. I went with a website that I could change easily at any time of the day without help from the vendors tech team or customer service and I am not talking changing code. If that is important to you I would like to recommend (JAZEL.COM) Also most website vendors come with SEO programs and CRM tools included. I am sure someone here will give you an honest answer about TK. You have certainly come to the right place to do some research. I hope some of our fellow bloggers step up to help you. Good luck Scott!

Since going with TK Carsites our two dealerships have seen a HUGE increases in website traffic. Their SEO department has brought our sites up from page 5 or 7 on the organic search engines to the first page. The other website provider we were using just didn't seem to want to work with you. If you needed changes it would take weeks sometimes, that is if you could get in contact with your rep. TK reps will return your calls immediately and get the job done, usually within 48 hours. It has been such a pleasure to have TK on my side in this economy. My sales rep, Jen Schrader, also has been an great asset to have. She is there for me at the drop of a hat, even coming to the dealership to help me out with whatever I need.

Due to our Toyota websites look and feel, we are the ONLY recommended Toyota dealer in Northern Michigan endorsed by AARP.

What I have been able to do since bringing TK on board is increase my sales leads coming directly from our sites and drop my paid leads to zero. The leads that we get directly from our sites have a much higher closing rate than any paid service that we have been using. We currently close an average of between 20% to 30% of our internet leads, which obviously makes the owners VERY HAPPY! That is almost a 80% closing increase from what our internet department did prior to taking on TK. With the integration of Homenet Inc. WebIOL it makes everything a breeze. Instead of having to use several different programs for uploading photos, updating inventory and printing window stickers, now I can do it all in one place. The simplicity of it is so wonderful and it makes my job so much easier. Convenience is a must when you are one person dealing with three separate dealership inventories.

I recommend TK to everyone that I come across as the quintessential website hosting provider and WebIOL as the best online inventory manager out there. I cannot say enough about this company. If you are not happy with your current provider I advise you to give TK a shot. Let them show you how they can increase your web presence and help you to generate not just more leads but turn them into sales. They haven't been votes "Best Website Provider" 4 years straight for nothing. TK Caresites has earned that distinction for a reason!!!

We are in the process of switching over to a TK site form our Dealerskins site. This is without a doubt the worst experience of my career with regard to building a site. They claim everything is custom yet you can't get what you want. The claim they have a very well defined process yet we're now nearly 2 months behind schedule. That's bad enough but they claimed the site was ready to go live but it wasn't even close but too late we let them go live. It's out there now in all of it's splendor broken links database errors etc. Over 4 days that way now with virtually no progress. I have tried to get people higher in the company involved they seem only remotely interested more interested in defending there lousy project manager. I have many more issues with them but I will give them a chance to resolve these issues before completing the rant. I can tell you our online as well as offline reputation would be as bad as Bill Heard if I treated my customers this way! RICHARD PLEASE GET INVOLVED AND FIX MY SITE! It's an embarrassment to both of us!

Scott

Scott,

I will contact you direct to discuss your issues.

Richard

Scott,

Tried to contact you. You are not available. I left you my cell phone number so you can contact me at your convenience.

Richard

Alright so as I said to Richard in his follow up calls to me I want to set the record straight on my new site. First off we love the look and feel! We all know it's about the first impressions.... That said once Richard and I connected things began to move! He does indeed get the process moving and the issues got cleared up for the most part. We still have a couple of minor items but everyone is working to resolve them. I am sure that we're going to be very happy with the site's results. I'm already seeing some changes in the search engine positioning. And we're seeing decent lead traffic. I'm sure as the site gets crawled and the search engines index it traffic will go up. I appreciate Richard's getting involved and inspiring his people. I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with TK.

Scott Dube

We built a portal page with TK to be the flagship site for our company to include our four area locations. When TK says that their websites are completely customizable they truly mean it. When we first started building our site, I sent them a rough “blue print” of the site that I had pictured. They were able to work off of my rough layout to help us design a truly one-of-a-kind site. The “power of 5” sites are simple to navigate, and make for an easy shopping experience for the consumer. We have only been live for a few days, yet we have seen a rise in leads. I am definitely looking forward to the new business we will acquire with this site.

Amanda Marsal
Internet Sales Manager
John Jones Automotive Group

I for one can speak to Scott's issues. Our initial cutover to tkcarsites was an absolute nightmare. It was particularly frustrating because everyone at tk was extremely nice - they just seemed overwhelmed with new business to the point that they were incapable of delivering on the over promised sizzle of their sales reps outlandish claims. Richard got involved and certainly was a big factor in cutting through the bs and getting results moving more quickly.
It seems to me that they have tried so hard to be able to provide a great product to dealers who have relatively no tech savvy personnel, that when they encounter a store that is on the cutting edge or has key personnel that are VERY tech knowledgeable, that their process gets in the way of their results.

Rather than speaking directly to the people doing the actual work they have what I call glorified message runners. And it seems that they even have message runners for the message runners. What happens is that so much is lost by the time it gets to the tech department that priorities aren't properly set and much gets lost, overlooked, falls through the cracks and ultimately leads to a bad customer experience for the dealer. I've spoken to Richard about this, i hope they are making strides to continue improving in this regard. While we are light-years ahead of where we were, it continues to take far too long to get trouble tickets and requests for work to be completed - one request has been in the works for over a month now.

The single biggest reason we have stayed is their SEO prowess. Now this is a subject which I have a deep understanding of. I won't go into details here, but their chief advisor for SEO is a certifiable genius in this area. They are so effective at using inbound links that they seem to be able to get away with a lot of no-no's in the seo world. Like using iframed inventory (a big pet peeve of mine) Using repeating title tags that are vague.) Some of what they do would also be very much in the grey area of googles webmaster guidelines. My feeling is that - much like myself - they are betting on the reality that dealer websites will continue to fly under google's radar because of the relatively low traffic dealer websites see (when compared with the amazon.com's and ebays of the world) thus, google will never have the time to deal with enforcing these loosely interpreted rules. None of that matters - google "Nissan Dealers" and you'll find Marlboro Nissan in the number 2 or 3 spot on google page one. Now this isn't a particularly important term for us, but that key phrase is extremely competitive and its a NATIONAL term. What this means for those who are less SEO savvy - its real freakin' hard to get on page 1 for a term like that. We were on page 1 for that term by our 2nd week with tk.

To give you an idea of just how effective their TK5 sites are I will give you some info about our sites. Prior to moving to tk our Nissan dealer site already received, on average about 3-4k unique visitors/month. Last month we topped 11k uniques and over 20k total visits. Now the lead conversion is nowhere near tk's 5% claims, but we are certainly busy. In this horrible economy we had a better January than last year and our Feb is going to be right about the same. We sold 69 cars on President's day weekend - 48 were directly sourced from our online marketing efforts.

Now if they could just build in the killer analytics package dealer.com uses - maybe the carflix dealer.com has and ok and the dominator ppc program they have, as well and a more robust back end tool for user customizability they would have the ultimate web solution.

I would warn you of this though. TK is so effective at driving traffic to your website that you better have a good process in place. If you don't you'll end up seeing a ton of bad reviews on dealerrater.com who's web link will be just below your websites location on google page 1.

Hope this helps!

Timothy P Martell
Director of eCommerce &amp; Marketing
Marlboro Nissan
Woburn Jaguar
[email protected]
(888) 251-3813

Do vendors (not going to name names yet) ever up the price of the contract for service after you've already gotten all of the big wigs in the company to sign it and fax it in?

This seems like bad business to me.

You would think they would just eat the small difference to save the utter embarrassment on all sides.

I have seen a good amount of TKCarsite websites before and I have a question involving the SEO that I have just never understood. I would say over 80% of TK sites I have seen have a javascript file (usually links.js) that is full of functions that use javascript to change the current page URL. Instead of just using normal SEO friendly anchor (A) tags, every single link has its own uniquely named javascript function.

Although some aspects of SEO are very open to interpretation based on individual results for a company's strategy, it is well known for fact that javascript is not SEO friendly AT ALL.

I was wondering if there is some secret behind using javascript instead of anchor tags before I just don't understand?

I have to agree with Scott and Timothy. Our site, which rolled out the last week of March, has been one minor frustration after another. From not being able to get the CarFax link changed to my AutoCheck link (3/23, still not done) to coding errors like linking the new car specials button to a dead page due to a typo.

For April, our average time on the site for 2333 visitors was only 248 seconds. That's less than 11 seconds per visitor. They are seeing the index page and leaving, or they click on the peel down coupon, which is very plain-looking, close it and leave. 77% of our vistors bailed out before ever looking at the inventory or even seeing a price, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't crappy pictures, poor descriptions or inflated prices. They never got to see how crappy or high we were or weren't. That's 1485 vistors that ran off into the woods.

Now here's the kicker, of the 1252 that didn't leave in the first page, 72 found their way to the used car inventory. 28 leads were submitted for used cars. That's a staggering 39% conversion rate. Of the 28, 7 bought a used car, or 25% lead to close. How many could we have sold if only 10% of the 1485 who left, could have found what they came to the site to find? Based on these numbers 148 would have submitted 56 leads and we would have closed 14 of those. If those numbers are too high, cut them in half and it's still 7 car deals or $16,000 in missed used car revenue, before pack. That means my salespeople missed the chance to make an additional $4,000 in commission. I don't know much, but I do know my sales team deserved the chance to make that money. They closed 14% of their total leads last month. All they needed was an at-bat to hit a homerun. It was already there. We didn't need more advertising, comments, photos or anything else.

To their credit TK is working to fix these and the other problems. It has not been the smoothest process. I think I'd have rather had an unneccessary prostate exam. Hopefully, once we are through the growing pains it won't be as frustrating.

Tom,

I am very concerned that you are having issues. I just left you a message.

I want to discuss with you personally to see what we can do to satisfy you as a customer as well as walk you through the stats as I believe you are mis-reading them.

My review shows the average time on the main site was 4.1 minutes. However,being that this is 5 separate websites, combined stats will show much higher.

We can discuss when we talk.

Richard Valenta
CEO
TK Carsites, Inc.

After a day of working with TK, I have to say, they recover better than any group I've seen. Once they got focused they kicked it. Richard went out of his way to get involved and stay involved. He took the time to walk through each issue and surprised me by not defending.

We went back over the stats and I realized, that with multiple domains, I had mis-read the data. Richard was right on the time. It was an average of 248 sec., and not a combined total, as I wrongly read it. On the other issues, all the big stuff was handled by the end of the day. We even had a chance to add a few enhancements. So, by the end of the day, we were not just back on track, we were even a little ahead.

Richard also knew what to do to get a car salesman back on his side. My sales team now has a very high opinion of our new website provider. Car guys are suckers for pizza.

TK has almost broke my spirit. Excuse after excuse. HORRIBLE customer service. Our PREMIUM SEO is a joke. The SEO dept at TK tells me Getcarsmart.com is to similar to Carsmart.com and that is why our site doesn't rank very well in a google site. That's funny...Carsmart in St. Louis and Carsmart in Nashville, TN pop up on the first page of any google search that I do. What gives TK? I know exactly waht "gives'...they OVER PROMISE and UNDER DELIVER. Once our contract is up...we're GONE!

Ted,

Sorry to hear about the problems you are currently having with our SEO. I will review the situation and personally contact you tomorrow.

Richard Valenta
CEO
TK Carsites, Inc.

I just wanted to take a small amount of time to let everyone know of some big changes. TK Carsites has fallen back into my good graces. After a short amount of time and a lot of hard work "TK" has delivered. Many thnaks to Richard, Isaac and Jen Schrader for fixing any and all issues I had. Kudos for a job well done.

Ted Heater
CarSmart

Ted - Thanks so much! It is greatly appreciated! I enjoy working with you and Jonathan!
Keep up the great work and that positive attitude of yours!

For anyone that is looking to use TK's services!
Stop what your doing right now and go SLAM your fingers in your car door as hard as you can. The feeling of smashing your fingers will be a much better feeling than the one you get with a TK powered website; plus you won't be able to sign a contract you WILL regret later.

I've been dealing with TK for 1 1/2 years now and it has been a huge headache from day one. The SEO package we are paying for is a big joke. We are beat out by all of our competitors unless you search by our business name or City + dealership.

The list of issues is a long one and I don't have the time now to post everything.

Do yourself a favor and go elsewhere for your dealerships website.

Ron,

I have spoken with several team members that you have recently talked with here at TK and no one has any logged issues.

So I am not quite sure what could be the problem as each said you were satisfied at the time.

It’s obvious that something happened between now and then and I really would like to make this right as quickly as possible.

I have tried to call you several times today to see what the issues are so I can get them resolved.

I think every company that has a large number of clients will have problems from time to time. The question is once a problem is identified how do they respond?

For years TK has taken great pride not in have no issues at all, but rather handling them in a prompt and professional manner as soon as we are aware of them.

I 'd like to think that we consistently do that.

Please call me as soon as possible 502-689-5370.

Joe Turner
Executive VP Online Marketing

Joe thanks for the Tele-conference you setup. I got an email today telling me that my SEO work was complete. I was excited. Then I looked at my websites to see these changes and realized that my Hyundai website was broken... TK quality as usual. See the image of my Hyundai site: http://media.auffenbergcars.com/Hyundai.PNG
See how many times you can find Mazda on my Hyundai site. Also, all the links on my Hyundai site link to my Mazda site.

After calling to report this issue I also asked about what was changed SEO wise, because I didn't see any difference in the Title and Meta-Tags. I was told that my SEO changes were not complete; that only the "More Info" page was modified.

They also used this as a excuse as to why some links on my Finance pages havent been modified yet even though the ticket for modifying these links was opened 2 weeks before the SEO ticket.

TK hasn't changed a bit, still as horrible as the day the contract was signed.

Ron,

I am very sorry to see you are experiencing such difficulties with our company.

I spoke with Greg today and he agreed there have been issues in the past but he felt it was behind us. I also spoke with Joe Turner and he stated that you both worked this out. Hopefully, that is the case.

Additionally, I provided Greg with my cell number so you can contact me if you or he feels we don't meet your expectations in the future.

Richard Valenta
CEO
TK Carsites, Inc.

Everyone at the company seems pretty friendly and knowledgable so we signed up a couple of our dealerships only to find the design and initial setup process an absolute nightmare. We are currently getting billed by their leasing company for websites that are not live and no one can see or generate leads off of yet. Out of the 3 dealerships we signed up only one is live so far (1 week late so we didn&#039;t have a website for a week) only because they kept loosing our faxed documents / information wasn&#039;t getting passed to the right people.


Anyways I guess we will see if they are a good company to go with as of now our dealer group is feeling we made the wrong choice just because of the initial development and their leasing company charging us for something we do not have has a pretty strong sting as we feel since they made us sign a lease they get paid upfront and now that their behind schedule we feel they don&#039;t care about rushing our project because they already have their money and there is no incentive for them to get our websites live. I spoke with them earlier this week and got a deadline of 2 more weeks for one of our website and 3-4 weeks for the other one that is in cue.


Anyways if it gets any better I will repost if not our recommendation is going to be to go with another company to save yourself the stress and keep what hair you have left.

Brodie,


First of all, thanks for the comment. We appreciate the feedback from our customers and hope that we can resolve the situation very quickly. Your dealer advocate will be contacting you today to find out the particulars. I will follow up with her tomorrow to see we are on the right track. If you have further issues, you are welcome to contact me direct.


Richard Valenta

CEO

TK Carsites, Inc.

714.937.1239 x233

Hi Everyone!


Regarding my previous comments I posted above TK has gone and solved all my issues that I had above and they are now back in our dealer groups good books again after going over and beyond what other vendors have done for us in the past.


I would just like to thank to TKcarsites team for taking the effort to bringing us back to having an exceptional experience with TK like how we originally started.




Brodie

I have to say vast improvements from the TK Carsites that I used to use. The one I had was drastically outdated as far as SEO and template design. I still see some old school looking sites from them...but much better than what I had to deal with before.


Didn&#039;t have a ton that you could do with thier sites before..only coupons, specials, and maybe a few more items. You couldn&#039;t build your own pages..which is something that is nice to keep updated info on your sites...and the SEO was horrific. So kudos for taking it to the next level..though some of the comments seem like the old problems I used to run into. Only one suggestion take out the annoying beeping, sound effects, that some of your sites still have when you mouse over items. That is so far dated it isn&#039;t funny.

Thanks for the advice, I actually learned a lot from the comments.

In today&#039;s busy world we sometimes forget to give kudo&#039;s to those that we take for granted. The team at TK has gone above and beyond our expectations time and time again. If you want powerful SEO and a clean, easy to navigate website that packs a powerful punch then let me suggest my friends at TK. Richard Valenta and his team have done a fantastic job for us. If you are looking for a &quot;magic wand&quot; or instant results then look elsewhere. But if you want a partner that formulates a plan of attack, does things behind the scenes to make your website better and provides superior customer service then drink the TK Koolaid. You will be glad you did! Thanks Richard!

Ted Heater

CarSmart

Kansas City, MO

TK Website is the worst website company I have ever had to do buisness with!!!!!!!!!!! I have gone through several department heads to get my site up and running. We signed up nearly four months ago and our site is still not up and running correctly. Their response time on return phone calls is horrible. Simple web page repairs take days to complete. Everyone passes the buck and says someone else will call you back. Buyers Be Ware - You can not get out of your contract!!!!!!!! You are stuck for the next two years!!! Anyone can call me for more details. Ron Barbosa 1-866-473-1692

Ron,


Sorry to hear you are having such difficulty with our staff. I just left a message for you with my direct number and cell. Please call me to discuss.


Thank you,


Richard Valenta

CEO

When the Chapman auto group first decided to leave dealer skins for obvious reasons we considered about 20 website vendors which I personally interviewed and screened. TK was our vendor of choice above all other competitors. TK has a web product that is like no other, their POWER of 5 is totally unique and the elite SEO is second to none. I like to tell people that TK doesn&rsquo;t just build websites they build comprehensive digital marketing web solutions. One thing that is very different about TK is that they build custom websites unlike dealer.com and all these other guys that say pick one of these 10 layouts and we will have you up in less than 30 days. TK is building you a custom user experience. That no one else will have there is no &ldquo;cookie cutter&rdquo; in the production department where they mass produce the same site 100,000 times and put your logo and colors on it.



Transitioning to a new website vendor sounds easy but let me tell you it is not, there are tons of small details to think about to consider and initially we very unhappy with the way things went with &ldquo;TK&rdquo; there were bumps throughout our transition we thought we had made a mistake in our vendor choice, during this process we reached out to Jenifer Schrader who put together a conference call with Richard Valenta and all the big wigs over there at TK. The owners of the Chapman auto group and myself had a voiced our concerns, Richard was very helpful and TK made some special arrangements that put us at ease. This was the beginning of getting things back on track.



It has been almost a year now that we have been live with TK and I could not be happier with my website. All of my concerns have been put to rest and I am selling more cars than ever. The support team is great, my dealer advocate Jenifer Schrader is amazing, and the management team at TK is always there when you need them.



I will say this if you choose TK as your website solution you will not be disappointed once your sites are up and running the transition may be a little bumpy but that is to be expected with any vendor, make sure that you communicate don&rsquo;t assume anything . The most important is that you must have the right staff in place to use these websites but if you don&rsquo;t you can rest assured that TK will help you every step of the way.


PLEASE CALL ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK MORE.


215-674-3600-171

@ Ron Barbosa,


I feel your pain, we had nothing but trouble with our websites from the time we signed the contract till about 1 1/2 years into the 2 year contract. We had tickets open that would get lost and the tickets that weren&#039;t lost would take a month sometimes 3 months to get completed.


I am so glad we are no longer with TK! We recently switched to BluSolutions and we love them. The entire process of having our sites built and putting finishing touches on them have been pleasant. Our sites where built from scratch and brought live before the deadline.


I hope things get better for you!

Hey Gregory,


I hate to jump in on TK&#039;s page here and apologize for that first.


My name is Matt Murray, Director of Digital Marketing at Dealer.com. I&#039;m glad to hear that you are excited with the products and service you are receiving from TK Carsites.


I just wanted to point out that Dealer.com does provide custom web design services for the interested customer. It sounds like our team failed to let you know that this was the case and I apologize for that as well.


Have a great day!

Matt Murray

888.422.2006

matt,


Thanks for the response, the custom webdesign was presented as an option but it seemed like they were all based on the same base themes, I must say that when I look at websites of other dealers across the web you can spot specific providers fairly easily. Its almost a game I play when I look at a new site because they are always so similar.


I am a chrysler jeep and dodge dealer so I have a factory site that is built by dealer.com

Ron,


Sorry things didn&#039;t work out for you with TK but after we got our bumps worked out, which happened in the first 90 days, we hit the ground running and never looked back. Being a client of TK over the past year I have seen allot of growth, production times are faster and faster, support handles most of my concerns with me on the phone, the site changes are almost same day or next day. it&rsquo;s nice to see that they care about client concern and then create a plan keep them from happening again. The new support ticket program is great too, its so easy to track progress with the emails updates and the follow up phone calls from the tech guys.


Good luck to everyone. Now lets sell some cars!!

Thanks for the support Greg. I have spoken with Ron personally this morning and we are back on track. Hopefully, we can right the wrongs here.


Richard Valenta

CEO

I have had nothing but issues with TK carsites.  Their customer service is lacking...they failed Toyota compliance checks 4 months in a row, and they still insisted they were doing their job.  I would highly recommend NOBODY use this company.

If you have questions I have pages of documentation about how they deal with dealerships.

My two dealerships will never recommend these guys...just the opposite, they have earned me telling others it is a mistake to consider them. 

We are an 8 rooftop dealership in Indianapolis and launched with TK in January.  We have had nothing but problems with our sites since we launched!  TK is blaming it on HomeNet, but if our inventory is not online, we are not selling cars.  I am ready to find a new website vendor.  Any suggestions??

Our dealership has been with TKCarsites for over 3 years. When we first started with TK we were extremely happy. A company who knew who you were when you called and wanted to make and keep you happy. Since the merge with KPA we've had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS. Customer support is a joke, sometimes they get back to you the next day but not often! I just had a call on from support for a ticket I opened two weeks ago!! With the new IOL 2.0 platform that Homenet launched a couple of weeks ago we had several issue's with how our inventory was showing on our website. Homenet kept us up-to-date with fixes to their new platform. But...some of the issue's were TK. We couldn't get anyone to call us back...we sent emails to their infamous techsupport and no response at all!! We went with TKCarsites in the beginning because we were impressed with what other dealerships had to say about their support, follow-up and problem solving. We have hand none of that for quite sometime. Our contract is about up and we ARE going with someone else. TKCarsites if you want to be top dog you have to get out of the house!!