A slick new desktop and mobile application to help connect used car buyers and sellers was unveiled today at the New Car Dealers Association of B.C.’s annual conference in Whistler, B.C.
The website www.rides.ca officially launches September 30, 2013 and will go head to head with online listing sites such as Trader.ca and Kijiji Autos. The architects behind the new site say their plans are to launch the site initially in B.C. then roll it eastward across Canada. Current plans are for a January 2014 launch in Alberta and soon thereafter Saskatchewan.
The drive behind creating the new site came from dealer beefs with the current listing platforms, says Blair Qualey, President and CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of B.C. (NCDABC).
“Rides.ca is your association’s answer to the largest issue we’ve consistently heard about from our members,” says Qualey during his opening remarks at the conference. “I’ve heard time and time again about the lack of viable ways to market used vehicles online.”
A BETTER MOUSETRAP
So the association responded to their member’s concerns by setting out to build a better mousetrap. “We were left with only one option,” said Qualey. “Create our own solution.”
If the site catches on, it’s good news for the association — and the province’s dealers. The NCDABC owns half the shares in the new company, with the site’s technology partner Datton Technologies owning about a quarter, and there are currently about 30 other investors, mostly dealers from across the province.
“The product is dynamite,” says Kevin Bent, CEO of Rides.ca. “We truly believe it’s a quantum leap ahead of what’s out there.”
Bent and his executive team met with Canadian auto dealer for an exclusive interview.
Bent says the pricing model is unique to any other offering in the market and was created to mitigate the risk for dealers in using the site. “It’s a descending model. The more inventory you put up on rides.ca the cheaper it will be on a per car basis,” says Bent.
Bent says they also built the model so that dealers pay based on the performance of the site in generating leads for them.
Another key advantage, says Alex Sekella, Director Of Marketing for Rides.ca, is that while other online portals only connect with the customer at the interest stage through phone calls and emails, Rides.ca connects with them throughout the buying process.
They have customer touches at the awareness stage through instant message chats, the interest stage through phone calls and emails, the desire stage through the site’s “find requests” functionality, the purchase stage when they submit their used vehicles for dealers to bid on, and the re-purchase stage with their trade ins.
SEAMLESS INTEGRATION
During a live demo at the conference, dealers were able to see how the desktop version and mobile version work together seamlessly to create a powerful, and intuitive used vehicle shopping experience with a powerful backend for dealers.
Kevin Bent, CEO, Rides.ca
The site’s interface uses a Google like search window that helps people searching for used cars zero in on what they are looking for without having to use a series of pulldown menus. The site has large photos and offers a clean easy to navigate interface for buyers and sellers. Users also don’t have to know much about vehicles or trim levels to be able to find good listings that match their interests.
If a user wants to search for “luxury cars” for example, they can just type in “luxury cars” in the search window and the best results most closely matching the search queries come up first. Or they can search more specifically for things like “Black VW Diesel TDI” and find cars that match.
As you might expect on a site built by dealers for dealers, there are also lots of easy to access tools to connect to the buyers and sellers using chat, instant messaging, email or phone calls, for example. The system also alerts a user if the dealer selling a car is online so they can be contacted immediately. This is particularly important for mobile shoppers. These tools can be set up to prompt people in the dealership directly via mobile devices or their desktops. There are also easy to understand dashboards to provide visibility for dealers into the leads and how they have been responded to.
SYSTEM GETS BETTER
The system already recognizes more than 8,000 search terms, but over time as users enter more queries, the system will produce even better results. “Every day that goes by the system gets smarter and smarter,” says Derek Rathbun, the President of Datton Technologies and the technology partner that built the website.
Rathbun says Rides.ca lets a consumer buy a used vehicle using today’s technology with tools similar to those they use on other leading online sites and their own social media experiences. “The matchmaking is so much better,” says Rathbun. “We put the dealer right in the middle of it in a very easy to manage, natural way. It’s very advantageous to the dealer.”
The site is not just for franchised dealers either. It’s open to non-franchised dealers and private sellers alike so that the search results represent an unbiased picture of available used vehicle inventory.
Dealers also heard that the company is planning a full scale $350,000 marketing launch to help promote the site.
Company officials say that other provincial dealer associations across Canada have been briefed about the website and have also expressed their support and interest. “The feedback has been very, very positive,” says Bent.
Salespeople from the company have been visiting dealerships across British Columbia for about six weeks and have been getting tremendous support, says Bent. “The acceptance of the product and the pricing from dealers has been outstanding,” says Bent “No one has said no.”
The goal, says Bent, is to have 12,000-15,000 used vehicles available on the website for the launch at the end of the month.
For more information visit: www.rides.ca
