This post is sponsored by Harris Ford
If you’re in the Seattle metro area, surely you’ve driven by Harris Ford - the largest Seattle Ford dealer in the area.
Looking over their website, it seems like they have quite a selection of new and pre-owned autos, although there were a few issues:
First of all, when looking through their used cars, it says “Contact Us” under the price column of each vehicle. I can’t stand that, and as a result wouldn’t even consider buying a car there if I was looking online. I need to know the price before I even consider looking; I’m not going to contact them for each car I’m looking at. Same thing when I’m driving through a car lot looking - the price of the car should be displayed on the windshield so I have a reference point for price. In fact just this last weekend I was looking at cars and drove past a lot without prices on their cars. I won’t be returning, even though I was interested in the cars. Just a suggestion, as I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Also, when I tried to look through their new inventory, I got a message that said “Product license has expired. Please contact the webmaster. Thank you” for all of the new cars. You simply cannot let that happen when you’re running a professional business that is relying on their website. Especially if you’re ordering sponsored reviews on your website like they are. Their choice in webmasters should be reconsidered.
So based on what they have on the website, you can’t really get any good information this way. There’s no way they could deal with anybody out of the area when you can’t see prices of the used cars, and can’t see anything about the new cars. They also have an online specials section, and to see any information on those, you have to contact them - no more information available. Their vehicle brochures section is broken (no license,) the vehicle reviews section doesn’t work for the Focus (if you don’t have a review of the Focus, then don’t show it at all.) Live help is unavailable when I tried (regular business hours,) the parts/service coupons and weekend specials aren’t available, there are no customer reviews even though there’s a section for it, and the pictures of the staff and service guys are too small, stretched, and low quality.
I’m not nit-picking; these are all issues that make your business look bad on the internet, and should be resolved. Your website needs to work completely, all the time.
All of these problems aside, this doesn’t mean that they’re a bad dealership. This just means that they need a new webmaster. They could be a great dealership, and without living in the area, I can’t review them on anything other than the website. They could be the place to go to Buy Ford in Seattle.
Traditionally brick-and-mortar business are really trying to get a grasp of the internet, but they don’t quite understand it yet. As a result, they contract any “I’ll make your dealership popular on the internet” business, no matter how bad of a job they do. This is a shame, and would be a great opportunity for a good web developer to break into and make a killing, as I’m yet to see a truly great website for a car dealership.
A suggestion to Harris Ford: Always double, triple, and quadruple-test your website and it’s core functionality to make sure everything works before the site goes live, and especially before you start to order reviews on it. You don’t want your website to reflect negatively on your business, and sadly that’s what yours does. I would recommend a different webmaster.
The problems I experienced could have also been temporary. And even though it still shouldn’t have happened at all, issues do arise, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.
I’d like to reiterate that this doesn’t mean Harris Ford isn’t a good car dealership - they could very well be great to deal with, and I welcome comments on this post from anyone who’s worked with them, and from the dealership themselves.
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