dcfsbovehicles

We don’t charge commission upon sale, so selling them won’t make us an incredible amount of money unless they get transportation, financing, and inspection services from our partners too.

I just want to sell them because it’s what our company is intended to do, which we are good at, but we could be the best at.

If we are better at that than anyone else, we should make more money and help more people (buyers, sellers, and people we provide occupation opportunities to), which it has always been my understanding is what most for-profit companies are supposed to do.

That way, the free market dictates that we are the best option and we both win and help others win when we win (shout to Dr. Steve Covey).

And it’s not just friend. It’s BFF!

Thank you for your response here and should what I’m working on move forward, I’ll be sure to be double-checking anything (I hope it does because we have a lot of AWESOME RVs that I’d love to find a buyer for quicker). I’ve always found mentors more reliable than the internet, and currently am not in regular contact with any of them, so I’m just looking for general guidance, which you’ve provided and I appreciate.

Security is the one of the main reasons that I’ve thought it a better idea to rely on CRMs for storing any kind of personal data. I don’t personally think it’s a best practice to store anyone’s credit card information unless absolutely necessary, which most CRMs don’t do unless manually configured to, is an example. These businesses also are forced to invest in security that the average business either could not afford or isn’t even aware of, so in that sense, I’ve found it a generally reliable way to store such information (unless there’s a DDoS attack on the provider, which would generally render the entire system useless if it is cloud-based). Plus, it’s a lot easier to explain to customers that <insert CRM company name> had a data leak event, than that your own company did because of decisions you made on your own.

I couldn’t agree more about keeping backups, but every business is different in how much information that would contain. As such, if there are on-site maintenance needs or hardware update needs is a variable that’s probably best decided by each business owner with the proper guidance, based on how much data would be stored and the level of sensitivity of that information vs the cost of doing so various ways. The scope of these needs is generally what pushed a lot of larger companies to the cloud anyway (along with server downtime for maintenance, which usually wasn’t a big deal if planned properly).

And you’re not just some random stranger on the internet, you’re “bcworkz” my best friend on the WordPress Forums.

I’m personally not a cloud-based supporter for solutions, but only because my background is focused on CRM and desktop CRMs were generally more reliable and operated in real-time better before internet infrastructure was improved. In that world, nothing was a comfier feeling that knowing that your single-source-of-truth was automatically updated no matter what the circumstances were and you could also keep working when infrastructure out of your hands went down.

My concern here is that there are probably a lot more bad-actors trying to find vulnerabilities in solutions that house the data of many than there would be those looking to find vulnerabilities in a place that houses only one company’s data.

Given the situation I’m asking you about, you sound like you are likely correct. What I’m wondering is if geo-redundancy of data is standard among these solutions, if there are any data leaks or ransomware attempts on any of these solutions that I may not be privy to, or if there are any that have provided such a bad user-experience that it would be wise to not start shopping there. You seem to be an authority on the matter, so you’re as good a person to ask as any in that respect.

You are speaking my language as far using the small data-sets for qualified queries so that table would likely be functional. I am not so worried about scraping, so much as, if we are housing this data it would likely be housed either along with or adjacent to the total data set that we are not running queries on. This information would also likely be housed in the same place or adjacent to the actual customer information. So screen scraping isn’t my biggest concern. If they keep doing that I’ll just build out the infrastructure that they would be scraping and selling fake cars without making it largely public, then report them for it, and put them out of business. It’s actual security around housing the data that I want ensure is sound. Keep in mind, I haven’t built on WP in years so I’m kinda fishing for whatever information you can provide me.

I’d need to learn more about working with the larger datasets, so if you have any guidance on if I have to pivot that direction, it would be greatly helpful.

For clarity, one thing that would be a major factor in my deciding how to build that DB would be security. I’d prefer to go without a cloud option unless I can hold that cloud option accountable for any data leaks (we recently had a “competitor” – more of a wannabe – start stealing our images off eBay and acting like they were listing vehicles that we are in an attempt to try to boost their credibility, because they have no items sold on eBay Motors). I wouldn’t expect any kind of sophisticated issues with security, but enough to cover the run of the mill issues would suffice.

I appreciate your kind words and all your advice.

What I’m actually planning on doing is not running the CMS via the iFrame information, but manual information that is more targeted and thus more easily managed.

The reason I’d be leaving Wix is for that CMS, combined with the fact that no one found it necessary to mention to us that this was a limitation.

Right now I am just testing with a landing page with a bunch of test cases for the custom websites so I’ll keep you updated on my progress, should the project continue to move forward.

Since you do seem to be an authority on the matter, our of curiosity, how would you approach the DB creation if it were you?

Also, your feedback has been really insightful and appreciated.

The parsing of the JSON strings is actually a great idea but the intricacies of it vs time expenditure on my end does not seem like something I should lean in to compared to these other aspects.

I couldn’t agree more. The last thing I want to do is build around variables that I can’t control when there is an option to build around variables that I can control.

My beef with Wix is not that they can’t search iFrames. It’s that no one mentioned it over a very long period of time when it was clearly going to affect UX for buyers and sellers. If that’s how things are handled there, it’s not a place that I think is wise to partner with in the big-picture. There are plenty of good use cases for Wix, this just isn’t one of them.

Based on what we are doing, our reps should be having conversations with customers where the main high-lighted items of the vehicles are discussed during the sales process and the images are obtained by us directly from the customer, meaning we have rights to the images and data gathered. Though it would be a lot of work, even with a good CMS, it gives us the best chance to improve UX/UI for both customer and seller, as well as, gain control over our SEO capabilities.

As far as being able to pull from the iFrames, would it be ideal to be able to search every single feature or spec related to a vehicle for SEO purposes?

Of course it would.

That said, it stands to reason that if we are trying to match search intent, there will be a lot more people searching for, say, a 5th Wheel with a kitchen island and solar panels (which should be gathered in a conversation with a rep, as that is what the seller is excited about) then there would be people searching for a 5th Wheel with a shower door type that is either plastic or glass, or a that the interior walls are wallpaper, vinyl or tile.

That way we can use the the listing previews to show the sexy stuff that matters the most, the images to highlight those key points along with on-page SEO listing those important specs, and a link or embedded iFrame to give them the option to shop the entire unit in a more user friendly way than our competition currently offers.

Will the extra work suck?

Yes.

Would I do it if there was a reliable way to consistently produce strong results to meet all of our criteria in meaningful and impactful ways?

No I wouldn’t.

Part of working with small businesses is resource allocation vs ROI and this appears to be the best way to allocate one of our most finite resources (time) for ROI until a better option that is not contingent on iFrames is produced by the free market (assuming this doesn’t somehow turn into a regulated market, in which case, it will just never be a good market to shop in anyway).

Part of this, as well, is that this is my first venture into SEO, so I need to budget my time in a way that will be productive for the organization and, in my estimation, there is no more valuable way to spend that time than making sure our listings look and function the way sellers would want, and reach as many buyers as possible to ensure we sell the most vehicles in the space.

Once we meet those criteria, I can’t think of anything any competitor is going to do other than buying eBay Motors that will take us off the top spot in the space.

I think the better solution is to manually get the data from the customers and do our own development with listing previews, then linking to the iFrame pages.

iFrames can be extremely valuable in a lot of use cases (like embedding a Stripe iFrame with terms and conditions into a page), but the iFrame functionality here is really only for the convenience of the company producing them. Companies that do that will become obsolete one way or another eventually so I don’t view it as a permanent issue.

In the mean time, while other companies are relying on a company that won’t share it’s API and only pushes out iFrames, we gain a competitive advantage in multiple areas over any of these competitors.

Templating it out and picking the winners for the pictures provided should improve UX/UI for both buyer and seller and we then have control over the overall SEO preview listings. Go look at a $300,000 RV on RVTrader or a car for auction on Bring-A-Trailer.

On RVTrader you will usually see ~75 pictures with tiny thumbnails that you can use a form of lightbox to cycle thru but in ten minutes you’ll be wishing your computer would blow up and take you with it rather than shop the site again.

Bring-A-Trailer, many items have like 300 photos of the undercarriage of a car. It’s car porn. If you’re looking at the people posting in their forums related to these auctions, they usually have never even purchased a vehicle from Bring-A-Trailer. They’re just there to talk trash about cars they can’t afford.

By training and embedding Google search for internal purposes, I think we stand the best chance at both gaining utility from the search function and testing our SEO efforts. This is unless there is a plug-in that can do it better, which I am absolutely more than open to being advised on.

Plus, the site is currently hosted on Wix, which states on their support page that iFrames are not searchable on there by their internal search function (which I’ve got some major beef with them about seeing as though no one in support has ever found it necessary to mention to their customer – companies like that I don’t attach myself to big picture because they’ll lose in their competitive landscape eventually).

Why go thru all the trouble of reinventing the wheel and parsing JSON data to my specific use case, when the utility can be provided by a plug-in? It’s the same reason I licensed a better version of lightbox than these other sites use.

The key challenges there are manual upkeep, which requires either a high level of organization of just a good CMS which there are plenty of (I also have no life outside of work so who cares about the time spent), but also doing some A/B testing to see how page load speeds are effected by linking vs embedding the iFrames.

If that didn’t work, I’d then pivot to something like writing a parser for JSON data and dealing with APIs that we have trouble getting manual access to. Let me know what your thoughts are on that.

Thank you for that and I really appreciate the input of anyone from the community. I was just pointing out that he is a moderator because it seemed like it signaled overall authority on the matter, which I think you understood.

I have more of a background in backend, particularly CRM, than frontend so I am open to all advice from anyone who knows more than me.

I think the bigger issue is if we will have access to the data for the DB if the piece of our tech-stack that we can’t live without won’t even share API info.

From there, we get into how to structure and maintain that DB, which isn’t an area I’m particularly strong in because it’s something I’ve generally relied on CRMs for.

Thank you so much responding and any more advice is greatly appreciated!

I am also looking into adding Google Custom Search as a potential solution, but don’t understand why this wouldn’t be an option that a moderator would recommend.

If you can help me understand how this wouldn’t be a functional option, it would be greatly appreciated.

I do understand that we still wouldn’t get SEO credit for the content within the iFrames, but the customers provide us with enough details that we should be able to move the needle in that area other ways.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by dcfsbovehicles.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my inquiry.

We are listing vehicles and we have a piece of software that pulls vehicle specs for us. If I had to guess the efficiency gain from this integration, I’d say it’s saving us from having to double the size of the department building the listings, so it’s not a piece of software that we will be removing from our tech-stack any time soon from any angle I can see.

The downside, is that it only pushes out iFrames for the listings, and though it will push to other sites, it does so as an iFrame.

I’ve created a simple landing page for lead gen that I am using as a test case for creating “Listing Previews” which have some of the highlights and best photos from the ads and links to the full iFrame advertisement linked in two places at the moment.

I figured that if there wasn’t a plugin available that will capture the data from iFrames and return it for their standard query, that any use of these iFrames, embedded or otherwise would result in a cumbersome process for both us, the seller trying to find their vehicle on our site, and the shopper trying to shop our inventory.

I guess the real questions I’ll have to figure out from here, is who owns the data or, at a minimum, if we have the right to use the data that is auto-pulled for the specs on the listing previews as there are a million ways to easily make that internally searchable and have it provide value for our SEO efforts.

The second is whether embedding the iFrames on the listing previews vs just adding links to the full listings affects page load speed more to impact our SEO as well.

The DB tries to act as a CMS but since it only pushes iFrames, I’d hardly consider it one. They also have refused to share their API to the owners of the company thus far, so I’m doubting I’ll have any better luck there.

I haven’t worked with WordPress in so long, I’m open to any and all advice from people that have navigated similar challenges. I’m of the belief that WordPress is a better way to go than Wix either way, and if I go the Bootstrap route I foresee myself working a lot of 14 hour days in perpetuity, which isn’t a great trade-off for being able to customize as much as I’d like with Bootstrap vs WordPress.