AC Collins Ford has been serving the local community of Pasadena, Texas since 1969. It is known as one of the leading dealerships in e-commerce sales, placing 42nd out of 4,200 Ford dealerships nationwide. While it had a strong e-commerce process in place, the dealership wanted to increase its presence in the marketplace. The plan was to develop a more interactive website with richer features and benefits to entice more car shoppers to visit and submit leads.

The new Dealerskins website went live in February of 2007 and the dealership immediately saw a huge increase in requests for more information. Within just 30-days Internet leads from the website increased by 35% and continue to increase each month.  

According to  BDC Manager Amy Penick, the attractiveness of the website and ease with which viewers can access inventory have been the strongest changes; “With just a couple of clicks a consumer can find whatever they are looking for and contact information is highly visible on each page. The highlighted specials have also been a great sales tool,” Penick commented.   

Dealerskins has found that “Specials” is the 2nd most frequently clicked link on a website and thus a vital addition for any auto dealer site. Penick changes the specials once a week and highlights factory specials, or perhaps units that have not been selling and need to be shifted.  

AC Collins Ford has also increased its closing rates for its website leads to as high as 19%.  The industry benchmark is 15%. This has helped the dealership increase its overall Internet car sales; “Before we had a strong process in place and were doing well. However, since the new website we have increased our Internet sales penetration by about 9%,” Penick stated. Since the new site went live in February of 2007, Internet sales have grown from 23% to 32% of total store sales and the dealership enjoys an average of 65 Internet car sales per month.    

About Dealerskins
Dealerskins, a division of Dominion Enterprises, provides automotive dealers beautiful, powerful, distinctive web solutions.  The company’s expertise comes from real-world dealership experience and a passion for listening and responding to dealers’ needs.  In fact, company founders designed, built and used the first Dealerskins websites while employed at a top-50 dealership group.  Dealerskins recognized that automotive dealers require high-caliber, dynamic websites to meet car buyers’ needs.  Dealerskins was founded in July of 2000 to serve those needs.  Dealerskins` websites have won numerous awards for excellence.  For more information visit www.dealerskins.com    

About Dominion Enterprises
Dominion Enterprises, headquartered in Norfolk, Va., is a leading media and information services company serving employment, real estate, automotive, recreation and industrial markets in the United States. The company operates a variety of technology businesses that offer Internet marketing, Web site design and hosting, lead generation, CRM, and data capture and distribution services including Advanced Access, PowerSports Network, and Dealer Specialties. The company has more than 500 paid and free magazine titles such as The Employment Guide, For Rent, Harmon Homes, Boat Trader, Cycle Trader and RV Trader with a combined weekly circulation of over 5 million, and more than 40 market-leading Web sites such as EmploymentGuide.com, ForRent.com, Homes.com, and TraderOnline.com, reaching more than 8 million unique monthly visitors. The company has nearly 7,000 employees nationwide and 2006 annual revenue of more than $850 million. For more information, visit DominionEnterprises.com.