Build log

The trade-in page promised offer times, prices above book value and a sales-tax saving that no dealer had confirmed, and the tax rule depends on the state.

Checked: Every time, price comparison and tax statement removed from the page, its form and its e-mail; the online figure is now described as what it is, a ballpark range.

Three blocks on a financing page showed text the dealer could not change, so a wrong claim could only be fixed in code.

Checked: Step lists, application stats and call-to-action checklists now have their own fields; editing a banner no longer changes its layout.

Dealers on that DMS were landing on a page titled "alternative", which says the opposite of what we offer.

Checked: One page, one offer, a live dealership to click through and a form that reaches a person; reachable with no login and listed in the sitemap.

The first version was all text; a dealer arriving from an e-mail should see the flow, a live car page and the form on the first screen.

Checked: Hero with the form beside it, a drawn DealerCenter-to-website-to-leads diagram, a browser frame on the live site and an eight-item feature grid; same words, same form, same checks as before.

The page that argues "a sold car keeps its page" had two empty placeholder boxes where the proof should be, waiting for the first car to sell through the platform.

Checked: A real sold listing from a live dealership, with its sold marker and the cars in stock beneath it, replaces the placeholders; the search-result panel, the numbers and the sign-up form were redrawn around the same words.

Bringing the second website template level with the first took a hand crawl of 29 routes; the next template should be a checklist.

Checked: A written contract for what every template must render, and a script that compares two live sites route by route (status, titles, structured data, footer links, lead forms) and fails on any unexplained difference.

Dealers who buy cars from the public asked for it: that is how their lot gets stock, and the link was the last plain item in the menu.

Checked: An outlined button in the dealer's own color with one short shine per visit (none for visitors who turn motion off); measured in the dealer's own font so the menu fits without pushing "Apply for Financing" off the screen.

On a phone the first field of the sell form sat four screens down, under the steps and six questions, and its first step asked seven things at once.

Checked: The form now sits under the headline, about one screen down; a VIN fills in year, make and model through the free federal decoder; ZIP is optional; and the form asks whether the seller also wants to replace the car, which reaches the dealer with the lead. Still no price on the page.

A dealership confirmed it buys any car, pays the same day, holds its offer for a week and pays off loans; the shared page could not say so for one dealer without saying it for all.

Checked: Four switches in the dealer's settings, each showing the sentence it will publish; a row of promise tiles under the sell form and matching FAQ answers appear only for what is switched on. With everything off the page is unchanged.

A dealer who agreed by e-mail or through the sign-up form had to be retyped by hand into a new account, which then started on the wrong trial, with no pages and no way for the owner to set a password.

Checked: One click on the request opens the account prefilled; pages, the owner's login invitation and the 90-day founding period are set up by the platform, and the invitation goes out when the account is approved.

The day a new dealer joined, nobody could tell whether the owner had signed in yet, or later who changed a setting or deleted a car.

Checked: Sign-ins and changes are recorded and visible to the super-admin and to each dealer's owner, with field names only (never passwords or personal data), and old rows are cleared on a fixed schedule.

A new dealer's site had to be built before its owner had touched the dashboard, and the only ways in were the owner's own login or a membership they had to grant.

Checked: Opening a dealer as admin shows a banner on every page, gives editing rights on that one website only, and records every save with the operator's name in the activity log.

Every storefront said each car was inspected, and one line said "Mechanic Certified"; a new dealer had never said either.

Checked: A dealer setting, off by default, with the dealer's own sentence; with it off, every page in both templates drops the claim and lists simply get shorter. "Mechanic Certified" is gone for everyone.

A new dealer's first call: opening hours read "09:30 – 17:30", texts go to a different number than calls, they use AutoCheck rather than CARFAX, and report or credit-form settings still needed a database change.

Checked: Every storefront shows 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM (structured data keeps the standard format); an optional text number adds a "Text us" link; AutoCheck report links (links only, no scores); and one settings panel for CARFAX, AutoCheck and the DealerCenter credit form.

A mistyped address or an old link to a sold car should land on the dealer's site, not on a blank page.

Checked: Every missing page now returns a real 404 with the dealer's header and search; all 214 URLs in the live sitemap still load.

A dealer should be able to change the look without losing a page, a link or anything they edited.

Checked: Compared on two copies of a real dealership, route by route: 29 routes, same pages, same structured data, same footer links.

Default text had grown promises no dealer had made: team members, review counts, warranties, lender lists, approval times.

Checked: Every default now comes from the dealer's own data or stays hidden; checked page by page on both templates.

The site described two different products; the one dealers buy is a website that works with the DMS they keep.

Checked: Every page rewritten to match, anything we could not prove removed, and the proof numbers recomputed daily from a live dealership.

Dealers buy cars from the public as well as sell them, and that lead has to be told apart from a trade-in.

Checked: Live within two days of the dealer's request; a sell lead arrives labelled as such in the dealer's system.

The dealer showed us shoppers who wanted to ask "is it still available?" without typing a message.

Checked: Shipped the same day it was asked for; the question buttons can no longer be hidden by the page's sticky panel.

Most shoppers browse on a phone, and Google ranks slow and messy pages lower.

Checked: Blocking time down from 960 ms to 40 ms and the Lighthouse score from 76 to 84; 45 cars now produce 213 indexable pages.

Leads that sit in a second inbox get answered late; the dealer works in their DMS all day.

Checked: Live since 2 September in the standard lead format; two forms that used to notify nobody now do.

The website is the product, so it has to run on the dealer's own address without losing search traffic.

Checked: Moved on 1 September; search traffic held through the move, 22 clicks a day before and 26 after (Search Console).

Dealer websites collect credit applications, so sensitive data needs more than good intentions.

Checked: Three critical dependency advisories closed, sensitive fields encrypted with their own key, stored documents served only after an access check.

A new lead, a first chat message or a silent inventory feed should reach a person in minutes, not the next morning.

Checked: Confirmed on a real phone before the first dealer went live; alerts carry only values we control, never text typed by a shopper.

The dealer keeps their address and brand, and nobody should need to understand certificates to move a website.

Checked: The certificate is issued before the dealer points their domain at us, so the switch has no downtime; old addresses redirect page by page.

A wrong import is worse than none: a car with the wrong price or no photos costs the dealer a sale.

Checked: Text encoding, the advertised price, the photo list, hand edits kept, sold cars able to return, cars without a price handled; about 1,400 unchanged photos a day no longer downloaded again.

The dealer should see what a sync will change before it runs, and someone should hear about it when the feed stops.

Checked: Every sync shows its plan first and runs one at a time; a feed that goes quiet raises an alert. Syncs run every hour.

Sold cars were counted as in stock, so a site could promise cars the lot no longer had.

Checked: A storefront that said "91 vehicles in stock" now shows the real number; sold cars keep their pages, marked sold, and stay reachable by search engines.

Independent lots are missing from page one for the searches their buyers actually type.

Checked: Built from a real search, read result by result; its numbers are now computed live.

The dealer already keeps every car in their management system; typing it twice is the job we remove.

Checked: The DMS sends a file, we import it on schedule with photos; the first dealer's whole lot came in without retyping a car.

The menu was ordered by when features were built, not by how often a dealer needs them.

Checked: Reordered by frequency; five links that had never rendered were found and restored.

A dealer decides faster when they see their own lot on a site, not a mockup.

Checked: Never indexed by search engines and expires on its own.

The landing, feature pages, pricing, and this log — shipped transparently.

Understands plain English ("black SUV under $15k") and supports live human takeover — jump in and reply.

Join now and lock in founding rates that stay below list.

Dedicated ranking pages for "Toyota SUVs", "SUVs under $15k", and more — plus breadcrumb and vehicle-list schema.

Faster loads (Core Web Vitals) and mobile fixes across the storefront.

Answers inventory and financing questions and captures every visitor as a lead.

A ranking page for every make, model, body style and price range — with auto-written descriptions, FAQs and schema.

Two fast, mobile, SEO-ready templates with your inventory built in.

Scan a driver’s license to create a lead; scan a VIN to start a trade-in.

Inventory, deals, in-house BHPH financing and CRM, in build and running on test data; rolling out to founding dealers as each part is ready.