Your website is your digital showroom, and having a website without pricing or with inaccurate pricing can be detrimental to your business. Unfortunately, this may happen from time to time for one reason or another. For example, maybe you have changed website providers or maybe you have new staff that is using the incorrect pricing field within your Dealer Management System (DMS).

So, how can we get ahead of these issues or resolve them quickly when they do arise? To find the remedy, we must first diagnose the issue. What went wrong?

Below are some questions to ask yourself. Whether you decide to troubleshoot yourself or call your support team for help, knowing WHO, WHERE, WHAT, and WHEN, can make all the difference in fixing the problem quickly and figuring out WHY your pricing is out of sync.

WHO are the key players?

One layer of complexity for inventory management and pricing is all the places on the internet that your inventory appears (your website, google vehicle listings, AutoTrader, CarGurus, etc.) There are multiple vendors that touch your inventory feed/file so it is important to know who is in the mix.

1. Who is your DMS Provider?

• • • This is where the flow of inventory information typically begins.

    • When your vehicles come into inventory, what price field(s) are you using within the DMS?

    • Is your staff trained in this process and using the expected fields?

2. If you are using a merchandising tool, who is your provider?

• • • Tools like VAuto, Homenet, Redline etc. are often used to help price vehicles or manage inventory photos. This is typically the second stop in the flow of information.

3. The merchandising tool provider or DMS sends your inventory and pricing information to other syndicates e.g. your website or online vehicle listings.

So how can you apply this information?

Let’s say your pricing is inaccurate on your website. In our example, we price our vehicles in the DMS which goes to the merchandising tool then to the website.

DMS > Merchandising Tool > Syndicate (Website)

IF the information is correct in your DMS, correct in your merchandising, and incorrect on your website. THEN we can infer that the disconnect is happening either in the feed/file of pricing information between the merchandising tool and your website provider OR in the display settings of the website. With this, we can eliminate the possibility of the pricing issue stemming from your DMS.

WHERE do you see the inaccurate pricing?

• Is it only impacting your website or is it in multiple places across the internet (for example, online listings like Autotrader, CarGurus, Cars.com, etc.)?

• Do you see this issue on new inventory, used, or both?

• Is the issue happening on a few select stocks or all inventory?

These answers will give you an idea of the scope of the issue. All inventory pricing being incorrect might indicate an outage or an issue in the way fields are mapped between providers while single stock with inaccurate pricing is more likely a human error or typo. D2D’s Website Watchdog program helps catch issues like this quickly to get the site consistent as fast as possible!

 WHAT is showing, and what should be showing?

It is good practice (particularly when working with website provider customer support) to grab 3 example stocks when your pricing is off. Share with support 3 specific vehicles affected, the exact amount their prices are currently showing, and the exact amount that should be displayed. This information is helpful to determine if your website provider is receiving the expected dollar amounts in the inventory feed/file they are getting. This gives them insight into possible causes for the issue.

WHEN did you notice the pricing issue?

Did pricing inaccuracies coincide with a known change, like a switch in website provider? Big changes to your dealership’s technology mix might impact your inventory feed/files as you are working through the initial setup.

In the end, pricing and inventory issues can be frustrating and at times complex. As an automotive digital marketing agency, we handle these kind of issues often! Luckily, our clients are able to lean on us when and if something happens, but knowing who your vendors are, where the issue is occurring, what your expected outcome is, and when the inaccurate pricing began can help you and your support representative(s) diagnose the problem and find a solution.