Autobytel Tricks Out New Shopping Site for Car Owners

Autobytel, one of the pioneering sites that hooked up new car shoppers and dealers in the mid-1990s, has launched a new one-stop Web shop aimed not just at auto seekers but at anyone with automotive needs—and tailored to the needs of the advertisers, both national and local, who want to reach that motoring market.

“Autobytel came up with the preferred model for getting research and buying information to consumers in a well-organized manner and then connecting to dealers,” says CEO and president James Riesenbach. He came to the company about a year ago from AOL, where he headed the search and directory businesses and oversaw such things as local search, audio/visual search, classifieds and e-commerce search.

But by 2001, the automotive sites that drove leads to car dealers were all operating on the same model, from Autobytel and AutoTrader.com to Edmunds.com and the Kelly Blue Book site. “They were buying funnels—not search-oriented and with no flexibility,” Riesenbach says. “Strip out the branding and consumers found them interchangeable.” On each, consumers had to choose to search for a new or used car and then navigate deeply to reach a results-page payoff.

Riesenbach saw a chance to launch what he calls a next-generation auto site, one that would incorporate new search technology, multimedia tools that weren’t practical in 2000, and content acquired from both partner providers and metasearch crawling of external sites. “Consumers have grown smarter through the growth of search and look at a lot more sites before buying,” he says. “I learned at AOL that walled gardens don’t work.” At the same time, general search engines can return millions of results for a term like “Honda Accord”.

MyRide.com bills itself as the first automotive vertical search site, built from the ground up to engage not just in-market consumers but those across the lifecycle of car ownership.

The early auto sites homed in on that buy cycle. “The consumer would come to Autobytel, then leave for three years until he was ready to buy again,” Riesenbach says. “We saw an opportunity to create value for consumers and also new opportunities for… a broad array of advertisers that Autobytel hadn’t reached in the past: retailers, local service centers, auto insurers.”

That broadened scope is reflected in the basic listing search. Consumers on other sites are forced to decide up front whether to look for a new or used car. But dealers told Riesenbach that as many as one third of the prospects who started out in search of a new model drove off in a used one. So the main car search query box on MyRide.com lets visitors input their criteria—make, model, location and price—and then tab between new and used offerings.

The main search function uses a proprietary “smart search” to understand that someone who enters’ “Escalade 12 wheel” is looking for rims and wheel covers for that Cadillac model. And users can specify their search intent by tabbing on “research”, “buy”, “accessorize”, “service” or “community”. The site also features specific searches for parts and accessories, local businesses, photos and videos.

Integrated multimedia should help put MyRide out in front with users, Riesenbach says, since most other auto sites offer only thumbnail-sized photos and segregate them in “galleries”. Photos will come largely from Automotive Information Center, an auto marketing and technology provider that Autobytel sold to car marketing agency R.L. Polk in February. The video content will come both from CarTV.com, a news and review site owned by Autobytel, as well as other Web sources.

Advertising on the MyRide.com site will be a mix of cost-per-click ads from a third-party network, sponsorships with manufacturers and regional dealer groups, and display ads, which Autobytel will sell. The site will also earn revenue through selling leads to dealers. Future ad plans include the possible offer of a pay-per-call option for local advertisers.