Car Dealer Website Provider RFP Template

The sections, the questions and the scoring sheet, written so vendors have to answer in writing instead of in a slide deck.

Most stores do not run an RFP at all. They sit through three demos, like one salesperson better than the other two, and sign. The stores that do run an RFP usually write it as a feature checklist, which is worse than nothing, because every vendor checks every box and you end up comparing nothing.

The problem with a feature list is that it asks closed questions. Does your platform support video? Yes. Does it support inventory search? Yes. Of course it does. You learn nothing, and you have spent three weeks learning it.

A useful RFP asks questions a vendor cannot answer with a yes. It asks for numbers, for named responsibilities, for time limits, and for a copy of the actual contract clause rather than a summary of it. It asks what happens when something goes wrong, not what happens when everything works.

The other thing a written RFP does is create a record. Six months into a bad relationship, the difference between a frustrating conversation and a leverage point is whether the promise exists in writing with a date on it. Send the questions. Require written answers. Keep the file.

Start by telling vendors the truth about your situation, because a proposal built on guesses is a proposal you will renegotiate later. Include your rooftop count and the franchise or independent status of each, your monthly new and used volume, your current website provider and contract end date, your current monthly traffic and form volume if you have them, and the systems that must keep working after the change.

Then define scope precisely. Are you buying a website only, or website plus hosting, or website plus hosting plus paid media plus SEO? Bundled deals look cheaper and are much harder to leave, because cancelling the site cancels the marketing at the same time. State whether you want those priced separately, and require a separate line item price for each one even if you intend to buy the bundle.

Finally, name your decision timeline, who is on the committee, and what the evaluation criteria are. Vendors behave differently when they know the criteria are published. Ask for a single point of contact on their side and require that the person who answers the RFP is the person who will still be on the account in year two.

This section is where you separate marketing language from engineering. Ask for specifics and ask for evidence.

Which pages are rendered on the server and which are assembled in the browser? What is the median and 75th percentile largest contentful paint on a live customer vehicle detail page, measured on mobile, on a real store you can name? Ask for the store name so you can check it yourself with any public speed tool. If they will not name a reference store, that is an answer.

Ask how many third party scripts ship on a default page load, because the answer is usually much larger than the vendor expects, and each one costs speed on a phone in a parking lot. Ask who has authority to add a script, and whether you can veto one your agency wants. Ask about uptime over the last twelve months, who monitors it, and what the notification path is at 8pm on a Saturday when the site goes down mid sale.

Ask what happens during a template update. Do your custom pages survive it, or do they get overwritten and rebuilt by their team at your cost? Our page on core web vitals for dealer websites covers the measurement side in more detail.

The vehicle detail page is the only page that matters commercially, so most of this section should be about it.

How is inventory ingested, from which source, and how often does it refresh? What is the maximum delay between a unit selling in your system and disappearing from the site? Stale units are not just an annoyance, they generate calls your team has to apologize through. Ask what happens to a unit with no photos, and whether a placeholder image or a hidden unit is the default.

Ask how many photos a vehicle can carry, whether video and spin content are supported natively or through a paid third party, and who owns the photo assets if you leave. That last one surprises people. Ask whether you can control the field order and the merchandising copy on the detail page yourself, or whether every change is a support ticket with a queue behind it.

Then ask about search. Can a shopper filter by payment as well as price? How does the site behave when a search returns nothing? Ask for a demonstration of a zero results page, because that is where sites quietly lose people. See vehicle listing optimization for the content side of the same problem.

Every website vendor will tell you they generate leads. What you need to know is what happens in the ninety seconds after a shopper hits submit.

Ask for the full list of lead types the site can produce: vehicle inquiry, trade appraisal, finance application, service request, chat transcript, phone call, text message. For each one, ask where it is delivered, in what format, and with what source and campaign attribution attached. A lead that arrives in your inbox with no source is a lead you cannot report on.

Ask specifically whether the site can post directly to your CRM by API rather than by email parsing, because email parsing breaks quietly and you find out weeks later. Ask what the retry behavior is when your CRM does not respond. Ask whether call tracking numbers are included, who owns those numbers, and what happens to them at the end of the contract.

Then ask about chat. Is it software your team answers, or a paid service answered by someone in a call center reading a script? Both are legitimate, but they are very different products at very different prices. Our live chat page explains the distinction.

This is the section vendors like least and the one that protects you most. Ask every one of these in writing.

What is the initial term, what is the renewal term, and does it auto renew? How many days notice are required to cancel, and what is the exact address or portal that notice must go to? What is the price in month thirteen? What is the maximum annual increase, and is that number in the contract or in an email?

Then ownership. Who owns the domain, and is it registered in your name today? Who owns the content, the photos and the page copy your team wrote? Who owns the analytics history, the call recordings and the form submissions? If you leave, what do you get: a database export, a static archive of the pages, a redirect map, or nothing at all?

The redirect map matters more than people expect. A site change without a URL to URL redirect plan drops the search visibility you spent years building. Require the outgoing and incoming vendors to commit to one in writing before the cutover date. The website migration checklist sets out the sequence.

These questions are short and they carry real exposure, so put them in every RFP even if nobody on your committee wants to own them.

What accessibility standard does the platform target, when was it last audited, by whom, and can you see the report? Is the vendor's approach built into the templates or bolted on with an overlay widget? Ask who is responsible if a demand letter arrives, and whether the contract contains an indemnity or a disclaimer. Read which one it is.

On privacy, ask what consumer data the site collects, where it is stored, how long it is retained, and which third parties receive it. Ask how consumer privacy requests are handled and how quickly. Ask whether consent language for calls and texts is captured at the form, stored with a timestamp, and exportable, because consent you cannot produce later is consent you did not have.

If your store operates in states with their own consumer privacy statutes, ask the vendor to name them and describe what the platform does about each. A vendor that cannot name the states is a vendor who has not thought about it. See accessible dealer websites for the detail.

Decide your weights before the responses arrive, not after, because it is very easy to reweight a scoring sheet toward the vendor you already liked. A simple weighted table keeps the committee honest.

Score each response independently before the committee meets. Then compare scores and argue about the gaps. Any vendor who refuses to answer a whole section has told you something about how the relationship will run once they have your signature.

Straight answer first: we do not sell a full franchise dealer website platform, and we are not an OEM compliant website vendor. If a manufacturer program dictates your site provider, this RFP is for the vendors on that list and we are not one of them.

What we do sell is the layer that sits behind whatever site you choose, and several pieces of it overlap with things website vendors charge for. Lead pages are a landing page builder with per page URL settings, so a campaign gets its own destination without waiting on a website ticket. Personal salesperson websites give each of your people a page of their own. There is a free live chat widget you can put on the dealer site you already have. Customer facing deal pages carry a real deal to the shopper's phone with electronic signature.

Behind that sits the CRM the leads land in: SMS and MMS, RCS with SMS fallback, a click to call dialer, call recording with transcription, email with a real inbox, automations and follow up processes, desking with a fifty state tax matrix, and three reporting layers. Pricing starts at $199 a month for CRM Only, month to month. See pricing or contact us.

How long should a dealer website RFP be?

Six sections and roughly forty questions is enough. Longer documents get skimmed and answered with boilerplate. Aim for questions that require a number, a name, a date or a contract clause rather than a yes.

How many vendors should we send it to?

Three to five. Fewer than three gives you no comparison. More than five means nobody on your committee reads the responses carefully, which defeats the point of writing them down.

What is the single most important question in the RFP?

What exactly do we take with us if we leave, and in what format. Data, photos, analytics history, call recordings, form submissions and a URL redirect map. Ask it early, in writing, before you have any reason to leave.

Should we bundle the website with SEO and paid media?

Price them separately even if you buy them together. Bundles are harder to exit because cancelling one cancels all of it, and a separate line item price tells you what each piece is actually worth.

Does LeadLocate respond to dealer website RFPs?

Not as a full website platform, because we do not sell one and we are not an OEM certified or OEM compliant website vendor. We do supply lead pages, salesperson websites, a live chat widget, customer deal pages and the CRM the leads land in.

Can we keep our current site and change only the lead handling?

Yes, and that is a common setup. No inventory feed or DMS integration is required to run the CRM, so the site stays where it is while lead capture, routing, messaging and follow up move.

See lead pages, the live chat widget and the CRM the leads land in, running on real lead flow. Month to month, no long term contract.