Building a car dealer website with beaverbuilder and CarDealerPress
Ever since we started using WordPress for car dealer websites, I have been on a mission to find the “perfect” website theme.
My criteria:
- Must be well built and stable
- Simple to use – so even a car dealer can use it 🙂
- Work seamlessly with the CarDealerPress plugin
- Play nicely with other plugins common for car dealers
- Build a clean site without the need for a graphic designer
Going back to 2008, this list seemed pretty achievable. Unfortunately after testing out A LOT of themes, there was always something that didn’t work as desired. We ended up using Genesis from Studiopress as a framework and Dynamik from Cobalt Apps as a child theme/builder. This is still a great combination and checked all the boxes except for one… simple to use. On a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the hardest to use, this combination was about a 5. For WordPress power users it is great, but it needs to be a 1 or a 2 for car dealers.
Enter beaverbuilder
I have been hearing a buzz in the WordPress world for some time regarding beaverbuilder. The thing is, changing the website theme you use is a big deal. New training videos, the need to get everyone up to speed, etc., etc.
That said, I started playing with a copy of beaverbuilder and quickly fell in love with it. It checks all the boxes so we have started the migration. We are updating the default theme on the Auto-Matic-Marketing Dealer Network, updating our own sites, and changing out the tutorials.
The following 5 videos go through building a car dealer website home page integrated with the CarDealerPress plugin.
Please don’t hesitate to leave comments or questions. Your feedback is important.
Video 1) Overview
Video 2) Inventory Buttons
Video 3) Inventory Search Shortcode
Video 4) About Us and Number Circles
Video 5) Tieing it together
Get a head start with car dealers