Enabling car classifieds for Carpages.co.uk

The Challenge

Although firmly established, Carpages was looking for new growth opportunities, and a key issue was how it could engage more with its users. Classified listings provide such an opportunity, because the volumes involved and the profile of activities certainly increase visitor involvement and also lead to additional revenue streams. Carpages had two options for adding a car locator to the site:

Option 1 involved the listings being delivered via a third party tenancy agreement, but such arrangements rarely engage the user, and it is not unusual for third party solutions to account for less than one per cent of total web site impressions. Further weaknesses are:

• Weak integration with original site content
• Failure to enhance the host organisation's brand, as the branding would be that of the third party which may already be more familiar to users

Option 2 would be for Carpages to implement its own classified solution, which would address the issues above and allow much better engagement with users. Adopting this option, however, included its own challenges:

• Integration to existing content is a key requirement, but typically done poorly in the market
• A large and relevant inventory of cars is key
• Creating and implementing such a solution requires considerable resources
• Additional resources are also required to bring in dealer advertising and revenue, in that dealers must be made aware of the offer and persuaded to buy advertising space

After a review in early 2007, Carpages was clear that Option 1 would not provide the engagement required, and so it asked Skupe Net to come up with a solution that would deliver and address the issues that had to be overcome.