Dealer Auction sprang to life in January 2020 with the ambition to revolutionise the way in which preowned trade vehicle stock is bought and sold – and what a journey it’s been!
During what’s been a turbulent year, Dealer Auction has been disrupting the norms of trade-to-trade vehicle sales by offering dealers more stock sources than any other digital marketplace. As we look back on the year that was, we’re proud to be approaching 2021 as the UK’s smartest digital wholesale vehicle marketplace.
Sell faster. Buy smarter.
So, first thing’s first: who are we? We’re an independent company, formed through a joint venture between Cox Automotive and Auto Trader – together, we created an online vehicle marketplace that’s smarter, easier and more profitable for everyone.
We launched a new platform in January 2020, after recognising the need for a bigger and better trade-to-trade vehicle wholesale digital solution. We passionately believe that data is a key driver of success – it helps both buyers and sellers support their instinct with insight and helps them concentrate their efforts accordingly.
With data being so integral to our platform, it was the obvious starting point when looking at the successes of the year. So far in 2020, we’ve listed 72,483 unique vehicles, helping dealers to dispose of unwanted, overage or duplicate stock.
We currently have 600 auctions ending daily, and this choice of vehicles has had an excellent response from buyers with over 122,000 bids each month driving and an 80% conversion. What’s more – our low buyer fees make buyer’s budgets work harder meaning vehicles typically achieve 103% CAP %. Going into 2021, we have over 4,000 registered sellers and over 5,000 trade buyers.
Connecting the right stock with the right buyer
As we brought together the expertise of Cox Automotive, Auto Trader and Dealer Auction, we honed in on the needs of our customers. As part of this process, we talked to existing users to ensure the platform met their needs, and then identified three key principles to inform everything we do: confidence, choice and convenience.
Confidence
We empower our buyers and sellers with data, enabling them to make smarter decisions. Our platform draws on the vast real-time data capabilities of Auto Trader to give buyers an unrivalled insight on what cars buyers are searching for in your area, and how each vehicle will perform for you. For sellers, our data insights help you list vehicles at the right price for sale to help attract more bids and achieve the maximum price.
Choice
With 11,000 fresh vehicles added monthly and available 24/7, over 4,000 sellers, and stock from more sources than any other digital marketplace, our buyers are literally spoilt for choice. There’s also plenty of choice for our sellers, who have the ability to list trade-in stock to a larger, more motivated and more competitive marketplace, with over 5,000 trade buyers.
Convenience
With Dealer Auction, it’s easy to make this marketplace work for you. For sellers, it means listing vehicles is quick and effortless too, with upload options to suit your workflows and as much control as you want – you’re in complete control. For buyers, that means intuitive tools and filters make listing, finding and winning relevant vehicles straightforward and fast. One of our key tools is our alerts system – so far in 2020, we’ve sent out over 7,000,000 vehicle alerts, an average of over 310,000 per month.
You get all of that for our exceptionally low transaction fees, meaning your budget can work even harder!
Always developing
As you can tell, we’re extremely proud of our platform, and how it gives buyers and sellers more choice, better insight and greater margin. But we’re not ones to rest on our laurels, and we’re constantly evolving to make sure we continue to meet the needs of our customers.
Here are our top 10 key website functionalities delivered over the last 12 months:
- New design and layout for search
- Increased the number of listings visible per search page
- New layout and design for the buyers’ dashboard with bid and buy now options
- Advert templates when listing a vehicle and image guidance facility
- New group buying functionality to switch accounts easily
- Use stock feeds to advertise multiple vehicles quickly
- Bulk list and re-list vehicles from your seller forecourt
- View CAP performance data for vehicles you’ve sold
- Utilise Stock Policy alerts so you don’t miss out on relevant stock
- Closed network functionality.
Digital is the future
We’ll be covering this topic in more detail over the coming months, but it’s clear that in recent years, there’s been a huge shift towards digital in the retail sphere – and, specifically, in the car industry.
According to Google’s ‘Car Purchasing Process UK’ 2019 report, 54% of buyers were considering buying online either at the time of the survey or in the future. At Dealer Auction, our view in early 2020 was that 80% of core trade vehicles will be transacted online by 2023, and this influence of digital has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s obvious that online consumer vehicle sales will continue to grow, and we are already seeing the same digital transformation for trade. You should expect such benefits as reduced days to sell, higher returns and competitive fees as the market shifts from physical to digital – and that’s where we come in!
We’re ready when you are!
Want to find out more about how Dealer Auction could revolutionise your trade vehicle buying or selling habits? Then why not try us subscription free for 30 days? Sign up here today.
