Website takes car dealership to the top
A 76,000-page website that cost less than £7,000 to develop has shot a Tees Valley motor dealer to the top of Google and turned his company into one of the most sought-after dotcom businesses this side of the bubble.
Andy Forbes credits Stockton e-commerce specialists Visualsoft with catapulting his one-man operation into the international limelight and helping extend his business ambitions way beyond the village forecourt from which he sells prestige cars in Swainby.
The web wunderkinds in Stockton, who have worked with several local companies on developing their e-commerce divisions, created a site based on search engine optimisation software developed by the firm. The site had paid for itself within a week and online deals overtook forecourt sales within six months. But Mr Forbes plans to continue to run the two businesses simultaneously to even out peaks and troughs in the trade. He has already declined substantial offers for the domain.
“I have the best of both worlds,” he said. “When the economy’s going well we have the retail business, but during a credit crunch people need the cash. It’s been an incredible success story.”
Visualsoft, which recently announced plans to extend beyond its Teesside heartland, is one of the few web design companies to have carved out a niche in the e-tail sector.
Director Dean Benson said clever search engine optimisation (SEO) could save companies a fortune.
“Web development is a very fragmented industry,” he said. “The big thing that separates us from the others is our in-house R&D team. We are statistics driven and we always know there’s a little bit more gain we can get.”
Share
