If you run an independent lot, your website is the showroom most shoppers walk through first. They look at your cars on a phone, often at night, before they ever call. So the question isn't whether you need a website. It's whether the one you have is doing the job of a good salesperson: showing the car, answering the obvious questions and making it easy to take the next step.
This is the checklist we use when we build dealer websites. It is written for owners, not developers. Use it to judge your current site, or any vendor pitching you a new one.
1. It has to be fast on a phone
Most shoppers will see your site on a phone over a cell connection. A page that takes several seconds to show the first photo loses people before they see the price. Ask any vendor for a test you can repeat yourself. Google's free Lighthouse test (built into Chrome, and behind PageSpeed Insights) scores a page from 0 to 100 for performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO.
Don't accept one screenshot of one perfect run. Scores move from run to run, especially on mobile, so ask for several runs. When we tested the home page of a live dealer site running our template on October 15, 2026, desktop scored Performance 100, Accessibility 100, Best Practices 96 and SEO 100 on all three runs. That's the kind of honest, repeatable number you should ask for. We wrote more about this in Dealer website speed and Core Web Vitals, explained for owners.
2. Car pages that answer the questions
The vehicle detail page (VDP) is where a shopper decides whether to contact you. A good one answers what a shopper would ask on the lot:
- Plenty of photos, loading quickly, with a clear price near the top.
- Mileage, trim, drivetrain, color, VIN and stock number.
- A short write-up in plain English, not just a list of codes.
- An estimated monthly payment, with the terms used to get it.
- A vehicle history report link, such as CARFAX.
- Buttons for the next step: check availability, test drive, value my trade, apply for credit, text us.
- Similar cars, so a shopper who doesn't love this one stays on your site.
You can click through a working example on our Classic demo site. It uses a made-up dealer and sample cars, but the pages are the same ones our live dealer site runs.
3. Search that works the way people type
Shoppers don't think in filter menus. They think "Model Y under 30k" or "SUV with a third row". A search bar that turns those words into real filters keeps people browsing instead of bouncing. It should also find a car by VIN, the last six of the VIN, or a stock number, which helps your own staff when a customer calls about a specific car.
4. A real out-the-door price
Shoppers want to know what they'll actually pay. An estimated out-the-door price that includes sales tax for their ZIP code, registration and DMV fees, and any add-ons they picked builds trust and gives your sales team a better conversation. The details matter. In California, sales tax depends on the location, and the state tax agency (CDTFA) publishes the rate for each area. If a site can't find the rate, it should say so instead of quietly guessing.
On our template, each car has a Checkout button: the shopper picks cash or finance, enters a ZIP and sees an itemized estimate. After checkout they get a printable deal voucher with their own numbers, clearly marked as an estimate, not an approval.
5. Financing without the friction
Most used-car buyers finance. Your site should let them start that step without calling. Two pieces help: a pre-qualification estimate that doesn't run their credit, and your secure credit application inside the site. If you use DealerCenter, its secure credit application can sit on your own finance page, so applications go straight into DealerCenter and your website never handles Social Security numbers.
6. Leads that land in the tools you already use
Every form on your site should end up in your CRM with the car attached, not in an inbox nobody checks. ADF/XML is the lead format dealer CRMs accept, so ask whether a site can send it. Ask what happens when a lead can't be delivered, too. A good site shows the shopper an error and lets them call, instead of silently dropping the lead.
7. Built to be found locally
Independent dealers win on local search: "used cars near me", "used Tesla in Corona". That takes pages for each store and the cities you serve, landing pages for the makes and models you actually stock, structured data that tells Google what each page is, and a sitemap that lists every car. Our guide to SEO for used car dealers covers this in more detail, including AI search.
8. Your old links keep working
If you're switching from another platform, your old pages already have links and search history. A new site should send every old address to the right new page, not to the home page or a 404. When one independent dealer switched to our template, we checked all 1,187 addresses from the old site's sitemap, and every one landed on a working page.
9. It should look like you
A website template shouldn't make your lot look like every other lot. Your logo, colors and tone should come through. Our dealer websites come in three looks, so you can see the difference for yourself: Classic, bold red and black; Luxury, dark with gold accents; and Clean, clean and simple with the monthly payment on every car.
10. Questions to ask any vendor
- Can I run Lighthouse on a site you built today, and what do you get on mobile and desktop?
- Where do leads go, in what format, and what happens if delivery fails?
- Does the site show an out-the-door estimate, and where do the tax and fee numbers come from?
- Will my old web addresses redirect page by page?
- Is there structured data on car pages, and a sitemap with every car?
- What do I pay per month, per location, and what's included?
If you'd like to see how our template answers these, book a demo and we'll walk you through it live.