Creating a car dealer website: what it needs and how the inventory gets onto it

Why WordPress for a car dealership

WordPress is freely available and runs on almost any hosting. You choose the theme yourself, build the pages with Elementor, Divi or the Gutenberg editor and are not tied to a website builder: domain, content and data are yours and can be moved to any other provider.

The vehicle inventory sits in your own WordPress database. Even if you cancel BasisCars at some point, the transferred vehicles remain in your installation.

What a car dealer website needs

Six things every car dealer website should have. BasisCars includes all six in every licence:

• Vehicle search with filters: narrow down by make, price, mileage and fuel without the page reloading.
• A dedicated page per vehicle: with its own address, gallery and data so that Google indexes every car individually.
• Enquiry form right on the car: the prospect enquires without leaving the vehicle page; the enquiry arrives by email and is also stored in WordPress.
• Shortlist: visitors collect their favourites and find them again later, without registering.
• Printable data sheet (exposé): the vehicle as a PDF with your logo, the images, the price and a QR code back to the listing.
• Mobile view: most people search from their phone, so one column, large tap targets, no zooming.

What goes beyond that, such as brand logos as filter tiles or the enquiry form as a pop-up, is shown on the Designs page.

The inventory comes from mobile.de

Most dealers maintain their vehicles at mobile.de anyway. A website that asks for the inventory a second time will not be maintained and soon shows cars that were sold long ago.

BasisCars pulls the inventory into WordPress automatically via the mobile.de interface: with images, equipment list, description and consumption figures. The sync runs at the set interval, new vehicles appear without a second step, and whatever is marked as sold at mobile.de disappears from the website.

How the interface works, what it costs and how you get access is explained in the guide to the mobile.de API.

Legal matters on a car dealer website

Consumption and emissions. For passenger cars the Pkw-EnVKV requires figures on consumption, CO₂ emissions and efficiency class. BasisCars shows the values from your mobile.de listing in line with EnVKV and WLTP on every vehicle page; as the dealer you remain responsible for their accuracy. The details are in the guide to the Pkw-EnVKV.

Vehicle images and data protection. If the images are loaded directly from mobile.de, every visitor’s IP address goes to mobile.de, and that belongs in your privacy policy. If BasisCars downloads the images into your media library, everything stays on your server. The plugin does not load any external scripts.

Enquiry form. The form on the vehicle obtains the prospect’s consent, enquiries are deleted after an adjustable period, and a data access request can be answered from the stored data. The privacy notices on your website are yours to write.

Brand logos. Manufacturer logos are protected trademarks. BasisCars does not ship any; whether you use them on your website is your decision and your responsibility.

Car dealer website: theme or ready-made template?

You do not need a special car dealer theme. BasisCars fits into the theme you already use: the images on the Designs page come from an installation with the Astra theme, without a single line of custom CSS.

You set colours, corner radii and spacing in the admin area, separately for light and dark mode. There are six layouts for the title area of the vehicle page, the order of the blocks below is freely selectable, and every visible text can be changed. If you want more, add your own CSS.

What it looks like, with and without the Pro designs: Designs.

Examples: car dealer websites with WordPress and BasisCars

Three businesses whose vehicle search is fed live from mobile.de:

• CCC Mobile, smart center and Suzuki authorised dealer in Bonn and Cologne: the inventory of several branches in one search.
• Bleses, authorised Mercedes-Benz service partner in Cologne-Deutz: used car search alongside workshop and appointment requests.
• MB Automobile, used car dealer in Weiterstadt: vehicle selection with an enquiry form right on the car, plus vehicle purchase and financing.

All projects: References.

Creating a car dealer website: do it yourself or have it built

If you already have a WordPress website, BasisCars is set up in under five minutes: upload the plugin, activate the licence, enter your mobile.de credentials. No programming skills needed.

If the website is to be built from scratch, you can have it built. That does not run under BasisCars but under autowebdesign.de, the web design service of the same developer, Robin Oehler. No agency in between, the same person who writes the plugin.

There are two fixed-price packages. The dealership calling card, from 2,500 euros net, is the website for your location, team and services, with the inventory from mobile.de; the BasisCars licence comes on top, from 100 euros a year. The mobile.de integration package, from 5,000 euros net, is the sales site with the full inventory, and there the BasisCars licence for three years is included.

The work is not limited to dealerships: used car dealers, workshops, valeters, wrappers, body shops, appraisers, classic car restorers, motorhome and motorcycle dealers are covered as well. Two of the projects shown there also appear here under references, because they run on BasisCars: CCC Mobile and Bleses.

Both routes end at the same place: the inventory sits on your own website and keeps itself up to date from mobile.de. The only difference is who builds the pages around it.