AutoTrader and your own website: which should lead?

If you advertise on AutoTrader and run your own website, the same vehicles live in two places. Connecting the two saves typing everything twice. The useful question is not whether to connect them, but which one you want to do your day-to-day work in.

Two ways to connect

• AutoTrader leads — you carry on managing stock in AutoTrader, and your website copies it across automatically. Your website mirrors your AutoTrader forecourt.
• Your website leads — you manage stock in your own system, and it sends your adverts to AutoTrader for you.

Which suits you?

If you are comfortable in AutoTrader and mainly want a website that keeps up with it, let AutoTrader lead. It is the gentler change.

If you would rather have one home for your stock — where the vehicle, its photos, its costs and its sale all live together — let your website lead and publish out from there.

What to expect either way

• Vehicles appear on both without re-keying.
• A price change or a sale in the leading system follows through to the other automatically.
• AutoTrader’s vehicle data fills in the detail buyers filter on.

And if you are not on AutoTrader?

Nothing stops you running your own website without it. Number-plate lookup still fills in a vehicle’s details, and you can connect AutoTrader later.

How MotoVend handles it

On MotoVend you choose the direction for each location, and each location connects to its own AutoTrader account. When MotoVend leads, you choose per vehicle whether it goes to your AutoTrader profile, to AutoTrader search, or both, and AutoTrader’s price guide appears in your stock list. More on the AutoTrader connection.