6 Best Website Builders for Car Dealerships (Tested) in 2023

The last thing you want is a potential customer to visit your site only to get stuck trying to navigate around it or be put off by an ugly design that distracts them from your beautiful cars. Choose the wrong website builder, and that’s what you’ll get.

Features like powerful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, stunning galleries to display photos of your vehicles, and advanced marketing tools all help your car dealership reach the right audience. But not all website builders offer the features you need to make your site look great and function well.

I’ve tested the best site builders on the market to take the guesswork out of selecting the right option. The six builders on this list are the ones that proved to be best for a car dealership website.

What We Look For in the Best Website Builders for Car Dealerships

The best builders make it quick and easy to create a site that’s both visually appealing and simple for potential customers to navigate. It should also provide tools to help with marketing, branding, and visibility. I focused on these features:

• Ease of Use. Running a business is hard; designing your website shouldn’t be. These builders offer user-friendly editors that make it easy to create an attractive, well-functioning website.
• SEO features: Creating a great car dealership website doesn’t mean much without an SEO strategy to help potential clients find you online. The website builders on this list either have integrated SEO tools or powerful apps and integrations that you can add on.
• A variety of gallery layouts: Your clients want to see what cars you have on offer before heading to the lot. The website builders on this list have plenty of options for displaying photos and videos of the cars you’re selling.
• Marketing and promotional tools: Get the word out about new arrivals and sales with integrated marketing tools. These builders have tools for creating email campaigns and reaching buyers on social media.

1. Wix – The Best Car Dealership Templates

Wix is my top pick when it comes to building a website that looks great and can help you reach your business goals. You can browse a selection of Wix templates for car dealerships with varied designs and layouts. Most come with the essential features you’ll need already built in.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you can customize it to your liking by moving sections around or adding image galleries, text blocks, videos, contact forms, and more.

If you can’t decide which template to begin with, Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) can create a customized design for you. Simply answer a few questions about your business’s needs, and Wix ADI will recommend three different website designs based on existing layouts. After choosing a design, all you have to do is upload your content and make any small changes you want.

Features

• Wix SEO Wiz: Get a personalized SEO plan that helps potential customers find you online. All you have to do is go through your customized checklist to see whether your site’s optimized for search engines. You can also pick and analyze keywords, index your site on Google, and track your progress.
• Media galleries: Wix offers plenty of built-in options for galleries. When you upload photos of your car inventory to your site, you can choose a layout, resize images, add links to specific images, and add a title and description. Wix even supports 360° images – simply upload them to your gallery, or import from your social media accounts. You can also showcase any videos you have of your vehicles.
• Wix App Market: Wix offers plenty of marketing tools in its App Market. You can add Google AdSense to create ads online, Wix Bookings to allow clients to reserve a time slot to come test drive a car, and Wix Chat to communicate with visitors on your site.
• Business management solutions. Ascend is a suite of helpful business tools that includes a CRM, email marketing, an invoice generator, and video maker. Tools let you automate tasks like welcome emails, thank you emails, and targeted offers, all of which can help you grow your business.

Read our in-depth Wix review for more details.

2. Squarespace: The Most Attractive Image Galleries to Draw Visitors In

Squarespace offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor and sleek templates, making it a great option for a professional car dealership website.

While there aren’t any templates specifically designed for the automotive industry, there are plenty of options that you can easily customize for your site. The local business category is a good place to begin.

You’ll notice that Squarespace templates have fantastic options for displaying images, along with striking website designs. They’re also customizable, so you can change the fonts, color scheme, and layout of each individual element. Adding new sections or pages to highlight your maintenance or financing services or introduce your team is easy to do.

Squarespace is as much about substance as it is about style. Business and e-commerce tools give you everything you need to run your dealership, from inventory management to payment solutions and automatic tax collection. On a final note, before publishing your site you’ll want to go through the SEO checklist to ensure it’s optimized for search engines.

Features

• Image galleries: Squarespace gives you two ways to display your car images: in Gallery Sections or Gallery Blocks. You can add a Gallery Section to an existing page (like your homepage) or create an entire page dedicated to photos of your cars. When you add a Gallery Block, you can share images or videos, but only on certain pages, like product detail pages.
• Scheduling. When you add Squarespace Scheduling, your clients can check availability and book appointments for test drives online, leaving you free to focus on your business. You can sync appointments to your Google, iCloud, or Office 365 calendar.
• Integrated email marketing: You can add a simple form to your site so visitors can sign up to your mailing list. Squarespace offers a variety of mobile-responsive email templates you can use to create a newsletter or promotional campaign. You’ll even get analytics to see how your campaign is performing.
• Map Block: You can easily embed a map on your website using a Map Block. Select a pinned location in Google Maps and have it displayed on your site so that visitors can easily locate your dealership when they’re ready to pay you a visit.

Read our full Squarespace review for tips and tricks.

3. Zyro: Smart Tools to Help Make Building Your Site Easier

If you’ve never created a website before, Zyro could be a good choice for you. It’s affordable, easy-to-use, and comes with innovative smart tools that can help with your website’s aesthetics, content, and visibility. The templates might not be quite as stylish as Squarespace’s, but they’re clean and modern with attractive galleries to show off your inventory.

Business features allow you to manage inventory, orders, and customer service all from your website’s dashboard. Zyro also offers marketing and analytics integrations that can help you target ad campaigns and grow your business, including Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook Pixel.

While there’s no free plan, Zyro’s entry-level plan costs just a few dollars a month and includes the full suite of AI-powered tools plus unlimited storage for high-quality images of your cars.

Features

• Business branding: Answer a few questions and the AI logo maker will generate design suggestions for you. If you haven’t settled on a business name, Zyro’s Business Name Generator can also help with that.
• Heatmap: When you upload an image of your website to the AI Heatmap, you’ll get an idea of what content will attract visitors. This can help with placement of call-to-action buttons and other key elements.
• Simple CRM. E-commerce plans come with Zyro’s basic CRM. This lets you manage customer leads and send automated emails, personalized discounts, and coupon codes – all of which can help you boost sales.
• Live chat. Quickly connect with potential customers and answer their questions by enabling a chat feature. Simply add Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to your site. This enhanced level of customer service helps build trust in your dealership.

Our in-depth Zyro review has more details.

4. IONOS: A Cost-Effective Builder for Car Dealerships

If you’re considering IONOS for your website, you’ll want to upgrade to either the business-friendly MyWebsite Plus or MyWebsite Pro packages, which offer more creative control and features than the basic MyWebsite Starter.

With IONOS, you add widgets to enhance features and functionality. You can connect your social media accounts (like Facebook and Instagram) to increase your dealership’s visibility, boost traffic and promote your services. You can also use widgets to integrate videos from YouTube or Vimeo to give potential customers a virtual tour of your cars.

All in all, IONOS offers ample business features at an affordable price – including a business email aligned with your domain, which communicates professionalism and can help build credibility. IONOS doesn’t offer a free plan, though there is a free 30-day trial. You’ll have to provide a credit card, but you won’t be billed if you cancel within 30 days.

Features

• Personalized content: Customize messages, invitations, and prompts to match the device a visitor is using. You can even tailor special offers that visitors see based on how many times they’ve viewed your site or whether they’ve previously purchased a car from you.
• Image editing: You can edit photos on your website with the built-in image editor. You can adjust saturation, crop, resize, and add text and background videos to make your product pages shine.
• Logo generator: IONOS makes it simple to create a memorable logo for your brand. You can browse a selection of logo designs recommended for your industry or choose an icon that appeals to you. Then use your custom logo on your website, newsletter, and marketing materials.
• List local. Add this tool to promote your business and optimize it for local SEO. Your dealership will be listed in key online directories, which can make it easier for customers to find your company’s location, contact details, and web address.

For more details, read our full IONOS review.

5. SITE123: The Best Option for Beginners

SITE123’s easy-to-use editor allows you to build a site quickly, upload your content, and make simple edits. It could be a great choice if you’re just starting out – just keep in mind that the customization options are a bit limited compared to other builders.

The template selection might seem less varied compared to Wix’s. However, the templates aren’t overly complicated and come with all the basic elements you’ll probably want, like built-in contact forms, location maps, and image blocks.

SITE123 offers a free forever plan you can use to test whether it’s a good fit for your dealership. But you’ll probably want to upgrade to a paid plan to collect payments, allow clients to schedule service appointments, or enable automatic multilanguage site translation.

Features

• Media galleries: Slideshow, carousel, and rounded image galleries showcase your cars and enhance your site’s content. SITE123 even lets you add both images and videos to the same gallery for a more dynamic presentation.
• SEO tools: SITE123 lets you set meta tags, keywords, and even add meta information to images on your site, giving you the best chance at ranking well in search engine results. The builder also automatically generates a sitemap, another valuable SEO tool that makes it easy for search engines to index all the different pages on your site.
• Marketing tools from the App Market: In addition to Google Analytics and AdSense, you can add social media apps like Pinterest for Business, Twitter Conversion Tracking, and Facebook Pixel, so you can reach a broader audience.
• Great customer service: SITE123’s Support Center provides detailed guides on how to build your site. If you get stuck, live chat support is available 24/7.

Read our detailed SITE123 review to find out more.

6. WordPress.com: The Best Option for SEO

WordPress.com is a little more complex than most DIY website builders, but it has a lot of capabilities. Although you won’t find any themes specifically designed for car dealerships, you’ll find dozens of different themes for businesses.

And with WordPress’s powerful website building tools, any theme can be fully customized to suit your needs.

If you prefer, there are also third-party platforms like ThemeForest where you can find themes that come pre-built with inventory pages, galleries, social media buttons, and more. While they’re not free, they can make it easier to design your site.

But it is important to note that to use third-party themes and plugins, you need to be on WordPress.com’s Business plan. You’ll need to decide if a simple website is enough for you, or if you want to invest in more advanced features.

Features

• SEO plugins for pros: If you choose to subscribe to the Business Plan, I suggest considering Yoast and SEMRush plugins. Both provide suggestions for enhancing the SEO on each page of your site, which includes adding meta tags and descriptions, and optimizing keywords.
• Integrated social sharing: Automatically send your posts to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and more, so each time you add a new vehicle to your site, you can reach the broadest audience.
• Beautiful galleries: You can create a gallery with individual captions by adding a Gallery block to a new post. You won’t have as many in-depth options as you would get from a gallery plugin, but it’s a simple, straightforward option.
• Customer reviews. WordPress offers multiple plugins and widgets you can use to add customer reviews to your product and services pages, which is one of the surest ways to establish your trustworthiness. By linking social platforms like Yelp, Google Reviews, and Facebook, you can enhance social proof.

Read our full WordPress.com review for more details.

So, Which Option Is the ‘Ferrari’ of Website Builders for Car Dealerships?

Ultimately, the builder you choose should be easy to use, but it should also allow you to build a sleek, professional-looking site to encourage clients to visit your dealership.

These are my top three recommendations.

If you want to get your dealership website started quickly and easily, try Wix. With Wix SEO Wiz, you can also rest assured that your website is ranking in search engine results and reaching the right clientele.

If you want to wow clients with stunning visuals Squarespace is best. The integrated email marketing tools are also very handy for creating promotional emails directly within the builder.

Or, if you’re building your first website, Zyro’s innovative AI tools can help with everything – content, design, and SEO optimization.

Take a look at the chart below for a quick summary.

FAQ

What makes a good car dealership website?

A good website for a dealership should include an up-to-date selection of new or used cars you have on your lot, with multiple images, details, and even a video of each one. You’ll also want to include a map with your location, information about your company and staff, contact forms for your clients to reach out to you, and a list of any other services you offer.

Whichever builder you choose, our step-by-step guide to creating a website can help.

How much does a car dealer website cost?

The cost of your website really depends on your preferences. You can easily create a basic car dealership website using a free plan from one of our recommended website builders in 2023, or you can opt to pay for a plan that gives you more features and customization options.

Builders like Zyro and IONOS will get you a professional website on a modest budget.

Is Wix good for a car dealership website?

Yes, Wix is the best builder for car dealership websites. It offers plenty of templates built specifically for car dealerships, so it will be simple to get started. It also offers great features like beautiful media galleries for images and videos of your vehicles, and Wix SEO Wiz is very helpful in making sure that your potential clients can find your website in the first place.

How can you promote your car dealership?

To successfully promote your dealership, you first need to optimize your website for SEO. Other effective marketing solutions include targeted email campaigns, social media integration, limited-time promotional offers, and lead gathering. Adding a blog can also be a powerful way to build your brand, especially if you post helpful tips and advice.