Stock that maintains itself.
A garage website that reads vehicle stock from the Auto Trader API, so the forecourt and the site never disagree.
Stock accurate without anyone maintaining it
Sold vehicles off the site the day they sell
One catalogue instead of two,
- Stock maintained in two places by hand
- Sold vehicles left live on the website
- No consistent route from a service search to an enquiry,
- AUTO TRADER API
- STOCK SYNC
- SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
- LOCAL SEO
- VEHICLE LISTINGS
Context
Northbank Garage sells cars and services them. Both sides of the business needed to work from the same website, and the vehicle side changes every week.
Stock lived in Auto Trader, because that is where the buyers are and where the team already worked. Anything on the website was a second copy of it, kept up by hand. A car sold on Friday was still for sale on the website on Monday, and the person who noticed was usually a customer.
The constraint
The problem was duplication, not design.
A website that holds its own copy of the stock list is wrong within a week. Either somebody updates it twice, which is a job nobody wants and nobody does reliably, or it drifts until the forecourt and the website disagree. A sold car left live generates a phone call that wastes everyone's time.
The service side had a separate problem. It needed to earn local search, which is a different job from merchandising cars and needs its own structure rather than a share of the vehicle one.
The approach
One source for the stock and no second copy anywhere.
The website reads Auto Trader directly through its API, so there is nothing to keep in step. The team carries on working the way they already do, in the system they already use, and the website follows.
Services and vehicles are separate jobs on the same site. Someone searching for a cambelt and someone browsing for a car want different things, so they get different structures.
What we built
Direct Auto Trader API integration
Vehicle data pulled from the Auto Trader API rather than a scheduled file export, so the site reads the live record instead of yesterday's copy of it.
Each vehicle gets a consistent page template and a stable URL, built from the fields the API returns.
Sold and withdrawn vehicles come off the site when they come off Auto Trader, so it does not accumulate dead listings.
The team maintains stock in one place. There is no website catalogue to update.
Vehicle pages
Specification, imagery and the enquiry route, in the order a buyer asks for them.
Service pages and local search
Service content structured around the terms people actually search for locally, with internal linking and a technical setup that lets it be indexed.
Enquiry routing
Call, WhatsApp and form wherever they are needed, with enough detail arriving at the garage to answer without a second exchange.
Results
The website tells the truth about what is on the forecourt, and nobody has to keep it that way. Cars appear when they are listed and go when they sell. The service side has a structure of its own rather than sharing one with the stock feed.
The measure of this kind of work is that nobody thinks about it. There is no weekly job to forget.
Next steps
Widen the service content to cover more of what people search for locally, and add structured data for the vehicle listings and the business itself.