AutoTrader.com, the world's largest automotive marketplace, today announces its launch of a dealer best practices microsite. The site aims to educate AutoTrader.com's more than 40,000 dealer customers about how to use proven best practices to increase sales by more effectively showcasing their inventories online. It also explains the benefits of using online classified listings to attract potential customers. The presentation includes an overview and several training modules that offer in-depth explanations through streaming video of Chip Perry, AutoTrader.com's president and chief executive officer.

As the viewer goes to http://bestpractices.autotrader.com/ and then clicks on various module titles, such as "Use the Internet to Sell" and "Market Your Cars Effectively," Chip comes onscreen and walks the user through tactics that have worked for AutoTrader.com's most successful dealers. "The best practices concept grew out of dealers asking the company how to best turn Internet shoppers into buyers," Perry explained. "We force ranked all 40,000 of our dealers and identified the strategies being used by the dealers at the top of the list who received the most leads. The microsite shows what these 'best practices' strategies are and how other dealers can use them."

The best practices microsite is one of many services AutoTrader.com offers its dealer customers, including marketing intelligence reports and in- dealership training. The microsite shows that dealers with effective merchandising can generate three to five -- and sometimes up to 10 -- times the response of a dealer who has only average merchandising. On the microsite Chip shows examples of effective merchandising which fall into several key categories such as "Telling the Story of the Car," "Telling the Story of the Dealership," and using coupons and specials to drive consumer response. Additionally, the site is dynamic and will evolve to include the most recent strategies for successful automotive marketing on the Internet.

"All of the research shows that Internet shoppers are information hungry," said Perry. "Successful dealers are capitalizing on this big time. They include multiple photos, detailed vehicle descriptions, comments about the vehicle and text messages that act like online coupons in order to get the consumer to take action. These basic techniques really can help drive more qualified in-market car buyers to your dealership."

AutoTrader.com's dealers have access to the largest online auto classified site, with the most in-market car shoppers, as well as a powerful set of cost effective and targeted advertising and auction-style listings products. AutoTrader.com attracts more than 7 million unique visitors monthly who perform 40 million vehicle searches and view 80 million individual vehicles each month. AutoTrader.com also has by far the largest dealer sales and support staff in the industry and provides dealers with a tool called AdManager to efficiently post and manage their inventories online. AutoTrader.com also provides dealer training at free seminars called E-Basics that share current best practices for using the Internet as a marketing and sales channel for new and used vehicles.

About AutoTrader.com

AutoTrader.com, created in 1997 and headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is the Internet's leading auto classifieds marketplace and consumer information website. AutoTrader.com aggregates in a single location more than 2.2 million vehicle listings from 40,000 dealers and 250,000 private owners, which provide the largest selection of vehicles attracting more than 7 million unique visitors every month. Through innovative merchandising products such as multiple photos and auction-style listings and comprehensive search functionality, AutoTrader.com unites buyer and seller online -- dramatically improving the way people research, locate and advertise vehicles.

AutoTrader.com is a majority-owned subsidiary of Manheim Auctions, Inc., the world's largest operator of wholesale auto auctions since 1945. Manheim Auctions, a wholly owned subsidiary of media conglomerate Cox Enterprises, Inc., is AutoTrader.com's principal stockholder and a key investor along with Landmark Communications, ADP, Inc., and the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. For more information, visit http://www.autotrader.com/ or call 1-800-353-9350.

SOURCE: AutoTrader.com

CONTACT: Louise Barr of AutoTrader.com, +1-404-843-5943, or
louise.barr@autotrader.com

Web site: http://www.autotrader.com/