engagement rate
pages per user session
The Client
CarsIreland.ie is Ireland's largest new and used vehicles classifieds website with a catalog of more than 50,000 vehicles available from dealers and private sellers.
The Situation
One of Ireland’s leading car sales platforms, CarsIreland.ie has grown to become one of the best-loved platforms for both customers and car dealerships when it comes to buying and selling cars.
The company’s main strategic goal was to become the market leader in Ireland’s car classified industry, offering a superior online experience and delivering what modern users want from classified websites. To do this, the company’s new online platform needed to minimize the number of steps the user needed to take to find available new or used vehicles quickly— all while empowering dealerships to increase sales.
The Challenge
The company faced many challenges with its previous online platform:
- Uploading and augmenting vehicle inventory was slow and didn’t happen in real time.
- The old platform struggled to accommodate the content that car buyers wanted — high-quality images, 360-degree car views, videos, etc.
- Users accessing the site through mobile devices had a less-than-stellar experience.
- Lack of reporting and transparency made it difficult for client sellers to track performance. For example, they couldn’t tell if a phone call came from a potential buyer looking at the site.
- Site performance and uptime was lacking.
The Solution
CarsIreland.ie tapped digital partner Annertech to execute its UX and design changes, while engineering a search engine that was faster and better than any of its competitors. Ultimately, the teams chose Drupal for its relatively low entry cost and its API-driven capabilities and ability to add enterprise functionality. Because they didn’t want to be worried about hosting, Acquia Cloud Platform was selected to ensure the CarsIreland.ie platform is performant and scalable, with very high availability.
The Results
The platform went live in February 2021, and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Site metrics show a strong engagement rate (75%) and a high average number of pages per session (13.5).
Additionally, CarsIreland.ie has noticed increased repeat visitors, indicating that users appreciate the new search functionality. As feedback is gathered from customer reviews, the dealership network and platforms such as TrustPilot and Google reviews, site development continues — in essence, creating a continuous innovation loop that evolves and grows with the market