One Platform, Hundreds of Dealer Sites
The Platform Behind DoneDeal’s Pro Dealer Websites for Car Dealers Nationwide
Overview
DoneDeal set out to give every dealer who advertises with them a world-class, professional website of their own. Hosted by DoneDeal at no extra cost to the dealer, Pro Dealer Websites are one of the ways DoneDeal rewards its dealer customers.
Square1 designed and built the platform behind the product and has been DoneDeal’s build partner on it since 2018. Today one multi-tenant platform powers hundreds of dealer websites across Ireland, for car dealerships and for agricultural and farm machinery dealers alike. Each site showcases its dealer’s latest stock straight from DoneDeal, looks like the dealer’s own business and lets buyers apply for finance on the vehicle they want.
Read about our website development and product and software development services for multi-tenant platforms.
Our Role
Website Design & Development Product & Software Development UX/UI & Brand Design
The Client
DoneDeal is Ireland’s leading online marketplace for cars, farming and much more, and a trusted partner to dealers across the country. Alongside advertising on the marketplace, DoneDeal offers its Pro dealers a growing set of products that help them build their brand and increase sales.
Pro Dealer Websites extend that service beyond the marketplace. Dealers who advertise with DoneDeal get a professional, high-performance website that showcases their stock, integrates finance and gives their dealership a strong online presence, all powered by DoneDeal. Dealers who already have a website with another provider can switch over with minimum hassle and at no extra cost.
Challenge
DoneDeal’s ambition was to offer a professional website to every one of its dealers, from large car dealerships to rural farm machinery specialists, without the cost or effort of a bespoke build for each one. Every site needed to feel unique to its dealer, work beautifully on any device and stay in sync with the stock the dealer already lists on DoneDeal.
The platform had to scale to hundreds of dealers nationwide while staying simple to run. DoneDeal’s Pro Success team needed to be able to launch a new dealer quickly, make day-to-day changes without technical help and keep every site looking its best. And finance needed to be part of the buying journey, so a buyer could go from browsing a dealer’s stock to applying for finance on a specific vehicle in one place.
Solution
We built one multi-tenant platform, designed around a library of configurable content blocks. Dealers choose the content, imagery and colours to suit their business, and site-wide theme tokens carry their brand through every page, so each site is distinct while running on the same foundation.
Stock is fed automatically from DoneDeal. Dealers simply upload their vehicles and machinery to DoneDeal as they always have, and the listings appear on their own website, where buyers can search by make, model and price and browse the dealer’s latest and featured stock.
Finance is built in. Buyers can apply for finance directly through the dealer’s website on the vehicle they are interested in, with embedded DoneDeal Finance applications from providers including Bank of Ireland, Close Brothers and LoanITT, finance calculators and price-per-month shown on search and filters.
Behind the scenes, an admin tool built around block configuration and live preview lets the Pro Success team set up and manage sites with ease. AI-assisted onboarding pulls a dealer’s details from DoneDeal and proposes a complete site for the team to refine, so new dealers can go live quickly. Every site is optimised for mobile and desktop and hosted on infrastructure that scales with the network.
Result
Hundreds of dealers across Ireland, selling cars and agricultural and farm machinery, now have fully branded, professional websites that stay in sync with their DoneDeal stock and give buyers a clear path to finance. For DoneDeal, the platform turns a website into part of the service it already offers every dealer, adding value to their advertising at no extra cost.
Because every site runs on the same platform, new features reach the whole network at once, and onboarding a new dealer is a matter of configuration rather than a new build. Square1 continues as DoneDeal’s long-term build partner on a product at the centre of how DoneDeal supports its dealer network.
See the platform live at Longford Trade Vehicles, Nolan’s Auto Hub, 5 Star Quality Motors, Walsh’s Garage, RPM Car Sales and PM Machinery.
