How To Make A Free Smart Phone Application For Your Car Dealership

Note: This can be used in any industry, but my niche is Car Dealers so the examples I use are for cars.

Car Dealers all over the US have been intrigued by the possibility of having their own Smart Phone Application. The problem is, many car dealers feel it’s too early to pay a developer to create an application. There are many unanswered questions like will people even download this?

I can tell just by looking at my stats that more and more people are using Smart Phones like the IPhone and the Google Droid.

This little application won’t cost you a dime, and it will allow you to present your latest new and/or used car inventory in a block of photographs. Each image is clickable to the actual inventory page. Every time your website inventory is updated, it will update your dealer app.

This could be a great tool for your sales force as well, allowing them to have their inventory information on the fly.

If you have a Smart Phone, follow these instructions to check out Frontier Motor’s Application in Pensacola Florida:

Open the url below in your iPhone’s Safari browser:

http://www.wowzio.com/m/gallery/68208 (If you’re on a PC you can click that to see what it looks like live)

Then, ‘Add to Home Screen’ by clicking on the ‘+’ button.

Pretty cool huh? Now I will give you some simple instructions on how to set it up:

1. Go to Wowzio and get your app. For now, you have to email them and ask if you can use it. They do this to avoid porn and other undesirable websites to use it. You will get your approval within 24 hours if you ask them nicely.
2. You will have the opportunity to make many different widgets. Simply copy and paste your inventory RSS Feed url into the box, and follow the instructions.
3. Now you will have a few layout opportunities. You can use each as a blog, website and/or Smart Phone Widget. You can choose any one:

If you do not have an RSS Feed for your inventory, you really should get one. Check with your website vendor, you may have one and not realize it. Showroom Logic will give you an RSS Feed with a directory listing here.

Once you have an inventory RSS Feed, you can:

1. Update Your Facebook Automatically With Inventory
2. Update Twitter Automatically. (Directory users can use Showroom Logic’s Twitter App for Free)
3. Submit your RSS Feed to directories, which will automate by itself.
4. Do many cool things with Feedburner (too many to list)
5. Update LinkedIn
6. And now, you can have your own Smart Phone Application

Here is an example of what an inventory RSS Feed will look like:

http://www.tampa-used-cars.com/feed.php

Note: Technically this is a widget that is displayed on a webpage, but it functions just like an app. This will work with I-Pads too!

If you have any questions or comments, please comment below.