VIN Basics Blog

It's that time of year again, and those of us in the automotive industry know I'm not just referring to the New Year! It's the final days before we travel out to San Francisco for the 2015 NADA Convention & Expo and as always we are looking forward to meeting up with our partners, friends and long-time clients. We will be based out of the Dominion Dealer Solutions booth at #1019S and happy to chat at the booth or meet up for a cup of coffee (on us)!

In light of the new year approaching and all the top 10 New Year's resolution lists/2015 predictions rolling out, we thought it'd be fun to write a News Year's article with a different twist.

Auto Technology: Aluminum Vehicle Technology

Aluminum dominates as the choice material for wheels and engine blocks in the automotive industry. In the last few decades, the use of aluminum auto technology has increased. Beyond its lighter weight which can enhance fuel efficiency and performance capabilities, aluminum is recyclable and can improve safety by absorbing more crash energy than steel. However, it is not without disadvantages.

According to Google, the majority of vehicle shoppers use digital channels during their research. Most of these online vehicle shoppers use more than one website before deciding on the vehicle they want to purchase. Let's look at ways to make these visitors convert.

In this day in age, there's so much work to get done with such a small window of opportunity to do it in. Many of us have our time spread thin between work, family and social lives; so after a long days work, having to take more work home is less than ideal! This is where utilizing a 3rd party solution(s) becomes a necessity for many businesses. 

The saying "time is money" applies to most all professions, however, maybe none more so than professionals in the automotive industry. Regardless of which segment you work in (auto sales, marketing, insurance, software development, logistics, etc.) there will be a number of items on your team's agenda that cannot be contracted to a 3rd party. Luckily, with vehicle data solutions readily available from trusted data providers, you are not stuck having to create a solution in-house.  In fact, with the availability of delivered data, web services and hosted software solutions, integrating these products has never been easier.     

Blogging has become an important part of traffic generation and brand awareness for any type of business and has indeed reached its way to the automotive world. Since the vehicle data and VIN decoding solutions we provide are vital to all segments of the auto industry, we come across quite a variety of auto blogs.

Though the blogs we've shared below are not exclusive to one auto niche (auto listing sites, dealer solution providers, auto insurance, etc.), we still thought each one of these articles would provide some level of value or interest industry-wide.

A study from GE Capital Retail Bank in 2013 found that 81 percent of consumers research products online before making a big purchase decision. This percent is expected to continue to grow as consumers become more comfortable with the integrity of online information along with the readily available product information.  From clothing to electronics to large appliances, shoppers are using the internet to make smarter decisions before opening their wallets.

The 2014 BMW i8 is easily one of BMW's most impressive releases in quite some time, combining the most attractive features of a sporty, high performance vehicle with those of an economy car. This beautiful piece of machinery has many of the advanced technology features we've covered in our automotive technology series thus far... and more. 

Thinking about trying your hand at creating the next great inventory listing portal?  Make sure your plan for displaying inventory has all your bases covered by checking out our infographic!

Auto Technology: Hydrogen Vehicles

Imagine a vehicle that gets twice the combined MPG of equivalent gas models and whose only emissions are water vapor.  Seems too good to be true, right?  However, vehicles like the one described above are already available in the United States... well, only with very limited availability and only in one state.