🎉 Public Launch – Release Notes

After months of tweaking and iterating in a closed beta with trusted dealership partners, driverseat is excited to change the way next-generation dealerships run their online business.

Changelog

When we released the first version of driverseat, the modern web framework world was the wild west with no true winners. Most big companies were implementing DIY solutions, and it was hard to follow the leaders. Over the last year, a clear winner was established – Vercel.

With this in mind, we decided that it was time for us to differentiate ourselves even further, by improving our performance scores to be the best in the biz, refreshing our design, and setting ourselves up to easily add additional features in the near future (user accounts, consignment, AI engine recommendation, etc)

Speed & Stability

Rewrote the platform using Nextjs and hosting is now done on Vercel which is used by the biggest silicon valley companies like Netflix, Uber, and Ticketmaster

More tests → we've written 4x the tests and now use a static language (Typescript) to catch potential bugs at build time before sites are deployed

Google Lighthouse scores greatly improved. Set a new target of 90+ for every release moving forward

Optimized from the ground up for the new Google Web Vitals, which will improve dealer search engine performance

The entire website is now cached at the edge, ensuring that it will never go down even if the API fails

Navigation and page loading is even faster as a result – making dealership websites more accessible even on the slowest networks

GTmetrix scores have far surpassed every other dealership website provider

General Improvements

Complete facelift on the home page, to bring the sites in line with the latest trends while improving the user experience

Improved the above fold content to provide more actionable items for shoppers

Improved the use of space by redesigning some existing sections

Implemented a new way to search for a vehicle by determining shoppers' wants and budget

Smarter 404 pages, with similar vehicle suggestions when a car has been sold

Converted every section into a standalone component that will be editable via the dashboard, allowing for instant on the fly changes

Improved the "meet our team" page with a greater focus on profile images and a better way of sending a message

Redesigned the blog list and post views to improve readability, as well as fix any display issues across content types

Dozens of improvements to other existing pages to unify the design language and performance. The browsing experience should now be improved for customers across all screen sizes

Improved OpenGraph images cross the main pages to provide more context when shared

Improved meta descriptions for primary pages to optimize for some long-tail search queries

VDP

Price alerts via Mobile Pass are now default on every lead submission, providing dealers with an additional channel to engage with potential buyers

Added new component with additional vehicle photos towards the bottom of the page to keep customers engaged

Optimized vehicle recommendations for "Similar Cars"

Refreshed the above fold layout

Testing more "bold" buttons on important CTAs

improved clarity around which dealership the vehicle is located

improved readability of additional vehicle features and specifications

Inventory

Added a small hero with title and vehicle counts (+ points to technical SEO for now adding an H1 title to inventory)

Used the analytics from the last year to determine most popular queries, and optimized new filters visible right away

Ability to quickly remove individual filters, or clear the entire search

A new way to apply multiple filters that's more reliable and user friendly

Replaced filter sliders for pricing and mileage categories with more intuitive filter groups

Optimized vehicle cards for screen real estate by removing bulk

Filtering by year is now easier

Infinite scroll is back for vehicle cards – now works correctly, and remembers position when navigating back from the VDP

Improved search functionality (ex, results no longer populate mid-word, but rather wait for a break in typing input)

Mobile feed is much faster and easier to swipe through images without going to the VDP

More user-friendly "empty state" for when no results are found

Bug fixes and general improvements (i.e. filter modules no longer scroll in the background, sorting works as expected on mobile, language changes on sorting drop-downs, etc)