Many of us, particularly those of us working in digital marketing, agree that CDK websites are... not good. In fact, CDK does not stand alone in this regard. Many of the OEM recommended website providers produce products that can hardly be described as professional grade. They are rife with structured data errors, are often slow to load, many 3rd party integrations cause issues and there is a complete lack of best practice standards when it comes to compliance with analytics or search engines. Whats more, often service requests to correct problems, when they do (often) arise, can go weeks and even months without resolution. 

For many years now, Wikimotive's general recommendation to newly onboarded clients is a change in website provider or we strongly recommend the need to pay for a non-compliant website built on a Wordpress platform. As a digital marketing company built on the foundation of SEO, this is almost always an essential move for dealers. Think of how flawed a business model it is to have to tell a potential client that they have to spend more money with someone else before they even consider spending money with you. Surely, no one would make such a recommendation unless there were a substantial need. And we are not alone in this thinking. Many dealers (maybe even yours) routinely have more than one website. Worst of all, most dealers in the know have no faith that this will change any time soon. But, what if it did change? What if CDK didn't suck?

Recently, I met with Chris Cunningham, product manager, earned media, of CDK Global. Unlike the decade and half I have experienced with CDK prior to this meeting, I found Chris to be not just competent, but incredibly impressive. Having just had a terrible meeting with CDK the week prior with one of our clients, I expected the meeting to be another veiled PR stunt. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Both myself and my chief digital office challenged Chris with a laundry list of highly technical issues which we believe make CDK a terrible choice for dealers. Chris didn't just have an understanding of the issues we were covering, he shared many action plans already in the works that address many of our concerns. More importantly, he shared his understanding of why the issues we were pointing to were so critical for dealers. 

Now don't misunderstand me. One exceptional employee at a company with an $8.7 billion market cap cannot effect change in an organization. But the fact that he exists and that others like him surely exist combined with the enormous resources a company like CDK can bring to bear once a course is set is more than just a little encouraging. Time will tell. We're committed to keeping an open mind to work with all vendors in this space toward improvement for the benefit of the dealer body. But this poses some obvious questions... What would it mean for other vendors in this space if CDK went from one of the worst in class vendors to one of the best in class vendors in a 2 year period? How many dealers have multiple websites now? What would it mean to dealers to reclaim advertising money on extra websites that would no longer be needed and what would it mean to the dealer community if they could actually rely on their OEM recommended site not because they have to have one, but because it quickly became the benchmark against which all other providers are measured?

Again, its really important to stress that CDK is nowhere near this place... yet. But what if they were? Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you think CDK could make such a big pivot? If you have a second website, how would you reallocate spend if you didn't need it? Do you think CDK should invest the time and effort in creating a product that follows Google's best practices? What else does CDK need to do to win you over?