Building a professional car dealership website isn’t easy. However, there are a few steps that you can take to simplify the process and increase the chances of success for your project.

One of those steps it to use an online publishing platform that makes managing your website and its content more straightforward. WordPress is a great example of such a platform and it’s a popular choice that powers 25% of all websites online today. The other important part of increasing your success rate is to choose a high-quality theme or template.

This theme or template will take most of the work out of building a car dealership website. If you choose the right one, it will deliver a professional design, backed up with a solid set of useful features.

In this article, we will be reviewing the AutoPro Car Dealer WordPress Theme. We’ll be looking at the design of the theme, as well as its features, and how easy it is to use. By the end of this review, you will know whether this is the right theme for your business and your online car dealer website.

AutoPro Car Dealer WordPress theme aims to provide you with all the features and functionality you need to build a car dealership website. Not only that but all of these features are wrapped up in a design that will give your website a professional and trustworthy appearance.

Once you’ve setup up your new car dealership website, you’ll be able to attract new customers with your site’s professional design. One those visitors arrive at your site, you can then promote your inventory in an easily searchable format to generate more sales.

That’s the plan anyway. So let’s take a look and see how this theme lives up to its objectives. We’ll start out by digging into the features of this car dealership theme, before taking it for a test drive on a fresh installation of WordPress.

AutoPro Theme Car Dealer Specific Features

The team behind the AutoPro theme claim to have carried out extensive research of the car dealership industry. Especially investigating how those in this industry promote their businesses online. The aim of this research was to establish exactly what a good car dealership website should include.

After concluding their research, the JWSThemes team set about adding all those essential features to their AutoPro theme. The result is that you should have access to all the tools you need to build a successful car dealership website, without having to rely on any third party plugins or tools.

The AutoPro theme does in fact, include some third party plugins in the package. However, these plugins have been handpicked by the development team, saving you from having to go out and find the right tools yourself.

Here are some of the best car dealer specific features on offer from the AutoPro theme:

Adding vehicles to your website with WordPress and the AutoPro theme is about as straightforward as it gets. Thanks to the enhanced inventory manager, you can add the main vehicle description, and then input all the necessary supporting information for each vehicle.

Thanks to the use of WordPress custom post types, your inventory content is kept separate from the other types of content on your website. This also means that the screen for adding new inventory includes a custom form. The form contains all the fields needed to store and publish the details for each vehicle.

These additional form fields include the technical features: Details, Specifications, Exterior, Interior, HighLight, Performance, Safety, Convenience, Car Color, Form Test Drive, Gallery, Download brochures, and options of the car. You can also input seller information, such as where they are located, and their contact details. You also have the option of uploading a PDF brochure to the listing. This is handy for giving your potential customers a resource they can download and take away.

Advanced Inventory Search and Filter Tool

Having a large, well-defined inventory is all well and good. However, if your visitors can’t find what they are looking for, then you aren’t going to make many sales from your website.

Thankfully, the AutoPro theme includes a powerful inventory search and filtering tool. This allows users to set as many filters as they need, helping them to find exactly what they are looking for.

Thanks to the power of Ajax, this filtering tool doesn’t require any extra page loads. Simply enter the search keyword and then filter the results as needed. The results are then updated, instantly on the same page.

Finance Calculator

The AutoPro car dealer theme includes a custom finance calculator tool. This useful feature gives your shoppers an easy way to see whether they can afford a certain vehicle that you have listed, and if so, on what terms.

Depending on your preferences, each listing on your website can include this financial calculator. This handy feature saves your visitors the trouble of going elsewhere to see how affordable a vehicle they are interested in is.

Vehicle Comparison Tool

Buying a vehicle can be difficult. With so many different variables to consider when making a decision, even between cars of the same make and model, it can be hard to know what the right option is.

To help overcome this problem, the AutoPro theme includes an easy to use listings comparison tool. Once the visitor has performed a search or while they are browsing your inventory, they have the option of selecting multiple vehicles to compare.

As each listing on your website should include the same sort of information, all of which is stored in custom fields, it makes comparing the features of the different vehicles very straightforward.

It’s great to see this feature included in the theme. The fact that you can enable it for your potential customers, without any extra effort on your part is even better.

Ecommerce Support

Thanks to the support for the leading WooCommerce eCommerce toolkit, adding an online store to your website is very straightforward. The WooCommerce plugin is actually included in the theme package. However, adding an online shop to your website is entirely optional.

If you do decide to enable this feature, you can easily start listing products for sale from your website. This could include the actual vehicles themselves, or supporting products such as car care items and driving accessories.

WooCommerce can be extended with Yith Plugins. This means there really is no limit to the number of ways you can offer services and products from your website.

General WordPress Theme Feature List

As well as a great selection of car dealer focused features, AutoPro isn’t lacking in the more general features every good website needs. Here are some of the highlights from the long list of features that can be found in this theme.

Drag and Drop Page Builder Tool

AutoPro Car Dealer with the commercial Visual Composer plugin. This is one of the most popular premium plugins for WordPress. With Visual Composer enabled on your site, you get access to a professional drag and drop page builder tool.

This means you now have an advanced visual interface for creating custom page layouts, which just wouldn’t be possible with WordPress alone. Furthermore, you can use Visual Composer to customize any of the page templates included with the AutoPro theme – again without the need to edit any code.

While the inclusion of the Visual Composer plugin will save you $34, its presence offers much more value than that.

Revolution Slider Tool

When you check out the AutoPro theme demo, you will notice a number of slideshows in use. These slideshows have been created with the commercial Revolution Slider plugin, which is included in the theme package. Again, the inclusion of this commercial plugin will save you $19. However, more importantly, you can now easily edit any of the included sliders or start creating your own animated slideshows.

08 Predefined Color Skins

While you can easily customize almost any aspect of this theme, thanks to the detailed control panel and the drag and drop page builder tool, most users will be happy with the prebuilt demo version.

If you don’t want to start making large changes to the theme, but still want to give your website a more personalized look, choosing from one of the five predefined color schemes should suffice.

27 Custom Shortcodes

When it comes to adding content to your site, you’ll be pleased to know this theme includes 27 custom shortcodes. These shortcodes can be used to insert a range of useful page elements into your content, all at the touch of a button.

Examples of these shortcodes include calls to actions, buttons, forms, Google Maps, testimonials, special offers, icons and much more. As well as the 27 custom shortcodes, you also get access to all of the default shortcode elements found in Visual Composer.

Responsive and Retina Ready

More and more internet users are accessing websites on their mobile devices. With this in mind, it’s vital that your car dealership website should be easily accessible on smartphones and tablets. Whether you want to help your target audience search for a new car on their mobile device, or simply find the way to your dealership from their smartphone, the AutoPro theme has you covered.

Not only is the design and layout of the AutoPro theme mobile responsive, it’s also retina ready. This means your website and more importantly, its content, will be able to take advantage of the latest high-resolution displays.

If you want the photos of your inventory to really pop on these high-end monitors, this is one feature you will be pleased to see.

One-click Demo Content Installer

If you view the online demo version of the AutoPro theme, you will notice that it’s essentially a fully built car dealer website. As you browse through the pages, you will see that there is a lot of content that is required to build a professional and useful online car dealership.

Therefore, if you want to build a similar website for your own business, you might be wondering how difficult and time-consuming this is going to be. Thankfully, the AutoPro theme includes a very straightforward content import tool. In just a few clicks, you can go from a bare bones WordPress installation to a fully populated car dealership site.

Of course, you will still have to add your own content and inventory. However, instead of starting from a blank slate, you can simply edit the contents of the prebuilt pages and listings to create your site.

Other Features

The above are some of the main highlights. However, here are a few other features you may be interested in:

  • Contact Form 7 plugin – this theme includes Contact Form 7 plugin which allows you to manage all your contact forms.
  • Boxed or full width layout – This can be set globally or even per page!
  • Built on Twitter Bootstrap – Autopro uses Twitter Bootstrap. This means that a range of shortcodes are automatically supported. For ease of use you can use the Visual Composer, Easy Bootstrap Shortcode or any other plugins to easily add visuals to your website.
  • Built with Less .css
  • Shortcode Support.
  • Demo content included!
  • Unlimited Color Options.
  • Moveable & Unlimited Sidebars – Move the sidebar to the left, the right, or hide it entirely for a full width page or post! (global or page/post specific).
  • Designed with HTML5 and CSS3.
  • Customizable Design & Code.
  • All installed Extensions are included.
  • Cross Browser Support.
  • Detailed Documentation Included.
  • Full Support.
  • + many more features.
  • More features coming soon.

How to Build a Car Dealership Website with AutoPro

When it comes to building a car dealer website with this theme, the process is surprisingly simple. After uploading the theme files to your WordPress website, and then activating AutoPro, you must install and activate the supporting plugins.

These are a mixture of free and commercial plugins and they can all be added to your site in just a few simple clicks.

Once these tasks have been taken care of, you can choose whether to import the demo content or not. Doing so is highly recommended. The one-click demo importer will setup the structure of your website and then populate it with sample data. You can then go in and edit the content to make it your own.

When it comes to customizing the site, you can use the included Visual Composer page builder plugin. The WordPress Live Customizer tool is also fully supported, allowing you to personalize your website through this visual editor and set of controls.

As mentioned, AutoPro makes use of WordPress custom post types. This means the different types of content you wish to publish on your site are stored in different post types. These include blog posts, vehicle listings, and eCommerce products.

After setting up the structure of your site or importing the demo content, you can then start adding your own and other personalized content to finish off your car dealer site.

AutoPro Theme Review Final Thoughts

The AUtoPro theme has a highly professional look and feel that will give your online car dealer website instant creditability and appeal.

The selection of features on offer will help you to list your inventory in style, while also making them easily searchable by your visitors. The vehicle compare tool is a great feature that will make life much easier for your visitors and hopefully lead to more sales.

If you need to build a car dealer website, the AutoPro Car Dealer WordPress theme takes much of the work off your hands and will help you to deliver a professional website in no time at all.

Extended Documentation & Intensive Support Service

Fear about difficulties whereas utilizing AutoPro? We guarantee that there’s adequate provide of supplies and dedicated support crew to offer you the very best quality service.