I’ve been using a lot of time over these last few weeks of 2012 and these first days of 2013 to take a break from our regular focus and spend time looking at what we do with our current Dealer web properties to see how they can be improved and what changes we can implement to make our content more accessible.

Many of the ideas that get implemented are the result of direct (and indirect) feedback we receive from the thousands of dealers and managers that read our content every day, and you’ll often find us tinkering with the site in the wee-hours of the morning so you can wake up to an improved Dealer experience. Hopefully this blog will provide you ongoing insight into what we’re working on at Dealer Communications in our ongoing quest to deliver a better experience.

This Week:

• Content Delivery: We gave the Dealer Magazine server a little Christmas gift and doubled the ram. One of the things we’ve monitored over the past year are concurrent users, and with the growth of on-demand content and more educational offerings we’re planning for in 2013, we needed a little boost. We’re complimenting the ram upgrade with a gradual move towards using our CDN (Content Delivery Network) more so content is delivered to your browser as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• Google+: Starting today, we’ve added a new social sharing option to posts… G+. Now, you can +1 your favorite posts in addition to the Twitter, Facebook, and Email sharing options we already offered.
• A Pixel Here, a Pixel There:  Although not as noticeable, we’ve improved the readability of the department pages by shifting the entire site up a few pixels. We also made a few minor tweaks around the framing that’s used when Dealer-Communications.com is used on the iPad. Enjoy it Retina users!
• Google Currents: Our Google Currents feed is alive and well, but even that experience will be improving in the weeks to come. Thanks to the long-overdue Google update to the Current’s app, we’ll be reorganizing the content delivered to Google Currents to focus first on the most popular stories as judged by our web traffic. With the limited navigation available on mobile devices and tablets, these planned changes will make reading Dealer Magazine on Google Currents (now for iPad too!) both more attractive, and more efficient.
• Related Posts: If you’re a regular reader of the site, you’ll notice that “Related Posts” disappeared at the bottom of articles. This removal is only temporary and related posts will return improved later this week. *Related Posts are back and with improved relationship matching!

As always, the best suggestions come from our readers and users.  If you want to see something improved on any of the Dealer properties, send me a note!