Case study · Automotive · Tools & programmatic SEO
ListYourCar Don't take the first offer. Make them bid.
A Canadian car-selling tool: a free valuation, a dealer-matching tool built on 4,400+ real dealerships, and a reserve-auction prototype.
01 — The brief
The problem it solves
Every trade-in conversation starts with the dealer knowing more than the seller does. The brief was to flip that: give owners the number before anyone makes them an offer, then put dealers in competition.
The marketplace is a working prototype — auction lots are clearly labelled samples with simulated bidding — while the valuation and dealer tools are fully usable today.
02 — What we built
Features that do real work.
Smart Estimate
Three figures — trade-in, auction range and private-sale ceiling — with every factor behind them shown: depreciation, distance, body-type demand and season.
Get dealers bidding
Ranks nearby dealers and drafts the message; the seller sends it from their own email.
Find buyers map
Every dealer grouped by postal district on a self-hosted map that never claims more precision than the data holds.
Skip the dealer
A private listing that lives entirely in its link — nothing stored on a server.
Dealer comparisons
Head-to-head pages that can end in a split decision — sell to one dealer, buy from another — and explain the trade-in tax saving.
03 — How it's put together
Structure
Templated pages per metro, per dealer pair, per make and model, and per city, with provincial paperwork notes on the city pages.
Under the hood
- Plain static HTML and JavaScript with versioned assets
- Schema: AutoDealer with address, coordinates and opening hours; ItemList, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList
- Dealer pages report real research, e.g. which dealers say outright that they buy cars from the public
Details that matter
- Sample auction lots are labelled as samples, on purpose
- The private listing puts the whole ad in the URL — zero server storage
- Comparison pages explain the tax maths most sellers miss
Prove the demand side before building the marketplace: the tools sellers want work today, and the auction is a clearly labelled prototype until there are dealers to bid.
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