ThriftyCarSales.com Traffic Quadruples With Site Upgrade

By: Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group | 0 Shares 81 Reads

TULSA, Okla., March 25 // PRNewswire-FirstCall // -- Thrifty Car Sales, a subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE: DTG), has seen significant increases in traffic -- in fact, it's nearly quadrupled -- since enhancements were made to its ThriftyCarSales.com website. Launched Dec. 14, 2007, the newly-configured site has seen explosive growth, with more than 10 million hits from Jan. 1 through March 21, 2008.

"These numbers exceed our early expectations and will continue to grow," said Lee Goldey, Manager, Marketing and Advertising for Thrifty Car Sales. "Due to a new open architecture that has allowed 'spidering' and improvements to our search engine optimization efforts, we are seeing growth in first-time visitors, with an average stay of seven-and-a-half minutes on the site. In the first three months, we have nearly quadrupled our old traffic numbers. The number of leads generated by the website to our national network of franchised dealers has tripled. This is an absolute home run for ThriftyCarSales.com and our dealers."

The new website, introduced last December, greatly enhances customers' car-shopping experience across its network of 39 U.S. dealerships. Some of the changes include:

A new user interface and technology designed by CarTHINK, improving the virtual buying experience for dealers and customers;
Web optimization using frameless website architecture that enables search engines to find and display relevant content to consumers and increase traffic volume;
Improved content management tools for Thrifty Car Sales dealers enabling them to better manage their online inventory of vehicles;
New merchandising features like "Find A Vehicle" that allows consumers to search for a specific make or model nationwide;
Search capability up to four weeks: Consumers can save their vehicle search criteria for up to four weeks and be notified electronically when Thrifty Car Sales has sourced a vehicle matching their specifications;
Expanded selection and availability of vehicles. The new site integrates "off-fleet" rental vehicles from Thrifty Car Rental and Dollar Rent A Car. A full inventory of these off-fleet vehicles is displayed on the "National Specials" page; and
"Click for a call" feature: When searching Thrifty Car Sales' nationwide inventory, customers may click on this icon to get a call from a customer service specialist who can set an appointment with a local dealership.

"Customer online behavior has changed dramatically when shopping for vehicles on the Web," said Goldey. "The old model involved consumers searching largely in their own neighborhood. We have embraced the new model where consumers are first interested in the make/model and features of a vehicle and geographic location is less important."

The new version of ThriftyCarSales.com was created by CarTHINK, LLC, a privately-held company that provides full-service Internet marketing, software and services to hundreds of franchise and independent dealers across the country. CarTHINK is a data partner with Reynolds & Reynolds, an eBay Motors/eBay Local certified solutions provider and has data distribution agreements with hundreds of online classified destinations such as Autotrader.com and Cars.com. For more information on CarTHINK, visit http://www.CarTHINK.com.

About Thrifty Car Sales

Thrifty Car Sales is a subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE: DTG), a Fortune 1000 Company headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Thrifty Car Sales, with 39 locations, franchises retail used car sales dealerships throughout the United States. Dealerships offer a wide range of late model, low mileage vehicles. Thrifty Certified(R) vehicles pass extensive inspection and are backed by a limited warranty. Thrifty Car Sales was founded in 1999.

SOURCE: Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc.

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