DriverSide.com Aims for Car Owner's Market

DriverSide.com, created by Trevor Traina in 2007, is a interactive website that addresses one of the largest markets in the world: car owners. The website acts as a median between car owners and car dealerships and repair shops by reminding the car owners of maintenance and other activities of that nature. The website also provides a support line which enables car owners to ask questions to a mechanic. Although the automotive industry has been increasing risky to invest in, DriverSide.com has been expanding at a impressive rate. With five hundred dealerships and repair shops and 1.9 million car owners registered, the website has proven to be a seriously attractive investment. The website has cleverly offered membership to car owner's for free, and only charges dealerships and repair shops up to $895 a month. With such a low cost to the member automotive businesses, the decision to join the website is obvious. In addition, by providing car owner's with a free membership, the prospective client pool for the repair shops and dealerships can only increase.

The genius of DriverSide.com is massive market the website almost exclusively addresses. The relationship between car owners and automotive businesses previously was limited to literal negotiations and exchanges between the respective parties. Now, the car owners have a tool that will remind them of maintenance, estimate potential auto repair costs, and provide ways to diagnose potential problems without the user having to leave their home. It is no secret that Americans especially appreciate convenience. A website that manages a car owner's dealings with dealerships and repair shops is almost promised to succeed. With the success of websites that manage a user's taxes, schedules, and even laundry, automotive maintenance was the next logical step.

Aside from the innovation regarding user convenience, DriverSide.com also has the potential to expand to other industries. The article mentions that DriverSide.com is partnering up with insurance corporations such as Geico. DriverSide.com has the information that insurance corporations desire. In collaboration with DriverSide.com, insurance agencies would know what customers are having problems with what car models, the recent fluctuations in repair price trends, how customers are dealing with different issues, etc. Insurance agencies would adjust rates based on a car owner's service activity, dealership preferences, and so on. These agencies could even speculate on the customer's driving tendencies based on the information provided by DriverSide.com. For instance, a customer who has replaced their brake pads five times within a six month time span maybe be driving a bit too fast. Insurance companies are not going to be able to handle all the information thrown at them if the website becomes a sensation in the Facebook manner.

This information regarding customer - automotive business behavior also would be valuable to marketing firms. Marketers could use the customer activity history to design customized advertisements through DriverSide.com for a price to automotive businesses. With ads that are more relevant to the users, sales because of those ads would increase. All of these prospective financial transactions would result from DriveSide.com. This website has the potential to give the domestic automotive industry a kickstart, or at least stabilize the auto insurance industry.