Elance Blog

Meet Ariel Tehrani, Elance buyer and winner in the Best Design category of the Best Websites on Elance Recognition Program. I caught up with Ariel to learn more about his company, Falcon Hyundai, and the award-winning design of the Falcon Hyundai website.



Elance: Why is it important for Falcon Hyundai to have a professionally-designed website?

Ariel: As the owner of a dealership, I have access to a number of resources that do template dealership websites. However, I felt that all of those templates were overused, and I did not want a “cookie-cutter” website.

What I really wanted was a fresh design -- something that other dealerships don’t typically do. So I used Elance to find and hire providers who could create and design a great looking website for my dealership.

Elance: What is special about the Falcon Hyundai website?

Ariel: Most automobile dealership websites still operate like brick-and-mortar dealerships: they ask the website customer to look at various models, click on a form and fill out their contact information and the model they are looking at. They may be able to see the MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price), but not the final price worked out by a dealer. And once they submit their form, they have to wait hours or the next day for a salesperson from the dealership to call them, and during the call, works out the dealer’s price.

In this model, a dealer loses potential clients by having to play phone and email tag.

I wanted to take this traditional model and go to the next level. My idea for the Falcon Hyundai website was to be the Dell of automobile dealership websites – build to order and purchase cars. I wanted my website customers to be able to “build” their own car in terms of model and options, get accurate pricing and purchase the vehicle – all from the Falcon Hyundai dealership website.

To enable this, I needed expertise in unique and eye-catching front-end design as well as back-end functionality – expertise that I did not have in-house in my dealership.

I am very pleased to say I found exactly what I needed with go2nplay for the front-end Flash website design and Bestplace for the complex back-end functionality.

But I’m not done yet. The next phase of the website will be to integrate automobile financing and payments.

Elance: How is your web business going?

Ariel: We completed and launched the website at the end of 2007. I’ve gotten great feedback from colleagues and customers. I’m now in the process of reviewing and hiring Elance providers with SEO expertise to begin marketing my website.