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Auto Town: Online Shopping Vehicle

When you approach Auto Town (www.autotown.com) on the information superhighway, the first thing you hit is a bunch of speed-limit signs informing you that you can choose your own limits through town. The choices range from a "text only" visit (Granny's Studebaker), to a graphics version (flashy convertible), to "Way Fast: All We Got" (late-model sports car). If you punch the pedal to the metal and race into Town Square, you'll see that this quaint little town packs a worldwide wallop.

Auto Town is an auto buyer's dream. It offers new- and used-car-search capabilities, a dealer-quote service, automotive job postings, and many other online features. Oracle Web Application Server and an Oracle database give the site a fast, flexible, and highly scalable system for managing the rapid growth of Auto Town's business, while powerful Oracle search capabilities give visitors access to the car-buying information they need.

Where's the guy with the skinny mustache and the white leather shoes? "Online auto shopping is making it easier than ever to browse car lots without a salesman breathing down your neck," answers Alan Heckman, Auto Town's Webmaster. "We give dealers a simple way to do business on the Internet, and we give consumers a tremendous research and shopping experience. They can search for a particular make or model of car in a given price range without ever leaving the comfort of their home. As more dealers join us, our database grows and our services become increasingly more valuable."

Auto Town currently has about 100 car dealerships on board and is expanding rapidly. "A lot of dealerships want to come online, but they don't have expertise on the computer side," Heckman adds. "We step in with the technical know-how to get them running."

Fast Oracle Engine

The power behind Auto Town is a sophisticated Oracle-based search engine that lets car shoppers define their own searches. A search can be inclusive or limited by region, budget, make and model, or mileage or age of the vehicle. The search engine benefits from Oracle universal data server's ability to handle bit-mapped indexing and dynamic SQL. "When users shop for a car, they query the Oracle database directly," says Heckman.

Auto Town is powered by a Silicon Graphics Challenge S server with a 9-gigabyte database that is growing daily. Heckman uses an SGI workstation to develop and manage the database and the site. Dealers that advertise there use their own personal computers and ultimately may use network computers to access the Auto Town system for frequent updates.

"At first, dealers had concerns about the impact the Internet would have on their business," says Auto Town's president, Jerry Daniels. "In fact, the Internet has proven to be the perfect advertising medium, due to the consumers' inherent fear of the car-buying process. Consumers can research auto purchases without being intimidated. Once they do go to a physical car dealership, they arrive with a high level of confidence."

Advertising Trends

The auto industry spends billions of dollars every year on the traditional methods of advertising: in newspapers, magazines, and television. It's a numbers game: If millions of people see the ad, some are bound to be interested. But Internet advertising allows merchants to be much more selective.

"The emphasis is shifting from mass advertising, where you push a product at the general public, to pulling people in toward the products in which they have already demonstrated interest," says Daniels.

Meanwhile, the superior tracking capabilities of the Internet provide new insight into the constantly changing interests and preferences of the buying public. Perhaps more important, the Internet can generate an immediate response.

"TV gets your name out and builds brand equity, but it's often difficult for consumers to respond," Daniels adds. "The Web is an interactive medium. You not only get your message across but you also enable consumers to take immediate action."

In the arena of electronic commerce, the buying process becomes a much more educated, informed, and civilized affair. Sites such as Auto Town are making it easier for people to get exactly the facts they want.

"As the dealers get more interested, they also want more features," Heckman explains. "We are now working on including videos that will allow customers to view the car from all angles and take a peek inside. The multimedia capabilities of Oracle universal data server and Oracle Video Server are very interesting to us."

Oracle Video Server provides a turnkey platform for integrating full-motion video into business applications. By delivering integrated support for both relational and multimedia information, it opens up opportunities for a new generation of applications that combine many types of data.

Auto Town's Heckman believes that multimedia represents the next wave on the Web. "Sitting at your computer, you'll soon Ôtry on' clothes in your own size and see how they look on you. You'll tour your holiday hotel and check the balcony view. And you'll see how your new car will look from the driver's seat."

Auto Town is also investigating Oracle Internet Commerce Server for constructing a boutique through which Web users can purchase auto accessories such as floor mats, alarms, and T-shirts. "From what we have seen, ICS can automate a lot of what we want to do," Heckman says. "It has the payment capabilities, the ability to figure taxes, and a lot of other valuable functions that would take a lot of our time to develop from scratch. Oracle keeps coming up with software tools that make electronic commerce that much more exciting."