Look at 50 franchise dealer websites in a row. Same hero carousel. Same three CTAs in the same spots. Same “Explore Inventory” button. Same layout on the vehicle detail page. Different logos.
Nobody planned this. It’s what platform economics produces.
Templates as the business model
Franchise vendors serve thousands of stores. They can’t afford to build a custom site per dealer, so they sell templates — you pick from six or twelve, plug in your logo, done. The template constraints get tighter every year because every new feature has to work across every install.
Marketplace-tied builders (CarsForSale, DealerCarSearch) sell one template. That’s the business model. One template, one deployment, everyone gets the same house — you rent the room.
Homogeneity is a training program
Both economics push toward homogeneity. Homogeneity pushes shoppers toward price comparison. Price comparison pushes toward whoever’s cheapest in your market.
If your site looks and feels indistinguishable from your five closest competitors, the shopper is being trained to pick on price. That is a bad training program for a dealer whose margin is not built on being the cheapest.
Design as identity, not decoration
The alternative is not a “custom” site — those are expensive because the vendor has to hand-build one — but a design line: a real starting-point aesthetic that reads as one dealership’s brand, not one vendor’s template. Different type, different rhythm, different photography treatment, different content structure. A shopper on your site should be able to tell it’s yours even with the logo covered up.
The economics we built Zoomshop around: five distinct design lines, each opinionated enough that a shopper notices, priced so that a real independent dealer can afford one. Custom on top of that if you want it. The point is your site should look like YOU. Not like whoever wholesales it to you.