Turning Fragmented Sites Into Dealer Infrastructure: A Governed Content Platform for CarGurus
CarGurus’ dealer-facing digital presence had grown into a fragmented collection of disconnected properties — and dealer fragmentation isn’t a marketing problem when dealer subscriptions are the revenue model. It’s a retention problem on the business’s primary revenue stream. We diagnosed an operating-model problem that manifested through websites, and built the infrastructure to protect and grow the dealer relationship at the root.
The work
The Challenge: Digital Debt on the Business’s Primary Revenue Stream
CarGurus’ dealer subscriptions pay for the business, and the dealer relationship is mediated almost entirely through digital — across multiple WordPress properties, a gated resource center, a product microsite and a dashboard, each grown by different teams under different assumptions. The Dealer Resource Center was bouncing at 61.57%, Insights topped 80%, most visits ended inside ten seconds, and nearly 15% of dealers said the disjointed experience was why they could not find what they needed. That is not a usability problem. It is a subscription business undermining the perceived value of what its customers are paying for.
The Strategy: One Governed Content System, Not Another Redesign
Reframed the engagement before any architecture work: treat the dealer experience as an integrated subscription product rather than as a collection of marketing sites to be redesigned.
- Governance before redesign. Shared standards across properties, because without a layer that makes the experience coherent, no amount of individual site quality will.
- Editorial independence for the marketing team. Publishing that does not route through engineering, so retention work can be continuous rather than budgeted.
- Shared measurement. Dealer behavior connected across properties, so investment in the relationship can be argued from data rather than instinct.
- Architecture that reflects the dealer. Discovery found dealers organize by workflow and task where the old properties mirrored the org chart — so the consolidated portal is structured around the work a dealer came to do.
The Outcomes: Three Sites Became One, and Marketing Got the Keys
The diagnosis became a system. Three dealer sites consolidated into one governed Contentful destination, the marketing team publishing and governing content with no engineering in the loop, one analytics framework reading the dealer journey end to end, and an accessibility program that brought five properties toward WCAG 2.1 and a population of assistive-technology users onto the platform at all.
- Growth | Dealer touchpoints reframed from marketing surfaces to subscription product, then rebuilt as one | Three sites consolidated into a single governed destination, localized for Canada
- Engagement | Editorial independence for the marketing team, with retention work continuous rather than queued | One analytics framework where the baseline had been 61.57% bounce and ten-second visits
The detail
Why it mattered
- The dealer experience is the product, not the marketing for it. The consumer marketplace is the visible product; dealer subscriptions are the business. Dealers pay for access to shopper data, market intelligence, product tools and support, and that relationship is mediated almost entirely through digital. When the dealer experience is what is being bought, its quality is a retention question rather than a design one.
- The properties had grown separately and read as one broken thing. Multiple WordPress sites, a gated resource center, a product microsite, a dealer dashboard — each built or extended by different teams at different times under different assumptions, each with its own workflow, analytics and content standards. Together they were CarGurus’ face to its paying customers.
- The friction was measured, and it was constant. The Dealer Resource Center ran a 61.57% bounce rate and the Insights pages topped 80%. The majority of visitors spent fewer than ten seconds on the site. Nearly 15% of dealers reported struggling to find information, naming the disjointed experience as the reason.
- Every friction point is a quiet question about subscription value. A consumer marketplace can get away with a fragmented support site because the consumer is not paying for it. A subscription business cannot, because its customers are continuously evaluating whether what they are paying for is working. Accumulate enough small hunts through scattered content and dealers start asking the larger question.
Why a redesign would have missed it
- The instinct is to rebuild the worst-performing property. That work generates activity and visible deliverables. It does not address why dealers were getting frustrated or finding less value in their subscriptions, because the fragmentation was a symptom of how the properties were governed rather than of how they looked.
- No content governance model. Without shared standards, each property developed its own editorial process, taxonomy and conventions. Even well-maintained individual sites would never add up to a coherent experience, because no layer existed to make them one. Dealers read institutional fragmentation as vendor unreliability.
- No editorial independence for the marketing team. The B2B marketing team could not publish or update without engineering support. The bottleneck did not only slow campaigns; it decided what the team could consider at all, and retention work that should have been continuous quietly fell out of consideration because the system could not support it.
- No shared measurement. Without centralized analytics, leadership could not connect dealer behavior across properties — where dealers dropped off, which content drove subscription value, where investment would improve retention. Decisions about the primary revenue relationship were being made on partial data.
- Any single fix would have reproduced the problem. Fixing publishing without governance produces fast publishing of inconsistent content. Fixing governance without editorial independence produces policies the team cannot operationalize. Fixing analytics without unification produces better measurement of a still-broken experience. The three were one system.
The build
- Discovery that read the dealer, not the org chart. Stakeholder interviews across sales, support, UX and marketing, a full content audit, heatmap analysis and a card sort. The critical finding: dealers organize information around their workflows and tasks, while the existing architecture reflected CarGurus’ internal team structures. The research also showed where content investment would matter — 38.78% of dealers very interested in digital marketing best practices, 36.12% in automotive marketing best practices, both categories scattered across the fragmented properties.
- Three sites became one governed destination. The Dealer Resource Center, the Dealer Account Request page and the product microsite consolidated into a single Contentful-based portal: articles, events, products, authors and reusable design components in one documented, governed content model, with localization for the Canadian market.
- One destination, one analytics framework. For the first time, dealer engagement is measurable across the whole content ecosystem as one journey rather than property by property — and every internal channel points to the same URL, reinforcing the hub over time.
- Accessibility as a repeatable process, not a one-time fix. Two phases: contrast failures, empty labels and keyboard gaps remediated on the existing properties first, then a post-launch program across the Contentful sites toward WCAG 2.1 — focus rings on dropdown menus, 4.5:1 contrast in headers, forms and FAQ blocks, alt text, and static chart images converted to accessible HTML. Five properties, and a compliance process designed to scale.
What changed
- The marketing team got the keys. Publishing, updating and governing content independently, removing the bottleneck that had constrained execution for years.
- Dealers got one front door. A single, consistent destination for products, services, research and account access — and where the pre-consolidation data showed bounce above 61% and most visits under ten seconds, the unified hub is the structural foundation for retaining and re-engaging that audience.
- Leadership got one picture. Centralized analytics replaced fragmented multi-site tracking: a shared basis for decisions about content investment, product positioning and engagement.
- Dealers on assistive technology got the platform at all. The accessibility program extended the portal to a population the previous architecture had simply excluded.
B2B content platform questions
How do you consolidate multiple B2B websites into one?
Diagnose before consolidating — the fragmentation is usually a symptom. CarGurus’ three dealer-facing sites were consolidated into a single governed destination on Contentful, with articles, events, products, authors and reusable design components in one documented content model, localization for the Canadian market, and full editorial control for the marketing team with no engineering dependency.
What is a content governance model?
The shared standards that make separate properties one experience: a documented content model, one editorial process and one taxonomy. Without that layer, each property develops its own conventions and even well-maintained sites never add up — and fixing publishing, governance or analytics alone reproduces the same problem on a new platform, because the three are one system.
How should a customer portal’s information architecture be organized?
Around the customer’s workflows, not the vendor’s org chart. CarGurus’ discovery — stakeholder interviews, a content audit, heatmap analysis and a card sort — found dealers organize information by task, while the existing architecture reflected internal team structures. The new architecture reflects the dealer.
Why does a marketing team need editorial independence?
Because a publishing bottleneck decides strategy silently. CarGurus’ B2B marketing team could not publish or update without engineering support, so campaigns queued behind engineering capacity and retention work that should have been continuous quietly fell out of consideration. On the consolidated platform, the team publishes, updates and governs content independently.
What are the benefits of B2B website consolidation?
For the CarGurus dealer platform by Pare & Co: three sites became one governed destination, the marketing team gained editorial independence, centralized analytics replaced fragmented multi-site tracking, and a two-phase accessibility program brought five properties toward WCAG 2.1 — extending the platform to dealers using assistive technology. The pre-consolidation baseline — 61.57% bounce, most visits under ten seconds — is the number the record keeps; the unified hub is the structural foundation built to change it.
Client leadership
Doug Sisko
Doug Sisko works on customer acquisition and the digital barriers in front of it. He has led platform work for companies that sell through a dealer network.