Company Overview
Cars.com is a premier online automotive marketplace that connects car buyers and sellers. Established in 1998, it offers a vast inventory of new and used vehicles, along with expert reviews and detailed specifications to aid informed decision-making.
The platform provides dealerships with advertising solutions and lead generation services, enhancing their sales efforts. Committed to transparency and customer satisfaction, Cars.com continually innovates its technology and services to meet the evolving needs of consumers and dealers, ensuring a seamless car buying experience.
Project Overview
Go Between joined the Cars.com team during a critical phase of their complete technology stack modernization initiative. The project, which had launched six months prior to our engagement, involved rebuilding the core systems that powered their entire business. This strategic initiative aimed to fully transform and modernize Cars.com's technology infrastructure, including a complete rearchitecting and replatforming of their web application, migrating to an Elixir-based system, rebuilding the data model from scratch, and redesigning all user interfaces.
Our team quickly adapted to the Phoenix framework and Elixir ecosystem, contributing meaningfully from day one. The project utilized Basecamp and the Shape Up software development process for project management. Initially serving as individual contributors to fully understand the technology and project scope, our role evolved to include technical leadership responsibilities, facilitating team execution, progress reporting, and cross-team coordination.
Key Project Contributions
Email Marketing Integration
We integrated the new platform with Iterable, Cars.com's email marketing system, to manage their marketing templates and campaigns. Our team designed and implemented a facade that simplified the platform's interface with Iterable, handling operations such as contact creation and updates. We developed a user preference management system allowing users to control their marketing email settings, supporting both registered users and newsletter subscribers.
Site Activity Tracking
Working with Cars.com's data and analytics teams, we implemented comprehensive site activity tracking using the Adobe suite. Our solution integrated Adobe Launch tag management and established consistent patterns for developers to annotate pages and user events with appropriate tracking information. We configured standardized rules in Adobe Launch to process these events and relay them to Adobe Analytics, significantly improving upon the legacy system's hard-coded approach.
Leads Partnership Integrations
We played a crucial role in implementing lead management functionality, a primary revenue source for Cars.com. This involved integrating the platform with lead delivery APIs for four major dealership groups. Our team employed a strategy pattern to handle the unique requirements of each API while maintaining a consistent lead processing workflow.
Leads System Completion
In the final pre-launch cycle, we refined all aspects of the leads functionality. This included:
- Integrating with Cars.com's Salesforce account for real-time dealer account updates
- Implementing Experian's FraudNet service for lead validation
- Adding consumer confirmation email functionality
- Developing comprehensive monitoring through Splunk dashboards
While the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily paused the project, Go Between returned to help complete the platform launch once the auto industry stabilized. We assisted in completing user management and engagement features, and participated in the overall launch, validation, and stabilization of the new platform.
Process Maturation
Throughout the engagement, we supported Cars.com's transition to more mature and consistent engineering processes, including:
- Adoption of Jira for work tracking and management
- Standardization of roadmap, epic, and ticket structures
- Implementation of consistent project management methodologies
CreditIQ Integration
We led the integration of CreditIQ, a recently acquired financing platform, into the Cars.com website. Our approach included:
- Implementing an iframe-based integration for immediate value delivery
- Enabling customers to explore financing options directly on vehicle pages
- Developing API integrations for application management features
- Creating email notification systems for application updates
The team methodically improved the financing process through A/B testing managed in Adobe Target, systematically increasing customer engagement and loan approval rates. This feature has become a significant value driver for the organization and continues to be an area of growth and opportunity within the platform.