Dealership stock feeds: how to get your stock onto your website automatically
Connect the website to a dealership stock feed. Your DMS or portal account exports each car's details and photos as a file, usually XML, and the website reads it on a schedule, builds a page per car and removes sold cars. Social Agencies built this for Dart Motors, whose stock loads onto its site without anyone typing it in.
What is a dealer stock feed?
A dealer stock feed is a file your dealer management system or portal account publishes, listing every car in stock with its make, model, year, mileage, price and photo links.
Most dealer systems already produce a feed, because that is how stock reaches AutoTrader and Cars.co.za. The feed is usually XML: plain structured text a website can read without a person in the loop.
The website's job is to read that file on a timer, compare it with what is already on the site, add new cars, update changed prices and take sold cars down. Once that runs, the dealer loads a car once in the system they already use, and the website follows.
Can my DMS or portal account feed my website?
Usually yes: if your dealer system or portal account can send stock anywhere, it can normally send a copy of that feed to your website as well.
Start by asking your DMS provider or portal account manager for a feed export for your own website. Ask for the file format, how often it updates and whether photos come as links. That one email usually settles whether a feed is possible.
If no feed is available, the fallback is a simple stock screen in the website's back office, where a salesperson adds a car in a minute from a phone. It is slower than a feed, but still far better than editing web pages.
| Question | Typed by hand | Loaded from a feed |
|---|---|---|
| Who enters a new car? | A salesperson, on the website | Nobody extra; it comes from the DMS |
| When does a price change show? | When someone remembers | On the next feed run |
| What happens when a car sells? | It stays until someone deletes it | It comes off on a set rule |
| Are photos the same as the portals? | Only if uploaded twice | Yes, from the same source |
How fast should sold cars come off a dealership website?
Sold cars should come off on the next feed run, and the website and the portals should use the same rule for when a car counts as sold.
A sold car still showing online is the most common complaint about dealer sites. Get My Auto lists "sold cars staying on the site" among the problems independent dealers raise about their providers.
Some dealers like a short grace period, showing a car as sold for a day before it disappears. That is fine, as long as one rule decides it everywhere. If the website and the feed to the portals disagree, a buyer can enquire on a car that another channel already shows as gone.
What happens if the stock feed stops?
Without an alarm, nothing visibly happens: the site keeps showing yesterday's stock and prices until a buyer asks about a car that has already gone.
Feeds stop for dull reasons: a password changes, a provider moves a file, a server restarts. The website does not break, which is exactly why nobody notices. The stock just goes stale.
The fix is a freshness check. The website records when it last received a good feed and raises an alert if too much time passes. Dart Motors' site runs this way, so a stalled feed is a message to the team, not a surprise from a customer.
What should happen to a vehicle page when the car sells?
A sold vehicle page should redirect to the closest match in stock, so a buyer following an old link or search result still lands on a car they can buy.
Next Left's dealership SEO guide recommends redirecting a sold vehicle detail page to the nearest match rather than leaving a dead page. The link keeps whatever search value it earned, and the buyer is not left on an error.
A good feed setup does this without anyone touching it: when the car leaves the feed, its page points to similar stock by make, model or price band.
Can the same stock feed power Facebook and Instagram ads?
Yes: the same feed that builds your website can build a Meta catalogue, so your Facebook and Instagram ads show cars that are actually in stock.
A Meta catalogue is a product list Meta reads to build ads for each item. For a dealer, each item is a car with its photos, price and a link to its page on your website. When the feed drops a sold car, the catalogue drops it too, so you are not paying to advertise a car you cannot sell.
This is the quiet benefit of loading stock once. The website, the portals and the ads all read from the same source, so a price change made in the dealer system reaches every channel on the next run.