The car finder form other developers said couldn't be built that way

The problem, in business terms

Motor Agents 4U knew exactly what they wanted. Their car finder form was the heart of the business, the thing that turned a browser into an enquiry, and they had a specific idea of how it needed to behave, taking its cue from the way CarWow's finder works.

The problem was getting anyone to build it. Other software companies told them it could not be done that way, or proposed a simpler version that would have been easier to build and worse to use. That is a familiar pattern: the customer is quietly told to change their process to fit the software.

What we built

A form built from the ground up to their specification, not adapted from something that already existed. The important part is that it handles two very different customers in one flow:

• The customer who knows the car they want, and just needs to get to a price.
• The customer who only knows they want a new car, and needs guiding to a shortlist.

Around it:

• A loan calculator, so figures come out consistently rather than being worked out by hand.
• Package purchases taken online through GoCardless.
• A site that lets them showcase their work and customer feedback properly.

It runs on our own servers with 24/7 monitoring.

The result

The business has the form it actually asked for rather than the one that was easy to supply. Customers can get to a quote themselves, at any hour, instead of waiting for the office to open, and packages can be bought on the site rather than arranged over the phone.