Dealership inventory feeds: how to get your cars onto your website automatically
Connect the website to a dealership inventory feed. Your DMS or syndication provider exports each vehicle's details and photos as a file, usually XML or CSV, and the website reads it on a schedule, builds a page per vehicle and removes sold units. Social Agencies built this for Dart Motors, whose inventory loads onto its site without anyone typing it in.
What is a dealer inventory feed?
A dealer inventory feed is a file your dealer management system or syndication provider publishes, listing every vehicle in stock with its VIN, year, make, model, mileage, price and photo links.
Most dealer systems already produce a feed, because that is how inventory reaches AutoTrader, Cars.com and CarGurus. The feed is usually XML or CSV: 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 units, update changed prices and take sold units down. Once that runs, the dealer enters a vehicle once in the system they already use, and the website follows.
Can my DMS feed my website?
Usually yes: if your DMS or syndication provider can send inventory to the marketplaces, it can normally send a copy of that feed to your website as well.
Start by asking your DMS provider or syndication vendor 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 inventory screen in the website's back office, where a salesperson adds a vehicle 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 vehicle? | 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 unit sells? | It stays until someone deletes it | It comes off on a set rule |
| Are photos the same as the marketplaces? | Only if uploaded twice | Yes, from the same source |
How fast should sold units come off a dealership website?
Sold units should come off on the next feed run, and the website and the marketplaces should use the same rule for when a vehicle counts as sold.
A sold vehicle still showing online wastes a shopper's time and the salesperson's, and it makes every other listing on the site look less reliable.
Some dealers like a short grace period, showing a vehicle as sold for a day before it disappears. That is fine, as long as one rule decides it everywhere. If the website and the marketplace feed disagree, a shopper can ask about a vehicle that another channel already shows as gone.
What happens if the inventory feed stops?
Without an alarm, nothing visibly happens: the site keeps showing yesterday's inventory and prices until a shopper asks about a vehicle 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 inventory 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 unit sells?
A sold vehicle page should point to the closest match still in inventory, so a shopper following an old link or search result still lands on a vehicle they can buy.
A dead page wastes the visit and whatever search value the page earned. A good feed setup handles this without anyone touching it: when the vehicle leaves the feed, its page points to similar inventory by make, model or price band.
Can the same inventory feed power Facebook and Instagram ads?
Yes: the same feed that builds your website can build a Meta vehicle catalog, so your Facebook and Instagram ads show vehicles that are actually on the lot.
Meta's Business Help Center explains that automotive inventory ads need a catalog containing information about all your vehicles for sale, and that one way to set it up is by uploading a vehicle feed in Commerce Manager. When the feed drops a sold unit, the catalog drops it too, so you are not paying to advertise a vehicle you cannot sell.
This is the quiet benefit of entering inventory once. The website, the marketplaces and the ads all read from the same source, so a price change made in the DMS reaches every channel on the next run.