Choosing what you want to buy, and advertising what you want to sell just got massively easier and faster with the launch of www.coachandbusmarket.com This ground-breaking website puts you in control, saves you time and saves you money. This guide shows you how easy it is to use the site. Visit us online today and save us as one of your favourites.
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and in no time at all the calls could be coming in.
Coach and Bus Market Users Guide Our launch Guide to the industry revolution which provides a onestop market for vehicles, products and services. Coach & Bus Week's James Day explains what it can do for you and your business and how to make best use of the site
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he brand new website coachandbusmarket. com has been many months in the making. Now it’s up and running the result is a revolution in the ease, speed and cost of getting vehicles, products and services in front of buyers. With a free launch offer underway to help you get selling, now is the best time to try it. The key benefit of coachandbus market.com for buyers is the huge choice and ease of comparison on one site. For sellers there is the breakthrough low cost, a superb range of ad spaces, speed of upload and direct control. There is a one time fee to display the vehicle for a week, fortnight or three weeks, with no cut taken from the sale price of the vehicle.
FREE LAUNCH OFFER Coachandbusmarket.com is free to use from now until November 21 or until 1,000 vehicles have been loaded on to the site. You can place as many vehicles as you like on the website for free for up to four weeks while the offer is in effect. There is also a £20 offer which includes two additional adverts in the magazine on top of displaying your vehicle for up to four weeks online free. Since this is all online and www.coachandbusmarket.com
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automated, your advert appears immediately, you do not need to wait until the next magazine goes to press, or for one of us to upload your advert for you.
TAKE A LOOK AT THE HOMEPAGE Close to the top of the homepage is the ‘featured vehicles’ bar. This scrolling bar displays up to 30 vehicles which sellers have paid to have featured on the homepage. Hovering the mouse over an image enlarges it, and clicking it takes you
to the vehicle’s detailed ad page. Also displayed on the homepage is a newsreel and featured companies providing products and services. At the bottom of the page, the most recently listed vehicles are displayed by default, which can be changed to display the most viewed or a random selection for those wishing to browse.
GETTING STARTED AS A SELLER Once you’re on the website, you can register automatically. Simply
For £20, your advert can appear as a featured vehicle on the homepage
click the register button on the right hand side of the screen, fill in your desired username, email address, password and phone number and you’re good to go. Before you upload anything, do consider subscribing to the magazine if you aren’t already. Subscribers get a massive 30% discount off their advert costs for as long as they subscribe. This can more than cover the cost of the subscription and end up saving you money. There is an image of the magazine to the top right of the coachandbusmarket.com homepage which when clicked takes you straight to the subscription process, or you can call our ever-friendly subscriptions department on 01733 293480. Step one of the selling process is simply choosing whether the vehicle you are selling is a coach, bus or minibus.
FILLING OUT YOUR VEHICLE DETAILS Step two involves entering vehicle details, pictures and choosing your ad package. The first field to fill in is the title. This is the heading of your ad and is what is displayed to people browsing vehicles. It needs to make your ad attractive but keep it succinct. It’s a good place to put specific body and chassis models. When filling in vehicle
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(price on application). Your telephone number will appear at the top of the ad automatically. It may be a good idea to add any further contact details to the end of the description, or even repeat the telephone number to give it more presence on the page.
information, put details for every single category if you can. Buyers searching for an integral vehicle, such as a Bova Futura, could place their search terms under the body or the chassis, so you’ll want both covered just in case. Other buyers will want to know for sure whether the vehicle has the seating capacity to meet their requirements, or may be looking for something of a specific age. The important thing about your description is that it reads quickly and easily. If you’re listing features of the vehicle, such as entertainment systems, engine specifications and driver aids, use bullet points. It makes detailed information far more easy to read, especially when numbers are involved. If you want to write in detail, make sure you use paragraph breaks properly and keep paragraphs relatively short. There is little on the internet which puts off readers more than the dreaded ‘wall of text’. Remember seller information can be displayed on your profile and it isn’t necessary to clutter single vehicle ads with it. A price for your vehicle is not required, but is recommended, as price is one of the options listed on the site’s search engine. If you choose not to add a price, your ad will automatically display P.O.A
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Pictures Picture quality is important. You have a two megabyte limit on the size of images you upload, which is about the quality of images produced by your average digital camera. Make as much use of this as possible. Try not to submit tiny thumbnails which are difficult to see and become pixelated when potential buyers attempt to zoom in. Remember, you can upload five images per advert. Show buyers as much of the vehicle as you can. Don’t leave them with only your word that the interior is in good condition. Show, don’t just tell. With exterior photos, try to control the surroundings. Sometimes there’s no option but
to show the vehicle inside a busy depot, but if you can take a photo in a wide open car park, near some attractive architecture or in an area with plenty of greenery, go ahead. Take advantage of this country’s rare sunny days, but make sure you take a photo of the side of the vehicle the sun is shining on and be sure to keep your own shadow out of the way.
ad chOice At the moment, the launch offers are running, so be sure to choose one of those from the dropdown menu at the bottom of the step two screen.
Once the offer is over, the pricing structure for standard packages will be as follows: One week online: £14.25 or £9.98 with 30% subscriber discount; two weeks online: £24.95 or £17.47 with discount; two weeks online and one week in magazine: £39.95 or £27.97 with discount; three weeks online: £29.95 or £20.97 with discount; three weeks online and two weeks in magazine: £49.95 or £34.97 with discount. We also recommend giving us a call if you sell more than ten vehicles in a year and we’ll discuss what more we can offer. For an additional £20 you can have your listing featured on the home page. After you have selected your package, you are taken to step three. This is a confirmation step as well as where payment is made. Coachandbusmarket.com uses Paypal, a safe and secure online payment method which will streamline any future uploads you make. Your ad appears on the site as soon as payment has been made.
YOur dashbOard Your dashboard is a toolbar from which you can control all of your advertisements. You can access it from the right-hand side of the homepage by clicking the button labelled ‘Manage Ads’. From the dashboard you can edit any details of the advert if you wish. There is also a pause function, where you can temporarily remove your ad from the site. The time remaining is frozen and ticks down only when you resume the advert. You can delete your ad if you wish, but you will have to re-upload and pay again for it to reappear, so be careful. You can also mark the vehicle as sold. Finally, your dashboard can tell you how many views each of your adverts has had and how long until each one expires, in real time.
using cOach and bus Market as a buYer First and foremost, you do not have to pay for the vehicle through coachandbusmarket.com. The site is a tool which sellers use to advertise their vehicles and buyers use to browse the market and make contact. This prevents a cut being taken from the sale price and means we do not handle your transaction money at any point. On the coachandbusmarket.com
homepage you will see three search options – coach, bus and minibus. Choose which type of vehicle you are looking for and click “search” to be taken to a specific search engine. Once there, you can either browse all the vehicles by scrolling down, or search for something more specific. The search function is quite thorough – you can search by chassis or body if you’re looking for something specific, or by price, maximum mileage, maximum age and seating capacity, if you’re looking for the best deal to meet specific requirements. Once you choose a vehicle, you will be greeted by much more detailed page on the vehicle, which includes price, age, seating, mileage, location, listing date and how long until the advert expires. Any additional information is written under ‘description’ below this brief fact file. An ad reference ID is at the bottom of the advert. You will also see images of the vehicle. Click on an image to enlarge it and bring it to the centre of the screen. Once one image is enlarged, either click on it again or use the arrows at the bottom of the image viewer to navigate through all the images of the vehicle. On the right hand side of the screen you will notice a Google map displaying the location where the seller is based. Above the map are two more tabs, ‘contact’ and ‘seller’. Under ‘contact’ you will find an email contact form where you can ask the seller for further information, clarification or if you’d like to organise a viewing or buy the vehicle. At the bottom of the form you will be asked a basic maths question – please don’t feel patronised! This is simply a small security feature to ensure you are human and not a dreaded internet spam bot. The ‘seller’ tab shows more information on who is selling the vehicle. It shows their name, how long they have been a member of the site and other vehicles listed by them. Even more information is found by clicking on the seller’s name, which will take you to their profile page. This can contain website and social media links, listed vehicles and a description of the company. See the website for yourself – visit coachandbusmarket. com. If you’d like more information or explanation call us at 01733 293240.
www.coachandbusmarket.com
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Time is money.
Upload your vehicle ad in a matter of minutes and in no time at all the calls could be coming in.
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