Earlier this week, Manheim announced upgrades to the search and sales functions of its online sales platforms: Manheim.com and OVE.com.

Prior to this news, Auto Remarketing caught up with Jenifer Eggert — Manheim vice president of digital services — at Used Car Week to talk about these changes within the company’s online offerings.

“The whole goal is to take customer feedback — and we have a lot of extensive research on both the buyer and seller side — and to connect them and help them transact quicker, essentially,” Eggert told us.

With the search and sales function upgrades, there are four main enhancements that were made to Manheim’s online portals.

The first two changes deal with initial search results on the online platforms. In what began on Oct. 10, the initial search results will only show vehicles with condition reports, seller disclosures and those priced less than 120 percent of the Manheim Market Report value.

(Manheim has found that buyers gravitate towards vehicles priced closer to MMR, and also appreciate having CRs and images online to help in making buying decisions).

“And it is a filtered check, so if buyers wanted to see cars without CRs, for example, they could just uncheck the filter and see them,” Eggert said. “So, we’re not blocking the entire inventory from them; they have the option of finding the rest of the vehicles if they would like to. But we just wanted to present that first look with the best inventory we could possibly give to them.”

The next change, she said, is to combine facilitation and success fees in a simple, easily visible buy or sell fee.

“In the past, it was somewhat confusing, including multiple fees on the listing itself. Now it’s a buy fee or a sell fee. We condensed it so it’s just one fee to look at,” she added.

The final change was a requirement for sellers.  As explained in Manheim’s statement on the upgrades, the floor price can be hit within three bids submittals via OVE.com

“Essentially, we’re requiring starting bids on vehicles to be within three-bid increments from floor,” she said.   

Now, here’s what may bring some relief to sellers, who fear their floor prices are being given away: there are a variety of different increments the seller can set, starting at $50.

“So it’s not showing the true floor price in any way, shape or form,” Eggert said.

As Manheim explains in its announcement, dealers have said that the sales process is often longer when the starting bid is greatly lower than the floor price.

So, say the starting bid is more than the three bid increments from the floor price. If that is the case, the starting bid will then be raised to that minimum level of three bid increments below the floor.

Overall, the feedback Manheim has received on its online offerings has been extensive; but Eggert explained why the company started with these four enhancements.

“They’ve given a lot of feedback,” she said of Manheim customers. “We just had to start somewhere, and we felt that these four things would make the most impact the quickest.”