The dealership websites platform is a multi-tenant SaaS solution developed for our client Cardia, an automotive software provider. It was developed to help dealerships establish both a professional online presence as well as showcase their vehicle inventory. The platform enables multiple dealerships to operate branded websites from a shared application while maintaining dealership-specific domains, branding, content, and inventory.

In addition to providing customer-facing vehicle storefronts, the platform also centralizes inventory management via a single administration system. This allows dealerships to manage listings efficiently and reduce operational overhead. The solution was developed using Laravel, Nuxt 3 (Vue 3), and MySQL, with server-side rendering (SSR) providing search-engine-friendly vehicle pages and a modern browsing experience for customers.

Overview

Cardia provides a SaaS platform that helps automotive dealerships in managing vehicle inventory and sales-related administration. While dealerships could efficiently manage the inventory and operational processes, they lacked a dedicated online sales channel where customers could browse available vehicles, submit enquiries, and reserve vehicles online.

LiteBreeze partnered with the client to develop a multi-tenant dealership website platform that integrates directly with the existing dealership management system.

The platform allows many dealerships to operate independent branded websites while continuing to manage their inventory through a centralized administration portal. It also ensures that dealerships can maintain their own identity through custom domains, branding, company information, and website content, and benefit from a shared platform and infrastructure.

Customers can browse available inventory, search and filter for vehicles, submit sales enquiries, and request vehicle reservations directly from dealership websites.

The solution provides dealerships with a modern digital sales channel while enabling Cardia to efficiently onboard and support numerous dealerships from one single platform. By sharing infrastructure and application resources across the dealerships, the platform offers a cost-effective alternative to dedicated website hosting and custom application deployments.

Key features

Multi-tenant dealership websites

Each dealership receives a dedicated website experience complete with its own domain, branding, company information, and inventory. While customers experience an independent dealership website, all websites operate from the shared SaaS platform.

Centralized inventory management

Vehicle inventory management is accomplished through a centralized administration portal. Dealership staff can publish vehicles, upload images, update listing information, and manage vehicle availability without maintaining separate website systems.

Updates are automatically reflected on the corresponding dealership website, ensuring inventory information is consistent across the platform.

Vehicle search and filtering

Customers can browse available inventory using search and filtering tools which help them quickly find the vehicles that match their requirements.

Vehicle reservations

Customers can reserve vehicles directly from dealership websites. Reservation requests generate automated notifications for both the customer and dealership, thus enabling faster sales follow-up.

Customer enquiries

Vehicle detail pages enable customers to directly contact dealerships regarding specific vehicles. Enquiry submissions include relevant vehicle information, which help dealerships respond more effectively.

Dealership content management

Dealerships can manage their website content, company information, logos, banner images, and branding settings through the administration portal. Technical assistance is not required.

Technologies used

The frontend was built using Nuxt 3 (Vue 3) and TypeScript. Server-side rendering (SSR) was implemented to improve search engine visibility and ensure dealership-specific content is available immediately during the initial page load.

During the first request, dealership-specific branding, theme configuration, content, and inventory data are rendered on the server. The application then hydrates into a Vue application, providing a fast, interactive Single Page Application (SPA) experience for subsequent navigation.

Bootstrap 5 and SCSS were used to build the responsive base design system. Dealership-specific branding, including colours, logos, banners, and company information, is applied at runtime through CSS custom properties resolved during server-side rendering.

The backend was developed using Laravel and MySQL. Existing dealership management functionality was extended to support website content management, vehicle publishing, customer enquiries, and reservation workflows.

A domain-based multi-tenant architecture was implemented to identify dealerships based on the incoming website domain. Domain mappings are centrally managed, allowing new dealership websites to be configured without application deployments.

The applications were containerized using Docker and deployed behind a load balancer, allowing multiple application instances to serve traffic efficiently across all dealership websites.

Challenges & solutions

Supporting multiple dealership websites

One of the primary challenges involved enabling multiple dealerships to operate independent websites without the cost and maintenance overhead of developing, hosting, and managing separate applications.

This was addressed through a domain-based multi-tenant architecture. Incoming requests are mapped to the appropriate dealership using the website domain, allowing dealership-specific inventory, branding, and content to be loaded dynamically while sharing a common application and infrastructure.

This approach gives each dealership a dedicated online presence while helping avoid extra costs. Containerized deployment and load balancing let the platform scale horizontally, so shared infrastructure serves typical dealership traffic economically while still absorbing peak loads as visitor numbers grow.

Balancing SEO and user experience

Vehicle sales rely heavily on search engine visibility. Traditional SPA applications often limit search engine indexing because the content is generated after the page loads in the browser.

To address this, Nuxt was used to implement server-side rendering. Inventory pages and dealership content are rendered on the server before being delivered to users and search engines.

After the initial page load, the application hydrates into a Vue application and behaves as a standard SPA, combining search engine visibility with a smooth user experience.

Dynamic dealership onboarding

The platform needed a way to onboard new dealership websites without code changes or application deployments.

To enable this, a centralized domain and dealer map configuration is managed by the backend and fetched by the Nuxt application. The application periodically retrieves and caches this configuration, so new dealership websites can be activated through configuration updates rather than software releases. Domain registration, DNS records, and SSL certificates are still provisioned manually outside this flow.

Balancing customization and maintainability

Different dealerships required their own branding and content while the platform needed to remain cost-effective and easy to maintain.

The solution allows dealerships to customize logos, colours, banners, company information, and website content while maintaining a consistent website structure and user experience across all the dealerships.

This balance provides branding flexibility while also avoiding the complexity of maintaining separate applications.

Next priorities

As the platform continues to onboard additional dealerships, future development will focus on improving automation, dealership self-service, and customer conversion.

Automated dealership onboarding

Building on the existing config-driven activation, automating the remaining manual steps (domain registration, DNS configuration, and SSL certificate provisioning) to make onboarding fully self-service.

Enhanced content management

Providing dealerships with greater control over the website content as well as page management while also maintaining platform consistency.

Online reservation payments

Allowing customers to pay reservation fees online and to automatically update vehicle availability following successful payment.

Finance calculator

Integrating finance estimation tools into vehicle detail pages to support customers’ purchasing decisions.

Vehicle acquisition services

Allowing vehicle owners to submit vehicles directly to dealerships, creating more inventory acquisition opportunities.