The advert is the shop window: photographs and listings that sell

The cheapest fix available to any dealer, routinely ignored. What buyers actually filter on, how many photographs is enough, and the fields that cost you enquiries when left blank.

Updated 1 August 2026 · 5 min read · Written for UK independent dealers

Almost every used car is now sold twice: once on a screen, and once on the forecourt. The second sale cannot happen if the first one fails, and the first one fails silently — nobody tells you they scrolled past.

This is the least glamorous part of the trade and, pound for pound, the most profitable thing most dealers could fix this week. It costs nothing but an afternoon.

How buyers actually search

Understanding the mechanics matters, because it explains why blank fields are expensive.

A buyer starts with filters: price range, distance, make, model, sometimes body style, fuel or gearbox. Then mileage, often with a hard ceiling at a round number. Then they scan a grid of thumbnails, and they are making a decision on each one in under a second.

Three consequences follow.

A blank field is an exclusion. If your listing has no fuel type recorded and a buyer filters for petrol, you are not shown. Not ranked lower — absent. Every unfilled field is a filter you fail.

The thumbnail is the whole first impression. In a grid of forty cars, the lead photograph decides whether anyone clicks. A dark, wet, cluttered image loses to a clean, bright one every single time, regardless of which car is better.

Round numbers matter. A car at £10,050 is invisible to everyone filtering "up to £10,000". Price to the top of a band, not just past it.

Photographs

Take enough of them. Fewer than ten and buyers assume you are hiding something. Around fifteen to twenty is the sweet spot. Beyond about twenty-five you get diminishing returns.

Cover the whole car. Front three-quarter both sides, straight front, straight rear, both profiles, all four wheels, interior front and rear, dashboard with the ignition on showing the mileage, boot, engine bay, and the service book.

Lead with the front three-quarter. It is the angle that flatters nearly every car and it is what buyers expect.

Dry, bright, plain background. An overcast dry day is better than harsh sun, which produces hard shadows and blown highlights. Get the car away from skips, other cars, wheelie bins and your own signage. A plain wall or an empty corner of the yard is worth more than a professional camera.

Clean the car. Obvious, and skipped constantly. A dirty car in photographs reads as a neglected car.

Photograph the flaws. This feels wrong and is right. A buyer who arrives and finds a kerbed alloy you did not show feels misled and will use it to negotiate — or leave. A buyer who saw it in the advert has already priced it in and comes anyway. Honest photographs filter out the wrong buyers before they waste your Saturday.

The description

The description is where you answer the questions that stop a buyer clicking away.

Do not just list trim codes. "Sport Nav+ 2.0 SkyActiv-G" tells an enthusiast something and everyone else nothing.

Lead with what makes this car different. Full service history, one owner, low mileage for the year, a recent cambelt, a fresh MOT, two keys, a genuinely desirable option.

Use the words buyers use. People search for "heated seats", "parking sensors", "apple carplay", "isofix", "tow bar". If the car has them, write them out.

Say what has been done. "Serviced at 62,000 with new front discs and pads" is worth more than "well maintained". Specifics are credible; adjectives are not.

Be honest about what it isn't. A line saying the car has a couple of age-related marks costs you nothing and buys you enormous credibility with the buyer who turns up.

Length: enough to answer the obvious questions. A dozen useful lines beats two lines or an essay.

The fields nobody fills in

Go through your listings and check every one of these is populated:

• Fuel type and gearbox
• Body style
• Number of doors
• Exterior and interior colour
• Engine size
• Number of previous owners
• Service history status
• MOT expiry
• Number of keys
• Registration date

Each blank is a filter you fail and a question a buyer has to ask. Buyers do not ask; they click the next car.

Price presentation

Sit just under the round numbers buyers filter at. £9,995 rather than £10,050. The £55 costs you nothing and the visibility is worth hundreds.

Avoid the almost-identical price. If eleven cars in your area are all at £8,995, being at £8,975 puts you first in a price-sorted list for twenty pounds.

Do not advertise a price you will not honour. Adding fees at the point of sale generates complaints and reviews that cost far more than the fee.

Refreshing a listing

Most portals surface newer or recently-updated listings more prominently. A car that has been sitting untouched for six weeks is buried whatever its merits.

If a fairly-priced car is not selling, refresh it properly before you cut the price: new photographs on a dry day, rewritten description, every field checked. This is free, it takes an hour, and it resurfaces the car in the sorting.

The order matters. Cutting the price of a badly-photographed car fixes the wrong thing and costs real money. Fixing the photographs of a fairly-priced car costs an afternoon.

Video and 360 views

Increasingly expected at the upper end and still a differentiator lower down. A two-minute walkaround, filmed on a phone, held steady, narrating honestly — walking round the car, opening the doors, starting it, showing the service book — does more for buyer confidence than any amount of copywriting.

It also cuts wasted viewings, because the people who turn up have already seen the car properly.

A checklist before anything goes live

1. Car washed and dried, moved to a plain background
2. Fifteen-plus photographs including flaws and the mileage
3. Every specification field completed
4. Description covering history, features and condition in plain English
5. Price set just under the nearest filter threshold
6. Listed everywhere you sell
7. Diarised for a fortnightly refresh

Seven steps, most of an hour, and it applies to every car you will ever list. It is the highest return on time available in the business.