Widget Theme Customization — Match Carvia to Your Brand

Release Overview

Your Carvia widgets can now follow the look of your website — colors, fonts, corner radius, and light or dark chrome — so vehicle intelligence feels native on every VDP, not bolted on.

Until now, Carvia widgets shipped with a fixed light appearance. That worked well on bright dealer sites, but stood out on dark templates, brand-forward OEM microsites, and dealer groups with strong visual identity. Shoppers noticed the seam. Marketing teams asked for brand alignment without rewriting the embed.

Widget Theme Customization gives every client a theme for each verified domain. Set it once in the Carvia portal (with a live preview), optionally let Carvia detect colors from your site, and every widget on that domain — carousel, score, history, valuation, and more — picks up the same chrome. Score and status colors stay Carvia-owned so trust signals stay consistent.

The Problem We Solved

Trust-building intelligence only works when it looks like it belongs on your page.

The “foreign widget” problem

Dealers invest in brand guidelines — primary blues or reds, custom type, rounded or sharp cards, dark hero VDPs. A bright default widget next to that design reads as a third-party add-on. Shoppers trust the data less when the chrome clashes with the rest of the page.

The dark-site gap

Many modern dealer platforms and OEM-aligned templates use dark backgrounds. Light-only widgets created harsh contrast blocks, washed-out borders, and text that never quite matched the surrounding UI.

The “ask engineering every time” problem

Brand tweaks should not require a custom CSS fork or a one-off engineering ticket. Marketing and internet managers need a preview, a save, and confidence that the next inventory page will look the same.

What's New

How to Match Your Brand

Most partners will customize once per domain from the portal — no embed rewrite required.

1. Open your client portal and select the verified domain that hosts your VDPs.
2. Open Widget theme. Start from Light (classic Carvia), Dark, or a saved preset.
3. (Optional) Detect from your website. Let Carvia propose primary, surface, and text colors based on your live site, then tweak what doesn't match.
4. Tune branding tokens — brand primary/secondary, backgrounds, borders, text, muted text, button text, font family, font size, and corner radius for cards and buttons.
5. Preview, then save. Confirm the live preview looks right next to your VDP template, apply to the domain, and refresh a live listing to verify.

What You Can Customize

Colors

• Primary & secondary — gradients, accents, and key CTAs
• Background & surface — page wash vs. card panels
• Border — card and divider chrome
• Text & muted text — headings/body vs. hints and secondary copy
• Button text — contrast on primary CTAs

Typography

• Font family — allowlisted options (including Manrope, Inter, Open Sans, Lato, Montserrat, Source Sans 3, Georgia, and system UI)
• Font size scale — discrete sizes so the whole widget family stays readable and consistent

Shape

• Container radius — outer cards and panels
• Button radius — CTAs and form controls (including pill / full)

Color scheme

• Light or dark — tells the embed how to treat native UI chrome (scrollbars, form controls) alongside your palette

Optional Embed Overrides

Domain themes cover most needs. Use embed attributes when a single page should differ.

Your theme builder can also copy a ready-to-paste snippet. Typical patterns:

Use a named theme on one embed

<div
  class="carvia-widget"
  data-widget="widget-carousel"
  data-theme="dark"
  data-vin="1HGCM82633A004352"
  data-mileage="45000"
  data-listing-price="22000"
></div>

Override specific brand tokens

<div
  class="carvia-widget"
  data-widget="widget-carousel"
  data-theme-style='{"primary":"#0B3D91","secondary":"#1F6FEB","radiusButton":"full"}'
  data-vin="1HGCM82633A004352"
></div>

Priority (highest last): Light defaults → domain preset → domain overrides → container data-theme → container style / data-theme-style. That means a campaign page can diverge from the dealership default without changing every VDP.

Value by Role

For marketing and internet directors

• Brand-consistent VDPs — Carvia chrome matches your primary palette and type
• Self-serve control — preview and publish without a redesign project
• Multi-site groups — different themes per domain when rooftops or brands differ

For general managers

• Native-looking trust layer — intelligence that feels like part of the storefront
• No disruption — existing embeds keep working; theme is configuration, not a reinstall

For sales professionals

• Same walkthrough, better presentation — the carousel content is unchanged; only the chrome matches the site you already demo on the lot

Related Releases

• Widget Carousel — the primary embed that inherits your domain theme
• SRP Listing Badge — compact score chrome on search results
• Get My Full Report — shareable report pages that benefit from consistent branding
• Widget Analytics — measure engagement after you polish the look

Getting Started

1. Sign in to the Carvia client portal and open the domain you want to brand.
2. Launch Widget theme — try Dark if your VDPs are dark; otherwise start from Light and set your primary brand color.
3. Optionally run Detect theme, review the suggestion, and adjust fonts or radius to match your cards.
4. Save and apply to the domain. Load a live VDP (and the carousel) to confirm colors, text, and corners look right on mobile and desktop.
5. Need a one-off page? Ask your web team to use the copy-ready snippet from the builder, or add data-theme / data-theme-style on that mount only.