Online used car shoppers put a lot of effort into research before they make a decision to buy. On average, they hit around 24 different research points and every time they leave your site, you’re missing an opportunity to sell them a car. So how can you differentiate your pre-owned car listings to better grab the attention of online shoppers?

We recently conducted extensive research on just this question. The two-prong research combined a survey of used car shoppers with “big data” analysis consumer search data with the information they find on over 300 different automotive marketplaces.

One of the most surprising findings was that most dealers aren’t highlighting the reconditioning they’ve done on a vehicle – something buyers really care about. A great place to do this is in the seller comment field on most used car marketplaces but only 47% of all dealer listings we analyzed even included seller comments and just 2.4% referenced reconditioning of key features like brakes, batteries or tires.

Another interesting point that came up during our research was that when looking at consumer behavior on used car marketplaces, we saw that listings with nine images had 71% more lead submissions compared to those with 30 images.

Some other tips for better merchandising your pre-owned vehicles:

• Include Detailed Data: Vehicle condition, accident history and service history top the chart of what consumers want to know – give them easy access to this data, ideally right on the VDP.

• Features Matter: The top 25 ‘must-have’ used car features may surprise you. MP3 support (the ability to play digital music), iPod connectivity and Bluetooth lead the pack of must haves. Be sure to promote them on the listings!

• Price Point: Most used car price tags end in “00”or “95” yet consumers submit more leads for cars with prices ending in “99.” In fact, search result pages with vehicles ending in “99” experienced 16% more clicks. So think about your price tag!

Check out this extensive white paper to see how you can start better merchandising your pre-owned vehicles.