Beingseen360.com
The Home Page Image Slider keep or throw it away?
Websites are big business for dealers and the vendors that provide them. I often times am frustrated by the lack of mobility offered with the OEM recommended website providers. Typically there are a few templates to choose from and those all come with limitations. That being said I often wonder why we focus on the banner ads that slide across the home page that so many dealers resort to.
On the one hand they do look nice and offer an opportunity to promoted the monthly specials, however if you look at a heat map the most common place visitors visit are the inventory pages. In fact one study sites that only up to 5% of visitors actually click on the banner. And the clicks get worse the deeper you go in the slide show. Are the low stats because the specials aren't engaging or do visitors have banneritis? Probably a combination depending on the dealership.
So why don't we put those front and center instead of our inventory which is the most popular pages to visit? On a website to increase conversion you want to keep it simple. Make the information that they are looking for readily available. Test your website with an A/B test by offering two home pages. One with banner ads and the other with quick links for the following most popular destinations on a dealership website.
- Schedule Service
- Today’s Deals
- Lease Specials
- Search New
- Search Used
- Value Your Trade-In
- Get Pre-Approved
If you are running any kind of paid digital advertising like retargeting, PPC, facebook ads, etc. it would be really interesting to see if bounce rates go down. Even with these campaigns you can send the visitor to special pages that engage based on the content of the ads. For example, if you are running a $199 lease on a Chevy make that ad click to a page that shows that vehicle up top right away and then quick links to other lease specials or other vehicles of a similar type or price.
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3 Comments
Patrick Bergemann
Image Auto LLC
There have been numerous studies showing that sliding banners are conversion killers on homepages. If someone misses the slide with the information most relevant to them, they won't stick around long enough to wait for that slide to come back. They might click somewhere they think is relevant to what they want through header navigation, but in reality, they'll probably get frustrated and find a site with a better UI.
Carl Maeda
Autofusion Inc.
We've done several studies across our customers and found most people go to inventory and a distant second destination was service so what you're saying is right. Several of our clients minimize the banner space and emphasize inventory and service.
You're also absolutely right about the destination for paid advertising. The landing page should reflect the offer in the ad. If your ad shows a $199/month lease, the landing page should definitely show the same offer and it should be very prominent. You could still send them to inventory - as long as the qualifying vehicles are displayed and the $199/month lease is shown prominently.
Derrick Woolfson
Beltway Companies
They are ineffective, and slow down your site! And do nothing for mobile customers, which makes up for a majority of the users. That being said, the emphasis should be on "content relevancy" for the homepage. Allowing the customer the easiest route to the VDP - as we know that is the *top* conversion point for the customer. Anything blocking or distracting the customer from that VDP is only risking a high-bounce rate. Aka exiting without converting.