Your dealership website is often the first point of contact for new customers. It provides high-level information for shoppers and current customers. You’re displaying your inventory, enticing the anonymous lurker to make their first contact with your store. It’s the first impression you make on the clientele you’re targeting.

If you’ve had someone spend hours taking high-quality pictures, you have a system that decodes the VIN for accurate details, and you keep the listings current, you’re on the right track.

You give detailed profiles on your sales, service, parts, and support staff, making a personal connection with the reader. It’s an extremely healthy item for your website.

The mobile experience mimics your website with intuitive, easy-to-navigate menus and simple-to-find information. It’s really coming together.

You have a website that functions well and looks great! But instead of the roar of the crowds in response, you have crickets. Why is it?

The Silent Killer Has Sturck

Did you notice the typo? And what did you think? As soon as your brain detected the spelling error, it was like jamming the gears. Your engagement went from a 10 to nil in a heartbeat. The silent killer STRUCK!

Spelling and grammar are two of the most important things to a reader, even though they may not identify it. It might be an errant keystroke or it could be the writer isn’t strong in the area. Whatever the root of the issue, one misspelled word can negate everything else you’ve built up.

Are you doubting how relevant it is? Think about it in real-world applications in your life:

• When you read Facebook posts, do you pass over the comments with improperly-used punctuation or those with none?
• On a LinkedIn profile, do you give credence to people who misspell words in their posts?
• Do you weight a tweet’s validity based on how well the writer conveys their 140-character message?

I’d be willing to bet that at least one of those items strikes a chord.

A Simple Message: Speling and Grammer Matter

I promise I’ll stop the intentional spelling errors. It hurts me too! But it drives home the point: your dealership website content needs to be spot-on with every detail you present to the reader. Spelling must be correct. Sentence structure and grammar must be accurate. In short, eliminate this basic issue as an obstacle for your customers.

How Do You Do It?

It sounds simple. Accurate spelling and grammar aren’t as easy as you’d like to think, however. If someone at your store writes content for your website, you need to give them the tools to be successful. Grammarly is a fantastic tool that addresses most grammar and sentence structure issues and is phenomenal with spelling. It even offers an alternative so corrections are often just a mouse click. If your content has frequent mistakes, though, perhaps you have the wrong person on the job.

Ideally, your content should be handled by a professional service. Online content creators have the skills necessary to provide a top-notch website experience for your readers…without all the errors. It’s going to seem expensive at first but if it results in a single new customer, it will pay itself off immediately.

Take a look at your website right now. Check every page for spelling and grammar issues. Are you missing an ‘S’ in ‘Accessories’? Is there an ‘A’ in ‘Definate’? Can you find a run-on sentence or a period where there should be a comma? Is the wrong ‘then’ or ‘than’ used?

If you find errors, your customers will also. Don’t let something as simple as spelling get in the way of selling cars!