Local Search Group CEO & Founder Jim Flint share some tips for dealers on how to keep up with Google's algorithm changes in this video blog.

The biggest driver of customer satisfaction today is speed.

As many have heard by now, the attention span of goldfish is 9 seconds. Human beings are down to 8 seconds. With smart phones and the associated instant gratification, attention spans are decreasing.

According to Google, customers leave a website if the page does not load within 3 seconds. Facebook advises us to tell our Facebook stories within 3 seconds, without sound, in a vertical orientation to capture the customer’s attention. That’s a lot to do without much time to do it.

The saying used to be "only the strong survive.” When did fast become the new strong?

The longer the wait, the greater the dissatisfaction. Delayed gratification exited stage left, and fast smartphones sit front and center.

What are you to do with this as consumers wait on your showroom floor or sit on your service drive? At the dealer level there are at least three things you could consider doing to speed up your customer experience:

1. Feed the speed monster. Give your customers a clean Wi-Fi experience. No secret passwords. Then routinely test the download and upload speeds via a free app like Speedtest by Ookla to ensure they are working. Post the scores. Keep pace with your bandwidth utilization.  Entertaining their children with iPads and streaming movies is a big win for parents.

2. Manage expectations without lowering them. If the customer thinks the oil change will be done in 30 minutes and it takes 45, the experience will be a poor one. CSI surveys as well as reviews will reflect the disconnect.

Just this morning on a flight from San Francisco, the Starbucks’ barista advised the customer behind me, “The food order could take 9 or 10 minutes.” When the customer got the food back in 5 minutes, he was ecstatic, “Great job! You got the food to me in five minutes!” At first, the barista didn’t understand the customer’s reaction until he repeated, “The food order could take 9 or 10 minutes” and continued expressing his appreciation. Editor’s Note: No! Jim was not the customer.

3. Track the time. Automotive retailers are operational masterminds, but when was the last time their service drive tracked the time it took for same day repairs? Somewhere short of handing customers stopwatches, we can know better by measuring and then shifting the amount of time it takes.

Start by knowing your daily repair order counts, express and main lane, and sales numbers for used and new. Then look into the hourly impact. Connect this with a quick staffing level assessment to determine if you have the highest staffing levels at peak customer times. You’ll likely find some opportunities for better deployment of your staff, which will help speed your customer through your sales process.

Even after implementing these recommendations for your dealership you’re still likely not moving fast enough for today’s consumer.

Annual announcements are nothing new for Google. If nothing else, Google rolls out new marketing elements, metrics and key performance indicators on a daily basis. If any company knows change, it’s Google. The Google algorithm changes approximately 500 to 600 times a year.

As SEO and SEM experts know, you have to test your assumptions when changes occur and redevelop strategies accordingly.

Historically, Google’s changes have involved three key concepts:

   *more relevance for today’s consumer

   *more clean-up of spammy activities

   *more money in Google’s pocket – aka financial changes

Late last year, Google made a change to Google Ads whereby the Ad Rank Score now calculates the speed of the target page and categorizes the user experience. It affects your online presence, your cost-per-click, and impacts cost since page speed is now a major ranking factor for mobile searches.

For stores that have deep linked VDP URL search campaigns—and who doesn’t? —for used cars, you should be wary of internet service providers that encourage you to take 49 photos of used cars. The corresponding impact of how quickly those pages load is key, and the more photos that exist on a single VDP can absolutely affect site speed.

Additionally, are you looking at page speed on a desktop with a Wi-Fi network? 70% of your website’s pages are visited through a mobile device. Slow-loading pages are like an invisible force field around your dealership ironically keeping customers out while driving your costs up.

The good news and bad news of it all is that your Ad Rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear. It’s a real-time, online auction.   Whether or not it’s ADESA, Barrett Jackson or Google, each car that runs down the lane will have bids that are affected by your competition, by the context of the consumer’s search, by the speed of your website’s pages, and by the relevance of those pages at that moment.

Keeping track of your mobile page score affects your advertising budget. Your Quality Score and loading speed on mobile devices make up your Ad Rank—a key to success in today’s retail automotive environment.

CEO & Founder Local Search Group Jim Flint discusses how dealers can have a good defensive strategy in their pay-per-click campaigns.

A few days ago, I wrote about the Fundamental Attribution Error. It’s when people place the motives for behavior on an individual’s character even though the environment is likely the most important driver.

Today, let’s discuss the Fundamental Conversion Error. It’s more straightforward than the Fundamental Attribution Error. Conversions don’t sell cars. Even though many would tell you that they do—err, statistically speaking, they don’t.

Making resource decisions—read: spending your advertising dollars—based solely on conversion metrics is essentially the equivalent of the warning sign placed on stock purchases. In either case: “Past performance is NO guarantee of future results.

A decade ago we fought through an economic recession that drove an automotive depression. Dealers across the nation refashioned their business models as Internet departments developed into Internet dealerships.

Much time, energy, and teeth-gnashing abounded as old-school met new-school and an industry that can be decades behind in technology (CRM’s anyone?) came crashing into a brave new world of smart phones and instant information.

Back then dealers moved monies from newspaper and magazines into digital very slowly and very cautiously until they realized it worked. Then the monies moved fast and furious as dealers sought to exploit a competitive, albeit temporary, advantage.

I now hear stories of dealers claiming to be “100% digital.” It’s a good sound bite; however, it may miss the mark.

TV, radio and billboards are critical. Good creative matters. Retail messaging and integrated marketing helps consumers to flip the switch from off to on in the buying cycle.

Working with OEM’s and associations to know where Tier 1 and Tier 2 dollars are being spent can help insure that your advertising dollars are either supplementing or complementing those buys and maximizing your ROI-oriented spend for your makes, your models, and your markets.

At the end of the day, 100% digital does not equal 100% coverage.

In this video blog, CEO & Founder of Local Search Group Jim Flint shares why dealers shouldn't confuse their digital efforts with its effectiveness.

The Fundamental Attribution Error reminds us that people tend to unduly emphasize internal character, rather than external factors when trying to understand people’s motives. We tend to believe that others do bad things because they are bad people. The oft-overlooked reality is that the environment matters more, if not most.

A thief steals an upscale car from the valet at your favorite upscale restaurant while you’re enjoying your steak dinner. Is the thief a bad person? Or does he have a family too to feed at home? External factors.

A car shopper doesn’t show up at a dealership until they are ready to buy. Are they a bad person? Are they even a good person? Or do they have everything they need for shopping completely and painlessly at home? External factors.

As more and more of today’s information moves online, as more and more of today’s transactions move online, and as more and more of society’s interactions move online, a good bet is to know the external environment the consumer is in and to start bringing the products closer and closer to them.

It’s more than digital retailing, too. Anyone can see that coming. It’s humbly beyond the concept of a transaction. It’s to a place of completing the transaction on your phone and having the car delivered to you at your home, at your place of work or wherever is most convenient to you—steak dinners or otherwise.

CEO & Founder Local Search Group Jim Flint explains Impression Share Bidding in this video.

Local Search Group CEO & Founder Jim Flint shares some advice for dealers on how to best prepare for the Spring selling season.