When it comes to successful lead generation on your dealership’s website, interactive experiences have a positive impact on the way those leads are captured. With more and more consumers becoming deterred by static forms (and the fear of getting bombarded with phone calls), dealerships need to leverage automotive website optimization, and come up with better, more engaging ways to reach those consumers, and obtain their information.

For Internet Managers, the biggest obstacle is simply coming up with better ways to engage with their consumers. Sure, the standard 3rd party lead capture tools do the job; but competition is fierce. Don’t you want to really “WOW” your consumers with an experience that can’t be beat? Here are a few types of engaging interactive experiences that you can integrate into your digital lead capture strategy: 

Evaluation Experiences

While this isn’t always the case, many consumers visit your website not knowing exactly what it is they want from your dealership. Many of them have an idea, but they haven’t made any concrete decisions. Setting up an evaluation experience on your website is a great way to help consumers figure out what it is they want. And the best part about evaluation experiences is that you can often customize the questions as much as you like. “What type of vehicle is best for your family?” or even “What financing option is best for you?” are great types of evaluations because they steer the customer closer to a purchasing decision.

Calculators are, arguably, one of the best types of evaluation tools that you can place on your website – the reason for that being that finances are almost always a major factor when it comes to vehicle purchases. If consumers can’t afford the down payment, the monthly payments or cost of mileage, it isn’t a wise decision to get the vehicle they’re looking at.

Once the evaluation is complete, those consumer preferences and contact info will be sent to your consumer database; and that’ll give your dealers the opportunity to provide inventory and service suggestions that are best suited for them. 

Assessments

Assessments can offer a way to help educate customers about your brand, product and major shopping decisions. Many dealership sites are just focused on the transaction phase of the buying journey – when they’re ready to buy. This could be a major reason consumers don’t’ spend as much time on dealers sites, in the early stages of process.

When someone begins shopping for a vehicle, everything is about assessment. They assess their current situation by finding out the value of their car and learning more about their financial situation. When the value of their car has been determined, they begin researching to assess the current market conditions and available options according to their needs and wants. What model is right for me? What can I afford? Should I lease or finance? Should I buy new or used?

All of these are examples of major decisions made while shopping for a vehicle. They all have a massive impact on what they’ll eventually purchase. If you can help a website visitor work through these decisions and put them on the right path, you’ll be making an emotional connection with them. These types of positive emotional interactions are what ultimately drive their opinion of you, and how fit you are to purchase a vehicle from.

Quiz (Testing Knowledge)

Quizzes are another type of great interactive experience that you can incorporate into your dealership’s website. Consumers love a bit of healthy competition; and they love seeing their name at the top of the leaderboards. Consumers especially like the concept of being able to share their winning results with their friends on social media. Although you might be racking your brain about what sorts of trivia questions you could ask, you can basically come up with questions about — well… anything! When conceptualizing your quiz, think about what consumers typically like to compete over — is it car knowledge, brand specific knowledge, hometown community knowledge? Make it unique, relevant and more importantly, fun!

One suggestion for a quiz would be to ask trivia questions pertaining to the history of your dealership — or perhaps statistics from your dealership. Doing this gives consumers the opportunity to learn more about your dealership before talking to any sales rep. 

Does your dealership’s website have its own interactive experiences? Tell us about them in the comments!