Making continual changes and upgrades to your dealership’s website is incredibly important. As technology and consumer expectations evolve, your dealership’s website will need to align with what consumers want and need online and even in-store.

One thing that’s particularly important is that the changes you choose to make to your website should be made with specific purpose in mind. There needs to be a reason for those changes. Your dealership simply can’t make changes for the sake of making changes. Believe it or not, this happens far more often than you think.

Any sort of modification that you make to the imagery, messaging and code could have a major impact on how consumers ultimately interact with your website. That being said, it’s important to tread lightly and really take some time to think about the changes you’re going to make.

For all you know, your site is performing just fine — and the changes you want would only have a minimally positive impact. That would have meant that you spent time, money and effort on something that was only marginally successful — and where does that get you?

If you’re even considering making changes to your dealership’s website, take a moment to look at these best practices. Perhaps they can offer a little guidance:

Make Data-Driven Decisions

As I mentioned earlier in the piece, there needs to be a reason or purpose for the changes you make to your website. More often than not, the reason for change is because some aspect of your website isn’t performing as well as you had anticipated. These conclusions are drawn from your CRM as well as other website analytics programs.

The aggregate data that you collect from these programs should be the core component of what guides your decision to make changes. Without it, you’re only making assumptions about what’s wrong with your website, and therefore, you don’t come any close to solving them.

Before you make any changes to your website, look to your CRM and analytics programs to see what parts of your website need more help. Let’s say, for example, your consumers are dropping off your website at a specific point before completing an experience. Once you take a look at the page in question, you can make an educated guess and omit/add something that will entice a consumer to convert.

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll say that a checkbox was added that allows consumers the option of of opting into being contact by a salesperson. Before that, the assumption was that a consumer would be contacted no matter what. If we learned anything from the previous piece, we know that consumers love self-service.

Plan Ahead for Upcoming Website, CRM and Strategy Changes

Once you’ve determined that you are going to make changes to your website, you’ll likely need to make adjustments to other aspects of your business: your CRM, your marketing strategy and to some varying degrees, your follow-up. If this is indeed the case (and often it is), you’ll need to plan ahead.

Do not, under any circumstances, wait until these changes have already been made. Set a timeline for when these changes are going to occur (on your website) and then determine what aspects of your CRM and marketing strategy will change.

Once you’ve determined what adjustments are going to be made to your CRM and your marketing strategy, plan out how these changes are going to happen and then develop a timeline for those changes. So long as each of the cogs are moving alongside one another, you’ll be in good shape.

Avoid Making Too Many Changes

Like I mentioned earlier, it's important to base your modification decisions on actual data that you've pulled from your website. However, it's important to note that data changes often and that not every consumer is going to engage precisely how you want them to. You might have those 5-10 consumers per month out of a few hundred who drop off at a certain point. It happens and it kinda sucks... but it's nothing to get bent outta shape about.

As much as it's important to make note of consumer activity as they occurs, it's also important to no go overboard with short, reactive changes. If you make changes to your website too often, it’ll dilute your ability to understand what’s working and what’s isn't. Reporting becomes less valuable because you can’t form any real conclusions based on such a short timeframe.

If the overall net performance of your website is solid, why touch the site at all? Only make changes if you find that the overall performance of your website is suffering. If you've already made changes to your website and you're seeing significant improvement, it’s best to leave it be. More events will occur in the coming months that will require you to freshen up your website. So just be prepared.

How often do you make changes to your dealership’s website? Let me know in the comments below!

It’s safe to say that most dealerships are seeking out the latest and greatest ways to optimize their dealership websites. After all, websites are now one of the primary ways dealerships are able to engage with consumers and capture leads.

Unfortunately, weaknesses have a tendency to present themselves with even the seemingly best optimization. Many website developers and dealers optimize their overall conversion strategy to heavily depend on engaging with a salesperson.

What this essentially means is that in order for a consumer to even attempt to do anything (check for price updates, special offers, trade-in estimate), they’ll need to agree to speak with a salesperson at your dealership.

For most consumers, the salesperson is often a deterrent. Think about it: there’s a lot of risk you won’t get a good salesperson, you have to be available enough to talk on the phone and you definitely have to wait, sometimes a long time, to get a response. The only time most consumers want to speak with a salesperson is when they’re about ready to buy or if those preconceptions have been removed. The mindset of most consumers is that if they’re speaking with a salesperson, they’re not engaging in useful discussion, but rather, just being sold to.

Why do you think websites like Amazon.com are so popular? Consumers can conduct whatever type of research their heart desires without having to talk to a single person. In fact, full purchases can be made without anyone’s assistance. Sites like Amazon.com are completely self-service. There are lots of great examples of digital only businesses that conduct all the necessary interactions with a website visitor without having to chat or talk live on the phone.

Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am, by no means, saying that we should cut out the salesperson. Quite the opposite. When a consumer is ready to schedule a test drive or set up financing, a salesperson will (in most instances) be extremely instrumental in the process. What your website shouldn’t be doing is relying on salespeople. Instead of forcing a consumer to immediately talk to a salesperson after they’ve completed an experience, it should simply be an option.

If a consumer wants to speak to someone, they can select from the drop-down “I want to be contacted.” If not, they can leave the box unchecked and continue their research normally. Now, just because a consumer doesn’t want to speak with a salesperson immediately, doesn’t mean your website won’t be able to create a genuinely engaging experience.

By making a conversation with a salesperson optional, you're significantly relieving the pressure most consumers expect to experience with car salesman. It’s the basic principle of value for value on your site. Having someone try to “check for price updates” or “get a trade estimate” just be given a thank you page isn’t returning value in the way most consumers expect to get it online.

All that being said, what can your dealership do to optimize its website for higher engagement without forcing interactions between a salesperson and consumer? Here are some things you can do:

Make Sure Your Website Offers Instant Value

I’ve said it once and I honestly don’t mind saying it again: consumers are drawn to website experiences that offer immediate gratification. This is especially true when it comes to receiving something of value like: an on-the-spot trade appraisal, an options to instantly check for price updates or special offers. It also applies calculators, pre-qualifications and assessments.

There’s plenty of software and website providers available to help dealerships create website experiences offer this important information to prospective customers after they’ve submitted their information. In addition to making your site more engaging for consumers who are wanting access to such information, you get more detailed information about your consumer base.

Use Automated Technology to Respond

Another thing I recommend dealerships doing is leveraging automated technology to send information to individual dealership consumers who request specific information.

Now, let me provide more clarity once again — I am not, in any way, shape or form, promoting the use of autoresponders. I am absolutely against dealerships faking a real salesperson’s response in order to attempt engagement. It simply isn’t effective. Consumers know better and frankly, you know better too.

I do, however, advocate automation if it streamlines processes. For example: Let’s say you have a consumer requesting the warranty of a particular vehicle on your website. Because this consumer has indicated (on your website) that they want something specific, a form submission can trigger that warranty being emailed out immediately.

Instead of pressuring a consumer to engage with you via e-mail (basically having your website rely on a salesperson), your dealership’s website is simply giving them what they asked for. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Clear expectations are set and met when consumers receive what they requested from you. Even though your salespeople aren't engaging in a full-on dialogue with the consumer just yet, sending that email out with the documents they requested still buys you some influence.

You still have access to their information, but you’re not trying to sell them anything without their permission. It’s with these warranties and documents that you incentivize them to come back to you. This is especially helpful when you follow-up with them down the road.

There’s no real reason why your dealership can’t offer robust, high quality deliverables to consumers. And no, warranties aren’t the only things you can offer. Consumers appreciate newsletters, videos and even graphics to help them making better purchasing decisions. Why, the very site you’re on now (DrivingSales.com), sends out newsletters to readers who request them. It’s because of these newsletters that we continue to know who they are.

Your sales team still plays an integral role in how your dealership operates and succeeds. There’s no real question about that. The biggest issue that dealerships have encountered is that their role is often inserted into areas of your marketing that are primarily meant to be self-service. By providing value for value interactions on your site, you’ll actually increase the number of real conversations your sales staff have with consumers.  

While your website and your sales team can definitely work well together, you also need to realize that the folks visiting your website and the folks talking to your sales guys are in radically different stages of the purchasing funnel. As you continue to better optimize your website for higher engagement and lead submission, it’s important to keep these things in mind.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve become particularly interested in studying the differences between new and returning visitors on dealership websites. The reason for this is because all (or at least a good majority) of the leads our clients were capturing were folks who were wanting purchase relatively soon. These folks were going through trade appraisal experiences, scheduling test drives and doing things that you’d typically do right before you’re about to decide on a vehicle.

When I began studying these two different types of consumers, I asked myself a baseline question: “Who was more likely to convert?” The data I dissected indicated that consumers who were returning to a website were more likely to convert into a lead. After taking the data and tying it to general engagement data, I discovered that the path was pretty typical.

When people are initially visiting your website, they’re in a discovery mindset. They’re looking for what vehicles you carry, they’re looking at various prices and they’re looking at other info as well (location, discovery info, etc.).

Most of the time, new website visitors aren’t going to convert often. In fact, they’re very likely going to leave your website to conduct additional validation on what they found. This isn’t to say that you store is completely “out of the running.” That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Although some folks might leave and never come back (which is always a possibility), there are lots of folks who will leave your dealership website to validate some of the information they’ve read on your website. Consumers might look up specific information regarding a particular make and model listed. They might look up reviews of a particular vehicle, or even look up reviews of your dealership.

The time between a consumer visiting your website leaving and coming back can range anywhere from several months to just a few minutes. Regardless of the time in-between, it’s pretty clear that that time frame can be a little nerve-wracking.

You don’t know when a consumer is coming back (or if they’re coming back), and you don’t know if they decided to go with a competitor. Keeping consumers on your dealership’s website for an extended period of time is ideal but challenging. It’s very rare that a consumer will travel down the purchasing funnel from start to finish within one single visit. It’s just not practical for most people. Purchasing a vehicle is a BIG decision and that’s why consumers conduct as much research as humanly possible — and research takes time.

Despite this, however, there are ways your dealership can really make the most of this typical consumer behavior. What if I told you that there was a way for you to “convert” a consumer at the beginning stages of the purchasing funnel? You might not think it’s realistic (or even possible), but trust me when I say it can be done. What it all boils down to is the way your website approaches those consumers.

If you’re like most dealerships, your website caters heavily to consumers at the bottom of the purchasing funnel — basically folks wanting to purchase very, very soon. Your trade appraisal tools, your payment calculators, your credit applications, your test-drive schedules are all things that bottom of the funnel consumers would be most interested in.

To ensure that you’re thoroughly engaging with consumers at the top of the funnel, you need to provide relevant CTA’s and content to someone in a discovery mindset. After you convert those folks, the data you collect will allow you to push them further down the purchasing funnel — so when they very likely leave, they’ll eagerly return to your website. Ideally, your site is setup with the kind of technology capable of automatically remembering them.

Soft CTA’s vs Aggressive CTA’s

Although returning visitors of the funnel consumers, arguably, have more immediate needs because they want to purchase soon, top of the first time visitors have needs that need to be addressed too. They’re just different than the folks who have come to a more solidified conclusion on what vehicle they’re going to buy.

Typical dealership websites have a variety of calls-to-action (or CTA’s) on their VDP’s and SRP’s. Those calls-to-action often consist of: value your trade, get e-price, get special offer, and so on. As you can see, these types of experiences are often completed by folks who are about ready to purchase.

Because the majority of dealership websites out there focus on bottom of the funnel consumers, folks in the research phases aren’t going to be as inclined to engage with those experiences. After all, those experiences are completely irrelevant to top of funnel consumers at this point.

So, this leaves one big question: How do you convert or, at the very least, collect information on a consumer who has just started research? You obviously don’t want to come off too strong, but let's face it, you want your dealership's website to be the one your consumers visit when they ARE ready to make a purchase.

Although the primary goal for bottom of funnel CTAs is to coerce consumers into filling out their information in an experience, the other primary goal is to provide a consumer with information they need -- a trade appraisal, an e-price, a special offer, etc. Your dealership is proving it's worth by offering something of value and that's why consumers are accepting of giving out information.

It might seem counter productive to do it so early, but CTA's can play just as big of a role for dealers who want to focus on top of funnel consumers -- or your first time visitors. Consumers need information at every stage of the funnel. The only difference is the type of information.

That being said, it would be in your dealerships best interest to integrate "Soft CTA's" into your dealerships VDP's and SRP's; which would show up primarily for new website visitors who have either, never converted or who have never had any interaction with your website.

Soft CTA's are like normal Smart CTA's, but they offer far less aggressive incentives and experiences. So instead of displaying a button that says "Value Your Trade," a more appropriate button would be displayed like "Learn More Information" or "Find Out What Vehicle is Best for You!"

These experiences don't give information that goes toward a specific purchase. Instead, the linked experiences help consumers learn more about what they want and make more solidified decisions about what they might want going forward.

In addition to being a type of evaluator, soft CTA's often lead to experiences that don't absolutely require a phone number or even an email. And if they do, consumers might have an option of saying "contact me later" or "don't contact me at all."

The point of these Soft CTA's is to build a relationship with consumers and earn their trust for future business. You're giving them useful information without being pushy and in turn, you're learning a little more about specific consumers on the backend.

In addition to leveraging useful consumer info, your website can leverage the consumer's visitor information to swap out CTA's on their next visit. The hope with these soft CTA's is that they convince consumers to realize the usefulness of your dealership so that they consider you a trustworthy option coming back.

Image Credit: Joe the Goat Farmer

This year’s DrivingSales Presidents Club was definitely a memorable one. Even though the event took place over a month ago, I still think about the great folks I met as well as all the things I learned from the brilliant thought leaders who presented.

At this year’s DrivingSales Presidents Club, I listened to DrivingSales CEO, Jared Hamilton’s Keynote Speech, and there was something he said that really made me think.

Jared likened the process of shopping for a car to shopping at a grocery store. Grocery stores have changed the way consumers check out, and he used this as a metaphor for how dealers should hire and train their staff to handle the experience inside the showroom. The main question he was essentially “how do you fill the positions correctly with the right people who have the right talents and skills?

Nowadays, grocery store customers have options. They can go down the traditional model and let someone guide them throughout the whole process (giving full control to the sales team); and alternatively, they have the option of self check-out or self-service. Your showroom is extremely similar.

For starters, let’s take a look at the options you have at both grocery stores and dealership showrooms. In both places, you have the option of working closely with a sales representative (or a cashier) to both search for what you want and make a purchase.

At a dealership, a consumer seeking a full-service experience will go into the showroom and immediately interact with a salesperson who will give them all the information they need, and even sell them the car.

In a grocery store, a consumer will interact heavily with sales associates to order goods from the deli, the butcher, the bakery and to get help looking for certain goods. After they’ve filled their cart, they’ll go to a normal checkout lane where a cashier will scan each item they put on the belt and check them out.

Another option you have in both places is utilizing limited support. At a dealership, this could mean walking into the showroom and hopping on a kiosk or computer to get a trade appraisal, all whilst you go to a salesperson to get additional questions answered.

At a grocery store, it could mean seeking out the assistance of a clerk to find certain products, but then going to the self check-out lane and paying on your own. Naturally, if something goes wrong with the kiosks, there’s normally someone monitoring the self check-out lanes who can help you if issues arise.

The last option is complete independence. Although this is pretty rare in dealerships and grocery stores, there are some consumers that are completely disconnected from the human element of car shopping and grocery shopping. Some folks might conduct research and actually purchase online (with the only real human interaction being picking up the car), and some folks will shop for their groceries ala Peapod or Instacart and get them delivered.
 

As I was listening to Jared talk about these similarities, I started to think about dealership websites. For the longest time, I’ve been a proponent of your dealership website heavily emulating the showroom experience. Because most consumers will find themselves on your website at some point (prior to visiting your dealership — if they even do so), you want to ensure that you’re giving those consumers the same options you would on the showroom floor.

Each and every one of your consumers has individual needs that need to be met — and each one of those consumers prefers different customer service experiences. That being said, all of the calls to action and forms on your website should provide options.

For example: If a consumer goes through a trade appraisal experience, they should be provided with optional next steps. One step could be locking in the price on a specific vehicle, another could be requesting a follow-up call, and naturally, consumers can just “leave it be.”

The point I’m trying to make is that your website is just as important as your showroom; because it’s essentially your showroom in a digital format. It can be accessed from essentially anywhere, and a lot of consumers base larger decisions on what they discover on your website. If your showroom is going to evolve, shouldn’t your website evolve along with it?

I think Jared was really onto something when he discussed hiring and training the right staff. Engaging with consumers in their preferred ways is so important, and can have a major impact on your dealership’s reputation.

Consumers aren’t okay with being complacent and accepting things as they are. And by “things” I mean specific features on your website.

If consumers can’t find the information that they’re looking for and get the details that they need right from your site, chances are good that they will not continue their relationship with your brand.

In this day and age, hiding information from consumers -- without the promise of any benefits to them -- is going to quickly turn them away from your dealership. As I mentioned in a DrivingSales post a few months ago, it’s important for your dealership to possess resources that can educate prospective buyers. Consumers prefer to self-educate, and with all the information in the world at their fingertips, they will take their business to where they are getting the best customer experience.
 

Before the internet, it might have made sense to keep some information close to the chest in order to better negotiate with the consumer. Nowadays, transparency is key, and it is essential that your dealership provides resources that empower the buyer to come into the dealership armed with knowledge.
 

When consumers are armed with knowledge, they will be less likely to ask numerous questions and try to negotiate a new price. If they’re coming into your showroom, that means they are far enough down the sales funnel that they will probably want to test drive and buy.

Technology has made it easy for customers to have a more independent research experience and to better prequalify themselves before they buy. Consumers can visit your website to look at inventory, financing options, pricing, assessments, trade appraisals, and reviews all before they buy.

So now that we’ve determined that educating your consumers is indeed important, what are some of the more specific things? Read on to find out!

Product Features
 

One of the first things I’ll be discussing in regards to consumer education are product features. Given how much of an investment vehicle purchases are, many consumers are rightfully choosy about every aspect of that investment. With all the features that many newer cars possess (Navigation systems, bluetooth functionality, rearview cameras, etc.), many OEM’s are fighting to develop the coolest and most useful car features for their consumers. That being said, there are a dizzying number of vehicles to choose from.

If your goal is to educate consumers on vehicle product features, make sure that information is in the limelight. Organize your pages so that those features are being highlighted, and if applicable, develop some multi-media to describe their functionality -- videos, images, etc.

Now, if you want to go the extra mile, one thing you can do is leverage videos and images to discuss individual product features -- features that you think would most entice your consumers. Explain the purpose of these features and of course, describe all the possible benefits of such product features.

Pricing

The next item that most dealership consumers like being educated on is pricing. Sure, you might think to yourself “Cool. All I need to do is slap a price on a piece of inventory and then we’re good to go” -- but educating consumers on pricing is far deeper than that. While consumers like dealers to be straight-forward about their inventory pricing (after all, they primarily wanna know if they can afford it), many are still apprehensive about the real cost of their vehicle.

Regardless of whether or not they can afford the vehicle or not, consumers don’t want to be swindled… therefore, as a dealer, it’s important for you to not just be upfront about the cost, but about how you managed to calculate that price to begin with.

Using multimedia formats like infographics, animated gifs and video, your dealership can explain in detail how that price was calculated. Describe the features that make the vehicle unique and valuable. Describe what type of vehicle it is, and how much they typically cost. And if it’s a used vehicle, explain how the car’s history impacts that final price. The point here is that this type of information needs to be absolutely clear to the consumer. By educating a consumer on exact price calculations, you stand a FAR better chance of earning their trust -- and using multimedia to describe those calculations will keep their attention.

Financing Options

The last, and arguably, most important thing that consumers want to be educated on are your dealership’s financing options. Assuming most folks are going to pay for a car upfront with cold, hard cash, chances are good that your consumers are going to need to take out a loan, lease their vehicle or trade-in their current vehicle.

While most dealerships have financing information on their websites (yours probably does too), but detailed is that information? Does it list off different interest rate ranges? Does it describe the factors that go into appraising a vehicle? Does it explain that certain things could have an impact on whether or not you get approved for a loan? The list goes on.

When it comes to matters of finance (or financing, more specifically), things can get complicated really quickly -- and that means your consumers will likely have lots of different questions. Even if you expect that many of your consumers will come to your dealership with specific questions, why not attempt to answer more common (but complicated) questions ahead of time?

Set up a Frequently Asked Questions section specifically for financial matters -- or better yet, set up an entire educational section devoted to different financing options. Provide up-to-date policies & interest rates, definitions, and explanations. And if you want to go the extra mile, provide calculators that let consumers assess their current financial situation -- that way they can conduct better research.

You don’t want to overwhelm your consumers with information right off the bat, but you definitely should not leave anything out. Allow consumers the opportunity to keep clicking to explore and learn more about specific features.

Remember: Consumers today want a two-way conversation as they engage with your brand. So don’t hit them with everything at once, but rather reveal more information as they delve deeper into your site.

 

Even though your consumers may not understand all information presented to them on your website, that’s okay. If anything, that opens the door for a conversation with your sales team, further making your dealership an even more valuable resource. It’s better to make it clear you have nothing to hide, and are open to be asked questions!

Educating consumers visiting your website on specific features is a key way to build their trust in your dealership. So don’t be afraid to share any and all information you have, and use your website as a sales tool to arm your customers with knowledge so they can come into your showroom well-informed and with a sense of trust.

During some recent conversations, I’ve discovered that dealerships continue to mistakenly perceive CRM lead duplication badly. I strongly believe we have to change the mindset in the industry.

If the same visitor interacts continuously with your site, you’re actually engaging them and building their trust.

Yes, it will result in duplicate leads. However, every time a person interacts with your website, the percentage of that person coming to your showroom to buy a vehicle increases.

Duplicate leads convert at a 167% higher than average rate, according to a Velocify study, and I’d venture to say that percentage is even higher today as websites have become even more personalized to consumers.

I work with dealers every day as a technology provider and see firsthand that more clicks and time on site generates a significant increase in conversion.

Think about your own interaction with websites. If you visit a site and leave quickly, you’re likely not finding what you were looking for.

If instead, you arrive on a site, begin clicking around and get lost in the experience, so to speak, you’re more likely going to trust the source of the information and be more likely to become a customer.

When a shopper comes into your dealership, talks to more people on your team, touches more cars, shares more information about themselves, then they’re much more likely to end up buying from you.

The way a visitor interacts is similar online, but it happens at a much faster pace. One extra minute on the site can make a huge impact online (compare that to a shopper who’s spending one more hour at your dealership).

There is a stronger likelihood visitors who interact on your site for a longer time will end up as a duplicate lead. Capturing the most information about a lead should be a priority, so instead of looking at lead duplication negatively, here’s how you can start to manage and embrace it.

1. Educate and Train your Dealership Team

Whether it’s the BDC, sales reps, a sales manager or the GM, anyone who works leads or helps to pull or review reporting from your CRM needs to know why duplicate leads are good.

It can be more work to manage duplicate leads (at least initially), but these are often the most interested website visitors and can help you sell more cars.

The message often gets lost, so if you’re reading this article, make sure your entire team understands why they shouldn’t view duplicate leads negatively.

I would even suggest producing a report that shows you duplicate or merged leads to find out who has been interacting with your site the most. This will help you focus on those website visitors that are more likely to buy a car.

2. Take Advantage of CRM Functions and Features

You have a CRM to help you manage and automate all the information you capture, but sometimes we see dealerships not taking full advantage of their systems.

Talk to your CRM provider to help you handle duplicates. With changes or updates to XML formatting, you can automatically merge lead duplicates within your system, saving you time on backend cleanup. Your CRM should be able to merge duplicates by looking at lead name, email or phone number. Also make sure these merged leads are labeled correctly in the CRM so you can see just how many times one lead interacted with your site.

You obviously want your key performance indicator reporting to be accurate. It affects departmental compensation and upper management’s understanding of performance.

If you start seeing a lot of duplicate leads and it affects reporting, you may need to readjust your goals or benchmarks. Make sure to include definitions in your reporting so that the rest of your team understands more duplicate leads means more consumer engagement on your website and that’s a GOOD thing… even if it means a change in KPI’s.

For example, if you sign up for a new trade-in tool that creates duplicates, then you can configure your CRM to create a separate “lead source” for leads that are duplicates. This will allow you to separately report on duplicate leads and not allow it to impact your overall lead-to-sale conversion percentage.

You can always adjust your reporting once your CRM begins merging duplicate leads on the front end.

3. Work Closely with Vendors
 

You can optimize lead triggers and lead delivery so information about a lead comes into your CRM in an ideal format and so that they’re labeled correctly.

We help clients set up different lead sources for each lead type so they know what CTAs visitors are interacting with on their websites.

You can use the XML format to parse out data correctly. For example, we can trigger leads in a CRM after a website visitor goes through the first step and the second-to-last step of an interactive experience. We can change when a lead triggers or can put criteria around an experience to say to only trigger a lead during certain points throughout an experience.

Your vendor should be able to work with your CRM provider to help you make changes so you capture the information that’s going to be beneficial to you.

4. Embrace Duplicate Leads

Most dealers aren’t used to a large number of duplicate leads in their CRM because they only have static lead forms on their website. In these instances, a consumer is entering their information and leaving the site.

Ideally, you want to encourage visitors spend more time on your website. Interactive CTAs helps with this and your CRM will capture more lead data because of multistage conversion. You can expect to see duplicate leads, but take time on the front end to work with your vendor and CRM provider to make sure these leads are merged.

Remember, embrace duplicate leads and help change the old mindset. They’re likely your next buyer.

If you work in the automotive industry in any capacity, there’s a really good chance that you’re aware of the plethora of digital retailing tools on the market today. You’ve got tools for trade appraisal, deal arrangement, calculating payments, scheduling test drives, etc. There are tools out there for just about every aspect of your dealership’s day-to-day consumer operations; and the ultimate goal of about 99% of these tools is to collect a lead.

While some tools are arguably better than others (according to consumer reviews and usage), there are a few problem areas that a majority of today’s tools possess — or rather, there are missing features that, if they existed, could transform these good tools into great ones.

So that leaves us with one important question: Just what’s missing from digital retailing solutions today? Allow me to explain:

They Aren’t Mutually Beneficial

The first issue I’ve observed with a lot of these digital retailing solutions is that they aren’t mutually beneficial. This basically means that only one party benefits from the tool itself — and it’s often just the dealer.

The whole point of consumers leveraging these tools is so they’re able to get answers to their questions and move further down the purchasing funnel. However, there are times when a consumer will only get a snippet of information (not enough to make or break a purchasing decision), while the dealer gets the whole shebang: name, address, phone number, email address, vehicle preferences, etc.

Not only does the lack of benefits deter consumers from filling out their information to begin with, but it makes the conversation completely one sided. When a consumer goes through a trade appraisal experience, they’re expecting answers — and the information that the dealer receives (from that experience) should be leveraged to better cater to a consumer’s needs.

Want to ensure that the tools on your website mutually beneficial? Make sure the tools you integrate onto your website give consumers what they want and need — and in order for them to get that trade appraisal or schedule that test drive, they’ll need to supply information to the dealer. It’s an equal exchange of information.

The Tools Aren’t Fully Connected to the Rest of your Website

Another common issue with digital retailing tools is that they're often NOT connected to the rest of your website. Sure, they’re on almost every page of your website, but it’s more like these tools are just sitting on top of your website as opposed to being fully integrated into the code and talking to other tools on your website.

For example: Let’s say you’re a consumer and you visit a dealership's website hoping to get both an appraisal of your vehicle and make an offer on a specific vehicle should you find one that interests you. You go through the trade appraisal experience no problem — getting your trade appraisal and a voucher for said appraisal after entering in your information. Now, after hunting around on the website for a section to make your offer, you have to go through the process of entering your information all over again.

If you’ve already entered your information, and the dealership knows who you are, why would you have to enter your information again? It might seem like a minor inconvenience, but connecting those two experiences together provides your dealership with insight into what a consumer is going after — and that, once again, helps with the consumer/dealer relationship.

The other connectivity issue you’ll see here is that the consumer had to go hunting for the “make an offer” section. If those tools were connected and “talking to one another,” a CTA (or call-to-action) could have popped following the previous experience to send them that way. A simple “What is your next step?” question in that trade appraisal experience could have pushed that consumer in the right direction. If experiences such as the ones I mentioned aren’t connected, the likelihood for a consumer to drop off or bounce off a page increases significantly.

If you find that the tools on your website aren’t as connected as you’d like them to be, all you need to do is reach out to your software provider and ask them if there are ways for those experiences to interact or talk to one another. Even if they don’t have that option just yet, simply inquiring can have a big impact on how many software and website providers continue to improve their products.

They Aren’t Customizable or Flexible

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: a one size fits all solution isn’t going to work. I repeat. A one size fills all solution isn’t going to work. In order for your website to be able to cater to different types of consumers, the digital retail solutions need to be customizable in some way, shape or form. Besides wanting to offer a unique experience to the consumer as they peruse your website, you want their answers they provide from those unique questions to allow your sales team to provide personalized follow-up.

Even if you don’t think your current digital retailing solution is able to be customized, you owe it to yourself to reach out to them and see what they can do for you. There might be customizable features that you’re unaware of, or ones that were just realized through an update. Now, if you’re shopping around for digital retailing solutions, all you need to do is look at the different ways you’d be able to possibly customize your experiences. Are you able to upload images? What about videos? Can you add custom questions or offer hyper personalized results based on things they’ve selected? Carefully look at the features of each software platform and ask lots of questions.

Making any sort of changes to your website can be pretty intimidating. After all, you risk compromising the very way you capture leads. You might be worried that you’re getting fewer leads. Just know that with software improvements often comes improvements in the quality of leads received. So even if you are receiving fewer leads, it’s safe to assume that those leads will be far better than ever before because you’re guiding these leads to exactly what they’re looking for — and that means you’re pushing them towards an actual purchase.

As an internet manager, you monitor a number of different metrics on your dealership’s website. These metrics are all to determine the overall engagement and financial health of your dealership’s digital marketing efforts. Some of the most common website metrics internet managers measure are Click-through rate, Click-to-Lead & Completion Rate. While these metrics are certainly important to keep tabs on for more specific components of your website, you can’t only leverage these metrics to measure overall success. You have to dig a little deeper.

Click-through rate, Click-to-lead & completion rate what I consider “vanity metrics.” Why do I call them vanity metrics? Well, because they have the potential to look really impressive. If your website typically gets lots of traffic coming from your social media channels, or they segue into another section through an on-website call-to-action, chances are good that your Click-through-rate might be pretty high. A 2-3% CTR on a social campaign might look good (depending on the number of impressions), but is CTR truly a full measure of success? Absolutely not. Even if you have an optimal CTR, is that traffic converting into a lead? Better yet, are those leads then converting into sales?

If, hypothetically, you’re not getting in-store visits and your leads aren’t converting to sales, you need to investigate further and see what’s going on. Are you perhaps reaching the wrong consumer base or audience? Is the messaging on your website completely clear to your target market? Different types of conversions are relative to your dealership’s goals and environment. In a nutshell, there are other aspects of your campaign that you need to examine to fully determine the overall engagement and financial success of your dealership. Here are 3 example “Vanity Metrics” that your dealership should delve deeper into:

Click-through Rate

Like I discussed before, a 2-3% click-through rate might look solid, but it’s not a completely full measure of success. Are those clicks to different sections of your website converting into leads? To fully understand whether or not your click-through rate is worth breaking out the champagne out for, you should be asking yourself a few crucial questions: How long are these folks on a page before they leave? Are they even attempting to fill out a form or a portion of an online experience (say, a trade appraisal or deal arrangement experience)? Another question you might ask yourself is “were you expecting an even higher click-through rate?”

To gain a better understanding of how good or bad your website’s click-through rate is, it’s important to dive into even more specific metrics that are directly tied to campaign performance. Metrics like: bounce rate and time on page can give insight into just how relevant and useful certain pages were to a particular audience. If you want to go even deeper, you can go into Google Analytics and look at the Navigation Summary for individual pages in order to determine why certain consumers jumped off the page.

Here’s a good example: Let’s say you have a page on your website that gets lots of traffic to it from different clicks, but no one is really converting on that page and the bounce rate is relatively high. The target page consists of a payment calculator — and the pages your consumers are coming from are inventory pages. Even though the calculator is seemingly relevant, the calculator doesn’t provide enough spaces for consumers to get a highly customized, and relatively accurate estimate of how much they might pay each month. If a consumer suspects that they won’t get anything of value from using the calculator, they’re going to leave the page and that will, in turn, increase the bounce rate.

If you’re dealing with offsite marketing (social or display advertising leading to your website), you might consider looking at other metrics like “Impressions” in comparison to link clicks — which would hopefully give you a better idea of just how relevant your ads are to your audience. If you find that people simply aren’t clicking, a potential fix would be to fix the actual ad copy or creatives.

Click-to-Lead Ratio

The next vanity metric I’ll be discussing is “Click-to-Lead Ratio” — with “Click to Lead” being the metric that represents a basic lead that’s generated after someone clicks a CTA. It’s information that stems from a consumer going through some of a website experience. Suppose you’ve captured a total of 45 leads during the 1st month and a half of the quarter and you still have that 2-3% click-through rate. Again, that CTR ain't shabby — but there’s more to that number than what meets the eye.

That click-through rate and even that number of leads might appear sound, but if you dig a little deeper, you might discover that they’re not the leads you want after all — which makes many of those unique conversions useless. Why? Well, it appears that some of those leads (let’s say 20 out of 45 of them) simply don’t meet your dealership’s specific qualifications. For example: 20 of the leads captured aren’t ready to purchase anytime soon. If there’s one thing you can learn from this, it’s that not all conversions or leads are “good.” So if your click-to-lead ratio is seemingly high, you might want to delve deeper and see what that number actually is.

In addition to determining whether or not a lead is qualified, it’s very possible that of those 45 leads, only a handful actually completed an experience. They might have filled out some of their information in an experience (and that information happened to be saved), but they dropped off midway and that left you with only some vital information.  

So what’s an internet manager to do? Well, for starters, altering the messaging and imagery on your website will help provide clarity to your consumers on what it is they’re signing up for. If consumers feel unsure about what it is they’re filling out, or they discover midway through an experience that it isn’t relevant, that lead would be considered incomplete.

All that being said, what sorts of things can you do to ensure they’re staying on the page? Taking a look at more specific metrics that might be able to improve the chances of consumers converting — metrics like “Time on Page” or “Bounce Rate.” At this point, you should ask yourself "How do you improve the Time on Page as well as Decrease Bounce Rate?"

Completion Rate

The last vanity metric I’ll be going over is “Completion rate,” which is essentially someone who has gone beyond a basic lead. I touched on this lightly in the last section. They’re not a customer just yet, but they’ve at least completed an experience and you have a good portion of useful information.While the completion rate is most definitely a worth-while metric to look at, the reason why I call it a “Vanity metric” is because, once again, it shows the big picture and only the big picture. It’s a potentially nice metric to look at, but we don’t necessarily know what it means.

For example: Let’s say your current completion rate is around 60% — meaning about 60% of the consumers who initiated the experience or clicked onto your website went through a trade appraisal, a dealer arrangement and so on. Honestly, I’d call 60% a pretty big win. However, you might be curious about a few things. For example, you might ask yourself: why wasn’t my completion rate higher? Or better yet, “what do my completion rates look like on average? Are these results better or worse?” Essentially, it’s important for dealers and internet managers like yourself to be curious about the why and how of these numbers — especially for completion rates.

Unlike “Click-to-Lead Ratio,” where you’re essentially trying to figure out why certain experiences were NOT completed, you should (with Completion Rate) figure out why the consumers you’ve captured did complete your dealership website experience. For example: How did they answer specific questions around the end of the experience? But a really great question would be “How long did it take for them to complete the experience?” By looking at the “time on page,” you’ll possess better insight into your consumer’s patience level — and the bounce rate of an experience will tell you where they lost interest.

Another thing you might consider is keeping track of navigation patterns (notably in Google Analytics), so you can gain a better understanding of how certain decisions were made within a particular experience.

What are specific metrics that your dealership pays attention to for lead conversion? Let us know in the comments!

Many dealers experience a plateau in their marketing efforts — and there are many reasons why this is the case: Holidays, large events, overall economic climate, etc. When things aren’t going to plan, it’s only natural for dealers to want to slow down on their digital marketing efforts — or their marketing efforts, in general.

Now, if a strategy isn’t working out, does it really make sense to keep using it? Of course not! Many dealers somehow fall into a trap where they’re still using those ineffective strategies, but less of them. Or worse, sometimes dealerships will give up on aspects of their marketing altogether.

Assuming that when your marketing efforts are slumping, your sales are also slumping — so wouldn’t it make more sense to put an effort into making things better as opposed to forgoing any strategy?

Instead of letting your strategy lapse, you should be altering your strategy to make it work better for your dealership. You don’t necessarily need to spend more money — you just need to figure out how to make that money work for you.

As I’ve mentioned time and time again, your dealership’s website is, arguably, the most important aspect of your dealership’s marketing efforts. If you’re not currently focusing on making your website better, why not finally take the plunge? And if you are working on your website, think about what you can change. Think about what you can do to best utilize your website and capture those leads using your marketing budget.

Shift Some of your Budget Away from 3rd Party Brands
 

It’s no secret that there are still a number of dealerships who leverage 3rd party brands pretty heavily on their website: AutoTrader, KBB, Edmunds, CarGurus, and so on.  If you’ve been following my posts over the last few months, you understand that heavily utilizing 3rd party brands makes it increasingly difficult for dealerships to truly showcase their individuality as a brand and stand out. In addition to showcasing another brand besides your own, many dealers will link directly to those 3rd party websites.

Obviously, if a dealership is listing the “KBB or AutoTrader price” on a vehicle on their website, they’re going to reciprocate with a link back, right? Well, obviously you don’t want your consumers completing a transaction on another website. You want them to stay on your website and hopefully pay your dealership a visit to complete a transaction!  

That being said, try shifting away from 3rd party brands for a little while, and see how it pans out. Steer away from listing your dealership’s inventory on other websites and don’t promote another brand’s “Best Price” (Ex: Kelly Blue Book pricing). Use those additional funds to focus on creating a unique experience for your consumers using your brand. Keep all of your inventory on your website and maybe even brand your price. Not only will branding your price keep them on your website and pique their curiosity, but they’re be more inclined to trust you -- especially if you provide them with an explanation of how you managed to get that best price to begin with.

As you continue to really tweak your website’s experience, make sure to include something your consumers might enjoy and then see how it pans out. If you can think about the many questions you receive on a day-to-day basis, it might provide insight into the things your consumers can discover on your website.

Instead of paying for additional advertising and to have your cars listed on a 3rd party website, you can leverage those funds to drive and convert traffic on your own website; where the cost per lead and cost pers sale will be less -- and at a higher lead to sale rate. By improving the overall experience and increasing engagement on your own website, you can do just that!

Use Budget to Send Consumers to Your Website

Once you’ve updated your website and made it super awesome, now would be a good time to actually send people to your website, right? While many consumers will undoubtedly discover your website via a quick google search, competition is still fierce — and some dealership websites are getting more traffic than others. Reserve some of your marketing budget to do some social media advertising for your website.

One thing I highly recommend while advertising is to create CTA’s (or calls-to-action) that specifically clarify what you’d like for them to. A good example would be a “Learn More” button that sends consumers directly to your dealership’s inventory. Another ad could be one that sends consumers directly to an interactive experience, and the button says “Sign Up Here” or “Try Now.” Lots of social media platforms have these buttons, so definitely experiment with them.

Look, it’s hard — SUPER hard — to look at your numbers slumping. I get it. The seemingly easiest thing to do is to throw your hands up and just halt all of your progress. I can tell you from my experience with working with dealers that this shouldn’t be the case. With all the amazing ways dealerships can now engage with their consumers, you owe it to yourself to make those investments.

As consumers continue to visit dealership websites to conduct research, the more important it is for consumers to continue to beef up their websites with the possible tools: trade-in tools, calculators, assessments, etc.

It might seem relatively simple to just have your website provider slap any ol’ tool on your dealership’s website, but this move could prove to be rather detrimental. Even though doing something like this would have been more than acceptable, say, 10-15 years ago, dealerships should absolutely think about their current marketing and sales goals before moving forward with implementation.

As time has progressed, dealerships have become more and more aware of the impact their websites can have on consumer attraction, retention and conversion. The quality and resourcefulness of your website can mean the difference between a high bounce rate and a closed customer.

There are a number of different dealership tools on the market today that have been developed for prospective car shoppers. While many of these are tools are extremely effective at providing many consumers what they want, not all tools are built alike and provide the same types of results.

On the market today, there are 2 important types of dealership website tools that you need to pay attention to: utility tools and conversion tools (or guide tools, as I sometimes call them). In a nutshell, utility tools (or website utilities) are exactly what you’d expect they’d be. They’re tools that solely act as a utility to a consumer. For example: a payment calculator would be considered a utility — because it’s a simple tool that does exactly what it says its going to do and nothing more.

A conversion tool, however, is one that focuses on converting that consumer into a paying customer. A good example would be a consumer that wants to calculate their monthly payment, while being presented with options that would fit their particular budgetary needs. Instead of just supplying a calculation, it goes the extra mile.

Of course, this isn’t to say that one type of tool is better than the other. In many ways, utility tools can be just as good as conversion tools. When searching for the perfect lead generation tool for your website, it’s important to think about your current marketing and sales goals. If your goal is to supply a quick resource for consumers who are likely to buy from you, then by all means, stick with a website utility tool. If, however, you’re trying to convince consumers to buy from your dealership, you might consider integrating a tool that acts as a guide — a conversion tool, if you will.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “Utility tools and conversion tools sound about the same. I don’t get what the BIG difference is. Isn’t a utility tool a resource that consumers use during their research?” Well, yes and no. Although utility and conversion tools can possess a lot of the same functionality, their purposes are entirely different. To understand their differences, of course, you need to fully understand what utility tools and conversions tools actually are:

What Are Utility Tools?

Like I mentioned before, utility tools are integrated onto a dealership’s website purely for the purpose of being, you guessed it, a utility. Usually heavy in functionality but without a high level of user-friendliness.

What’s arguably the biggest difference between utility tools and conversion tools is that utility tools are simply tools that were originally made for internet managers and dealers, but were converted to assist consumers as well. Even though this might seem like a positive all around, a lot of the terminology used hasn’t been changed or simplified for a curious consumer. For example: Consumers utilizing a traditional trade-in tool might not be able to fully assess the detailed options and condition of their vehicle because they (like many consumers), don’t have a full understanding of what would be considered a “good” or “average” condition vehicle. Consumers who aren’t familiar with automotive terminology might find themselves confused with a trade-in experience, and it might ultimately leave them frustrated.

This, of course, isn’t to say that utility tools are bad. While I’ll fully admit that I’m advocate for the consumer guide approach, utility tools can prove extremely useful for consumers who are familiar with automotive terminology. Many digital retailing technologies are a great example of utilities are helping advance consumer's capabilities online. They’re also a really good example of a utility based product. Very heavy in functionality but for someone who doesn’t handle vehicle transactions on a daily basis, it can be a lot to take on. Where we see the best performance of the digital retailing strategy is by far with the most consumer centric

What are Conversion Tools?

Unlike website utilities (or utility tools), the purpose of conversion tools is to literally convert a consumer into a paying customer. A conversion tool might also consist of a trade-in tool or calculator — but the actual experience and results are presented at a very high-level and are easily digestible. Instead of assuming that consumers will understand certain terminology or understand the intricacies of determining vehicle condition (good, bad, average, etc.), it asks consumers to answer questions that they can answer with full confidence.

For example: Instead of asking a consumer about the condition of their vehicle, they could simply ask about the things that aren’t based on opinion like: vehicle mileage, years you’ve known the vehicle, car make and model, etc. The questions in these tools let consumers feel like they have a say in the matter — even if they’re providing simple information. And in addition to providing “just the facts,” they might have an opportunity to show their interest in other things like: a test drive, special services — anything that can help folks in the dealership help their consumers when they finally are ready to purchase.

Long story short, website utility tools and conversion guide tools both have clear benefits to your dealership. Whatever type of tool your dealership decides to use should be determined by your consumer base as well as your dealership’s overall marketing and sales goals. Again, while I’m personally a heavy advocate for conversion tools, you might find that utilities are helpful as well. My suggestion to you is to experiment with different types of technology and use your best judgment. You never know how things will pan out.