By Tim Duke, Senior Director of Performance Management, FusionZONE Automotive
Online leads from your website close faster, at a higher rate and gross, than any other online lead. But the problem is that the majority of dealership websites, consistently convert less than one percent of their traffic into leads. However, with a few changes made to your website, you can drive conversion rates as high as 10 percent.
Below are four tips to help you move consumers right where you want them – submitting a lead and giving your sales team one more chance at-bat with an in-market car shopper!
(1) Provide a map and lead online visitors where you want them to go.
Imagine driving towards a destination, in the dark with no road signs, and your GPS stops working. Sadly, that’s very similar to the online experience many dealers offer to customers on their homepage.
90 percent of visitors on your site are there looking for one of three things: new inventory, used inventory, or service. So, doesn’t it make sense to have these areas marked clearly at the top of your homepage? I always recommend three large CTAs (Call to Action) on your homepage, one for each of these options. If you have additional profit drivers, you can have CTAs for those as well (no more than six), but again, since 90 percent of clicks are on new, used, or service, have these as your first three CTAs on your homepage (above the fold).
Your homepage is the map you provide to shoppers that says here’s how you get to the destination you came here to find. Somewhat counterintuitively, you want to eliminate choice for the consumer so that you can lead them to your product.
Another point to keep in mind is few consumers scroll down on your homepage at all and less than five percent ever making it to the bottom. This means the content below the fold (anything you must scroll down the page to see), isn’t really for consumers. Sure, you should put some specials on sliders, and a small fraction of consumers will interact with those.
Truthfully though, almost all the below the fold content is strictly for SEO purposes. You should ensure that your website provider provides quality SEO content on your homepage, but that is a topic for another article.
Think of the lowest common denominator, and structure your website so that any given person can easily find their way. If you make it simple for customers, more of them will find their way to where you want them to go, while having a better customer experience along the way.
(2) Don’t create friction in the search process.
The key to continuing consumer engagement once someone clicks on a CTA is to deliver relevant results. Just as Google focuses on relevance, the same concept applies to your site.
Once shoppers click on a CTA, many dealership websites take them to an irrelevant page. Most are set to deliver SRPs (Search Results Pages) in a specific order. In most cases, that means all new or used vehicles and price, high to low. The problem is that this page is often irrelevant to the consumer.
Let’s say I’m shopping at a Toyota store because I’m interested in a base model new Camry. I visit your site, click “new inventory,” and then I’m given an SRP with all your new vehicles priced high to low. This result is irrelevant, and it requires either scrolling through hundreds of other vehicles to find the ones I’m interested in or additional steps to filter through inventory.
What if you delivered relevant results instead? This really isn’t that difficult. After a consumer clicks “new inventory,” rather than delivering them an SRP with every vehicle you have, first take them to a page where they can filter their results. This can be done by price, body style, model, etc. This simple change will result in lowering your bounce rate on SRP’s (sometimes by as much as 30-40 percent), which means a higher percentage of consumers interact with your inventory, and you increase your lead volume.
One more thing on this point, when it comes to your SRP and VDP, the same principle about limiting your CTAs applies. Don’t overwhelm your potential car buyers with 30 options. Keep it simple with a limit of three CTAs that focus on results that you want. Generally speaking, these are a lead form, click to call, and either digital retailing or a credit application.
(3) Know your ultimate goal.
The end goal of any dealer’s website is interaction with the customer. If you structure your site correctly, more customers will engage with you, leading to more sales.
It’s ironic that many of the things that we did in the 90s still work today. The bottom line is consumers must get incentivized into giving up their information.
The number one reason consumers do not submit a lead is they believe it will provide no benefit to them. Consumers don’t see the need to “check availability,” because they believe that if the vehicle is on your site, it should be on your lot.
Dealers must provide the “why” behind lead conversion. The most compelling why I have seen is offering a pricing concession in return for lead submission. This is achieved by clearly indicating to a consumer that a lower price is available if they simply submit a lead.
Today’s consumers are conditioned for instant gratification. Many dealer websites promise a price reduction in return for a lead but don’t deliver. Instead, they return a message, “A salesperson will call you with our price shortly.” All this does is upset consumers. Imagine you are shopping for a TV. You see a button that says, “Get the best possible price on this tv instantly!” You click it, you give your name and phone number, and then a page pops up saying, “We will call you soon with your price.” That method isn’t likely to make you a fan of that business. The same principle applies here. Give a CTA that incentivizes consumers to submit a lead, and then deliver on your promise of a lower price, instantly.
It doesn’t matter what amount of a savings you extend, as long as you deliver the offer instantly, while also fulfilling any promise made in your CTA.
(4) Remember that the first to make contact wins.
In the end, the first dealership to contact the customer, to interact, build rapport, and set a sales appointment, often wins the sale. The faster you get a customer on the phone, the more likely that customer will continue looking on your website and want to buy a vehicle.
There are many tools available to connect faster with your consumers, but you first have to examine your internal processes. Take the time to test your lead process yourself. Go to your site, submit a lead, and see how long it takes for you to receive a response. Does it take five minutes, ten minutes, or even longer?
Then, ask yourself, if I submitted this lead on my competitor’s site at the same time as submitting it on mine, who would have contacted me first? If the answer is your competitor, you have a problem! At that point, you must identify if the problem is people, process, or product. When I work with dealers on this issue, the answer almost always is in process or product.
The highest converting dealer websites are winning by creating a pathway that fulfills the customer’s desire for immediate gratification by delivering relevant results. They provide clear CTAs and respond promptly via phone and email to initiate the right kind of engagement to drive a sale.
Providing precisely what consumers are looking for, will drive higher engagement via form submissions and lead to shoppers more willing to work with your dealership. Customers are more likely to continue engagement either via phone or in person. And that’s how you increase time on site, decrease bounce rates, and sell more cars.
About the Author
Tim Duke brings over a decade of automotive and digital marketing experience to fusionZONE Automotive. His background spans from newspaper, TV, SEO, SEM, social media, and third-party automotive advertising including roles at Cars.com and DealerFire Inc. In his current role as senior director of performance management, Tim manages a national team of performance managers and is responsible for the overall satisfaction and retention of our client base.
