As we close out 2025, I’m taking the time to reflect on the automotive industry’s evolution this past year. Specifically, I find myself thinking about dealership websites. Not long ago, most conversations about dealership websites revolved around inventory, CTAs, and compliance. Those topics are still important, but in 2025, for the first time—thanks to AI—dealers began to seriously rethink what it means to deliver a personalized digital shopping experience that reflects each consumer’s individual behavior.
What stands out most to me isn’t just the growing interest in personalization, but the urgency behind it. This wasn’t a trend that emerged slowly; it was propelled forward by consumers who now expect website experiences that adapt to them automatically, much like Amazon does.
For me, it became clear that a website could no longer offer one static experience for every car shopper. Instead, it needed to be a platform that learns, adjusts, and responds in real time.
That realization led me to make some important changes. Collectively, my team saw what dealers were struggling with, recognized the gap in the market, and adapted our approach accordingly. Now, after a year of watching these changes play out, we can actually see the impact…
The New Baseline for Digital Retailing
If I had to summarize 2025 in one phrase, it would be this: car shoppers now expect websites to work for them, not just with them.
Previously, a car shopper’s online experience was largely the same, no matter their demographic or previous vehicle preferences. Pages were static. Tools were reactive. Website flows were designed around dealer processes rather than consumer preferences. But this year made the shortcomings of that model painfully obvious.
Consumers can’t be fooled; they know what a good digital experience feels like because they encounter it every day in other retail, banking, travel, and entertainment industries. So, when they arrive on a dealership website, they subconsciously expect the same level of intelligence and personalization. So, what happens if they don’t receive it? Well…they leave!
My team started asking ourselves the following important questions:
- What would happen if we customized homepage messages?
- What if we made CTAs unique to each shopper and where they are in the buying journey?
- What if returning shoppers were allowed to instantly pick up where they left off?
- What if pricing tools and trade-in tools retain previously entered information?
These questions were long overdue and answering them allowed us to push toward meaningful innovation in 2025.
The Shift Toward Behavior-Based Personalization
The biggest evolution we observed and participated in this year was the move to true behavior-based personalization. Since each click, scroll, hover, and return visit creates a clearer picture of that individual shopper, dealers have everything they need to let their websites interpret those signals and adjust the experience accordingly.
Throughout 2025, dealers embraced this concept in three key ways:
- Personalizing content based on shopping patterns
If a shopper repeatedly gravitated toward used SUVs, the website adapted. If they demonstrated price sensitivity, their experience was adjusted to promote clearer incentives or savings-based messaging. If their behavior showed they were early in their research journey, the website highlighted educational trade-in calculators and appraising tools rather than aggressive lead forms.
- Reducing unnecessary steps in the path to purchase
For years, dealers would assume adding tools to their websites would increase leads. 2025 showed us that more tools don’t always equal more engagement. Instead, what matters is relevance. When shoppers are shown fewer, but more meaningful, relevant options based on their behavior, they move faster and seamlessly through their shopping journey.
- Recognizing returning visitors as individuals rather than new sessions
When a website remembers a shopper’s progress, interests, and actions, the shopping journey is instantly transformed into a familiar, smoother, and more human experience that delivers higher engagement and boosted confidence.
These three changes may sound small, but together they’ve helped dealers move beyond outdated one-size-fits-all approaches and toward something much more modern.
What We Learned After Making These Changes
After making these changes, we’ve reviewed the results across a variety of market conditions and saw:
- Increases in engagement on key pages
- Shoppers returning to the website to pick up where they left off
- Higher-quality leads visiting the website
- Improvements in DR tool usage
Shopper intent signals throughout 2025 taught us that personalization is not about adding complexity; it’s about reducing it. When a website intuitively adapts to a car buyer’s behavior, it naturally removes unnecessary choices and refocuses their attention on what matters most.
What This Means in The Year Ahead
Dealers are asking me, “Joe, what’s the next major website shift going to be?” I’ll answer with this: If 2025 is any indication, the biggest opportunity in the coming year is a piggyback to this year’s, as we continue to refine behavior-based personalization with AI tools like never before. Because dealers don’t need more tools, they need smarter tools. Ones that respond to consumer actions and adjust themselves in real time.
2025 was a turning point. It marked the year the industry began treating website visitors as individuals rather than sessions and rang in a more modern digital car shopping experience for all. For dealers, it ignited the beginning of a fiery, intuitive, consumer-focused approach to online retailing.
And let me tell you this: dealers who embrace this as we step into the new year will benefit from more engaged shoppers, stronger lead quality, and a more streamlined digital retailing experience that actually moves people toward a sale.
That’s an evolution good for dealers, shoppers, and the industry as a whole.
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Joe has been an entrepreneur, business owner, and real estate investor since the age of 21, with deep roots in automotive retail and early experience in online real estate marketing and sales in the 1990s. After years as a dealer principal for six new car franchises, Joe became increasingly frustrated with the limited, underperforming technology options available to dealers. Knowing there had to be a better alternative, he founded