Online Car Buyers Seek Sales Advantage

I attended a Kelly Blue Book eMarketing seminar this week in Weehawken, New Jersey that was excellent.  The speaker shared data from surveys that investigated the online behavior of new car buyers. It was enlightening to see the clear expectations that online car buyers had when visiting a car dealer website.  Best of all, when the results were placed on a chart, the data made practical sense.

The motivations behind car dealer website designs at times are puzzling.  I’ve been to car dealer websites that actually make it hard to get a price quote on a car.  I’ve seen websites that hang up my browser because they are so overloaded with flash, or set-off my pop-up blocker with annoying “specials”.

The seminar forced me to think about how we could create an optimal website design that meets the expectations of the online car shopper.  I don’t have any solutions today, but I did start with creating a graphic of what I distilled from one part of the seminar.

Online car buyers want to be educated about the cars they are researching. They want that information provided in a convenient format and preferably sent to them via email as a PDF.  They are expecting a simple process to obtain a price quote, MSRP, and features for any car the dealer sells.  They expect dealers to respect their privacy and send them information via email before they call.  And finally, they want to feel that all this work resulted in a better –than- average price for the car they buy. They want to win.

If these needs truly represent the average online shopper, then car dealer websites have a long way to go.  Many auto dealers’ sites fail to provide the same PDF files that are offered freely on the manufacturer’s website pertaining to car model specifications, options, and colors.  Just by adding some basic educational materials to dealer websites, car buyers would be spending more time on dealer sites and less time on third party lead collection websites.

If consumers have a choice on where to educate themselves about a car, the local car dealer that adds ample content on each car that they sell will have an advantage over their local competition.  According to one of the speakers at the seminar, if the dealer respects the consumers wish to receive and review the requested information before a call is initiated, the potential for a successful result will be optimized.

Once you start looking at your website from the consumer perspective, some small changes could make a big difference in conversion rates of visitor traffic.  If you would like a free evaluation of your car dealer website, give me a call; 732-842-4720. You can also read some additional digital marketing case studies at www.dealer-seo.com .