Looking at your website through the eyes of an online consumer who wants to buy a vehicle:

• Do you help me find what I want? Presumably if I am on a dealer's site I've passed the what brands & models stage of my decision. Now I am considering from whom I'll buy.
• How well does your site help me find what is important to me in my vehicle choice?
• Why should I buy from you vs. the next 5 dealers with your franchise?
• How can you build a relationship with me when I am a click away from you never knowing who I am?
• Given a dealer's 4-6% gross profit margin on the vehicles they sell, how much more of a discount can I really give as my primary competitive advantage?
• Do you market price because your online experience stinks?
• Call or email for price is not a buying experience (sales) it is advertising (marketing). If I wanted to be harrassed about coming in to the showroom, I would have done that already. It is why I am on the web.
• What good is a payment estimator if you don't tell me what interest rate I should use or what rebates are available?
• Last time I checked, dealers made most of their money in their variable operations from F&I products. Accessories, Extended Service Contracts, Finance (interest rate) markups, Insurances, Protections. Where are those as sales efforts on dealer's websites?
• Control is an illusion and the Internet inverts it on a dealer.
• Consumers will reward a great experience by purchasing.
• A great experience will allow you to maintain a reasonable pricing / gross profit premium.

80%+ of consumers use the Internet as part of their vehicle purchasing experience. Few buy based on the leads they submit. Why?

Does your website sell or market?

Excellent post.

>80%+ of consumers use the Internet as part of their vehicle purchasing experience. Few buy based on the leads they submit. Why?<

I try to explain to all of my hosting customers, the internet is full of websites. so people browse for hours untill something gets their attention and overwhelms them.

If your website does that, you will win. If you can sell the sexyness of your inventory and make the customer feel good you can get leads. But if you are a clone of every other website out there, they just google the next guy down the street.

Buying a car is a big decision for most people, yet almost all sales are impulse buys. If you understand that and design your site with that in mind, you can capitalize on internet traffic.

But websites are no different than any other advertising medium. And in my opinion, dealers know advertising better than anyone overall.

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Webmaster of buzztrader.com a free automotive classified.

One thing that always really bugs me if when I go to a dealer website and the first thing I see is a flash intro complete with music. It takes me 4 or 5 clicks just to view inventory. Nothing about the site makes me want to buy a car. It's far from simple, and if I were actually buying a car I would immediately be turned off.

Another thing that astounds me is that dealers pay thousands a month for some websites and they have absolutely no text on the page itself. It's entirely flash, and it is not search engine friendly at all. I ran a particular site through a search engine spider simulator. The only thing that came up is the title. Absolutely no SEO is put into these very expensive pages.

It seems to me that many dealers think that if they have a website people will just magically come to it and start buying cars. They have no real concept of online marketing... yet. I believe it's slowly getting there.

From a post above...

"But websites are no different than any other advertising medium."

Amazon, Dell, eBay... these companies certainly advertise, but on the Internet they SELL too.

Car dealers are near unanimous that advertising on the web alone is an inefficient and poor profit center. I pay all this money to drive traffic to my site, buy leads, buy technology to manage it, staff it and have to advertise price, yet I have weak margins already (4-5%) because I don't have an online experience and it ignores how I make up the difference in my showroom (F&I products)... what does that look like on my profit and loss statement? I know... and I don't like the color.

Now what if a car dealer's web presence (website, SEO, SEM, Ad words, url masking, etc.) also had a "click thru to buy" experience behind it?

A complete experience, just like the consumer was sitting in the showroom: credit, interest rates, rebates, trade ins, accessories, extended service contracts, insurance, protections, tax, title and fees. Accurate monthly payments and a BUY button?

A high quality online buying experience to differentiate me in the market?

What if it was more than here's some pictures of the car and a detailed write up, now call or email me?

What if my web presence was centered around providing a great online shopping experience rather than just "overwhelming" the consumer so that they give up out of frustration and buy as the original quote suggested was the most effective approach (no offense meant... it is correct that this is the current state, but is this really the end state or as I like to call it "As good as it gets?")?

What if?

bhoecht,
Sounds like you're one your way to creating a complete ecommerce platform for a dealership.

At this time, IMO, your vision is ahead of the audience... both dealer and consumer... BUT, to give the shopper a choice to "opt out" of the dealership visit, this is interesting.

There are obstacles to this. Consumers still distrust the dealers and want to see, feel & smell it. The trade-in still needs to be negotiated. Consumers with a fist full of ACV trade-in quotes will drive in and "sell" the dealer thier trade.

Also, I believe a Dealer will fight to keep the buyer focused on the bright shiny metal and move to keep the "after sale" items out of the pre-sale light. Margins are higher on a captive client than a shopper.

On the positive side, should a legitimate BUYER/Dealer feedback system for dealers take shape, NOW you've hit the mother load!

g'luck

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Joe Pistell
DealerClearanceServices.com
...A Web Marketing Design Botique in NY
...Project 2007: BreseeChevrolet.com

Will be issuing a press release soon, but...

On Sunday the first two consumers on the face of the planet completed their vehicle purchase online from a dealer without coming in to the dealership.

They found the vehicles they wanted on the dealership's website, one arranged his own financing, the other did so using our system, they both had trade ins... but most importantly they both bought ONLINE from the dealer.

"The dawn of true vehicle eCommerce for dealers is here!"

You heard it here first.

We had a dealer back in November of last year request this, and we thought he was crazy (he is a little bit actually). This was one of those customers who was adamant in having exactly what he envisioned, no matter how bad the design is or much we tried to talk him out of it. His site is aesthetically the worst one we've ever done, but it's exactly what he wants. When he said he wanted a way for customers to purchase a vehicle (city and state taxed tacked on to retail price, processing fees, etc.) we said nobody would ever do that. To date, nobody has, however this dealer wanted a second option that has worked pretty well. In addition to the "buy it" option, we also developed a means for customers to pay $50 using their credit card online to hold the car. If they arrive and it's not as described, their money will be refunded. We had a few discussions as we developed this that nobody would ever do that, and to our amazement a customer did it on the very first day the site went live. I guess the lesson learned is that sometimes the dealers really do know more about the internet customer than the web providers, but not often!

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Higher Turnover, LLC - Websites for Independent Auto Dealers

Online Auto Dealers - Blog with information for auto dealers who use or plan to use the internet

Au contraire...

It is built, installed and live. It has an upfront "validate your email address" to get in and is still very green software but it is working. Results for most recent month are:

• 1 in 20 bought online using the BUY button directly from the website
• # validated email addresses were 2 x # leads received prior to system
• Unsolds (which get sent to dealership daily for follow up) are responding at far higher rates than prior leads from dealer's website
• Consumers in showroom are commenting to dealer how much they like function on the website

System adds on to a dealer's website so dealer can provide to his/her customers. Price, credit, interest rates, rebates, trade in, accessories, extended service contracts, protections, tax, title and fees, accurate monthly payments... it is all there just like the consumer was sitting in the dealership.

Sounds like you've got a good system built....I'd be interested in seeing it in action if you wouldn't mind sharing the URL

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Higher Turnover, LLC - Websites for Independent Auto Dealers

Online Auto Dealers - Blog with information for auto dealers who use or plan to use the internet