Your Dealership’s Website:

The Medium is the Message

How well does your website deliver your brand message?

What is the primary purpose of your website?

o   To sell more cars?

o   To communicate your brand?

o   To otherwise make you easy to find and easy to do business with?

If you would like to mix in other website purposes and reprioritize my list, please feel free to do so... then please, please, please ask some consumers to rate your site against the list.

What separates your website (and your dealership) from the next dealership up the street?

70-80% of car buying consumers use the Internet.  Your website is likely the first (and often the last) impression that you make with a consumer.  Rather than belabor a point about spending on physical facility vs. online showroom, let’s explore what impression typical dealership websites leave with consumers.

I encounter approximately 30 dealership websites a day.  I’m at the point now that I can usually tell who the provider is without having to dig for it.  Car buying consumers reach that point pretty quickly too.  In general I find that most fall in to one of these categories:

·         Basic brochure-ware functionality

o   Simple navigation

o   Basic vehicle inventory

o   Map, hours, submit leads, request for service

o   Option A:  pretend there are no people at the store (submit queries to info@mydealership.com)

o   Option B:  personal photos, email addresses and phone numbers of staff

o   Impression left with consumers:  Old school.  If I wanted to come in to the showroom I wouldn’t be on the Internet.

·         Flashy sites with gimmicks

o   Fancy graphics

o   Welcome to my site characters

o   Online brochures

o   Some do a better job with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and workflow layout than others

o   Flash technology can but need not destroy SEO

o   Some are so busy with functionality I completely lose my way in the purpose of the site and have no idea what the dealership’s brand is

o   Impression left with consumers:  Better…  but does it inspire me to do business with you? 

o   As a dealership if you wanted to do a better job that way, what could you do?

·         OEM mandated / endorsed sites

o   Usually done by well-meaning OEM’s who want to make sure their dealers’ websites meet minimum brand standards, I tend to notice the following list of deficiencies:

§  What makes my dealership different / better than the one up the street?  Should that be important to me?

§  Muddling of workflow related to actions you want me as a consumer to take.  By that I mean these sites tend to have good information + rich functionality, but not sales “mojo.”

o   Vehicle manufacturers are just that.  They are not retailers.  “Selling moxy” comes from an understanding of sales psychology.

o   I find it telling that many dealers have one of these sites just so they get Internet leads from their manufacturer, but all serious website promotion that the dealership does goes to a second website under the dealer’s control.

In general I make few technology product recommendations and I’m not going to do so here.  I’m writing to help raise the collective effort.  I’ve seen great implementations and horrible implementations from the same website vendor, so I have to believe that there is some element of dealership execution at play, or maybe it is just the good, better, best offerings of the various vendors.

Looking for inspiration?  Here are the best dealership websites that I have seen:

www.toyotaofkirkland.com   is the hands down winner… I just love their workflow and the effort they have put in to it… it just screams “I am a car dealer and I am in business to sell cars.”

www.billjacobs.com  is the best custom-built site I have found.  Great colors, fast, easy, effective navigation.  Unlike Toyota of Kirkland, the great experience breaks down when redirected to the manufacturer sites underneath since they are just the usual template stuff.

If you are looking for pitfalls to avoid, here are my favorite pointers from a free Internet resource titled “Websites That Suck”

o   The website is designed to meet your organization’s needs (more sales) rather than the needs of your website visitors

o   The website tries to tell the visitor how wonderful you are as a company, but we make little to no effort to solve their problems or satisfy the reasons why they are on your site in the first place

o   A person from Mars hits your website… and it takes longer than 4 seconds for that person to understand what your site is about

Here is the link if you would like to see the full list  http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-checklist-part-one.html

So why am I writing about this?  Certainly it is not because I think Ai-Dealer’s website is going to win any design awards… I know it is a bit ugly, but I never get complaints on the big questions – purpose, relevancy, function and message.

What are your metrics?  A dealer friend of mine once told me that “Without data, you are just another Schmuck with an opinion.”  There are a few very basic metrics that can guide you as to how well your website is performing its sales role, as follows:

1.      % of visitors who view your vehicle inventory

2.      % of visitors who become selling opportunities for you

3.      % of selling opportunities who buy and at what gross profits

Having this data will also let you focus in on where your issues are.  For instance, if your metric #3 is below 10% you likely have Internet sales process issues.  If #2 is below 5% you likely have website design, consumer confidence issues or need to explore some add on calls to action (online credit decision, trade evaluation,etc.).  If your site + 3^rd party lead sources are not generating enough leads to support 30+% of your total dealership’s sales volume, you likely aren’t getting shopped enough.  Explore how consumers are supposed to find you (Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, blogs, etc.).  This is complex stuff.  I recommend getting a partner-vendor who specializes in this area such as Jump Start Automotive or ClickMotive.

If you have read any of my previous writings, you already know how Ai-Dealer’s product fits in to this greater marketing mix.  Since an Ai-Dealer contract includes a franchise-exclusive territory for our dealer customers and has the only complete online shopping cart based ecommerce system for dealers… for your brand and in your market promote

o   “The ONLY complete online shopping experience!”

o   “Buy ONLINE without coming in to the showroom!”

Does having this capability + communicating the above message give you a differentiating message in the marketplace?  Is it relevant to many consumers’ purposes?  Do they get to shop online using our service without becoming an identifiable selling opportunity?  (Answer:  No they don’t).  Does it raise the critical metrics?  (Answer:  Yes it does).

But this isn’t an infomercial.  You spent $x Million on your physical showroom and now have a rent factor of $y.  The great majority of consumers now shop your virtual showroom (website) and the quality of your execution there determines whether you will see them in your physical showroom.

Success on the Internet is clearly the new competitive arena in retail automobile distribution.  How well are you embracing and executing here?  If that is not important to you, reply to this email and I will take you off of my mailing list.

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