The Online Car Dealer's "AH-HA" Moment

An early mentor of mine once said: 

"Sometimes it takes a long time for the truth to show up."  

  Consider the following snippets from this week's Ward's Dealer newsletter (Internet Edition): 

  ... Many dealer websites, if not exactly designed to fail, don’t connect with customers.Typical problems include poor layout, disastrous design, ho-hum content… confusing navigation and buried information.  Add to that a Las Vegas-like look (too much flash and animation)… and no substance. 

  ... as much as the Internet is ballyhooed as a great automotive marketing tool, dealers use it largely to prod people offline and into the dealership....dealerships receiving an e-mail or Internet sales lead, will attempt to get the prospect on the phone. Then the salesperson will try to get the customer into the dealership for some good old-fashioned quality face time.

 And then of course we complain about low website visitor to lead rates, and pathetic lead response rates as if somehow consumers are not living up to their end of the deal because we have a website, and now they are not doing their part by telling us who they are and coming in to our store and buying. 

Seriously?   Is that how Amazon, eBay and Dell do it?  “Email us what you want so we can invite you to our retail store?” 

Is that how you use the Internet when you are in the market to buy something? 

Are there costs at your store associated with that “inefficiency?” 

Sure cars are different than books or computers, but do concepts such as meeting the online consumers’ purpose, structured workflow, clean site design, and establishing online trust have a role to play? 

 This is the great “AH-HA” of this historically brief (for me) article…  

 “Do you really care if they buy online or offline as long as the buy from you?” 

 To me the important questions are: 

• Did you get your kick at the can?
• Did they buy from you? 
• Can you leverage “Shop Online” via these design concepts to sell more? 
• You can buy almost everything else entirely online, why can’t consumers do so on your website?   
• Are they really on your website to call, chat, or send you an email? 
• Don’t focus on Online Buying.  It is a Shopping Cart, not a Buying Cart.  Properly structured shopping gets them to identify themselves.  Some will buy online, many more will be attracted, high numbers will identify themselves and be engaged.  Do you know how to sell into that environment? 

If you missed the May 6^th webinar where I explained this in greater detail, you may view the abbreviated video and accompanying blog post by my friend and host Ryan Gerardi: 

What’s On Your Internet Site?