Choose Your Words Carefully

Is your online shopping experience delivering the conversion rates your bottom line demands? If not, it may be worth digging into the details of your digital retailing program. In part one of our Digital Retailing Best Practices series, we discussed the immense importance of using real vehicle pictures on your dealership website.  

This time we’re talking: Real descriptions… 

Just like using the right vehicle pictures, using the right descriptions of vehicles is vital to an online sale. It helps buyers understand why they should buy this vehicle from your dealership.

To do that, you need to utilize real vehicle information. Along with the basics, you should be thinking about what can make this information interesting to customers. You’ll also want to make sure vehicle descriptions are complete and include specifications for items you may think are too mundane. Chances are, they are not mundane to customers. Since your sales force isn’t right there next to them to answer questions, it helps immensely when a customer can answer those questions themselves with the information presented.  

When it comes to the high-level description of a particular vehicle, the more customized you can make them, the better. Try to avoid using and repeating a generalized description for each model. What we’re saying is: Do your utmost to avoid slapping on some canned out-of-the-box copy to your vehicle descriptions.

Through our proprietary industry data monitoring, we see that using real information can help increase Vehicle Display/Details Page (VDP) views as consumers engage further with your inventory. By doing so, you are increasing the chances that a customer will click through to a VDP and submit a lead. In fact, using real vehicle information helps drive more traffic to your site, increasing page views by 49%!

You can further increase the chances of a submitted lead, and therefore increase the chances of a sale, if you also include an easy way for a customer to find out about–and easily understand– the vehicle options available to them. You’ll want to make sure those options are customizable by the viewer, meaning they can select options and other variables and see accurate pricing as they make those changes. (More on pricing later in this series...stay tuned...)

Our data shows that real vehicle information is a key factor in lead generation performance of dealer websites. In fact, sites performing in the top 17% receive 2-4 times as many leads as dealers in the bottom 16%.

As most dealers are acutely aware, actual foot traffic has decreased in dealer showrooms, which means that traffic to digital showrooms has increased exponentially. Your merchandising strategy for your website is the digital equivalent for customers to “kick the tires.” If you’re telling those customers about boring tires, or the wrong tires, or none at all, that’s a lost sale–just as it would be in person. The more real you make the digital experience, the more real the sale becomes. 

Shift Digital can help define and implement the processes you need to deeply engage your customers in the sales process from the comfort of their homes. We help facilitate those processes through comprehensive and validated web technology, VDP creative delivery, and advanced support communications, including chat, phone, email, etc. We ensure your sales representatives employ best practices for lead follow up, increase alignment with OEM regulations, and help you grow your online sales, regardless of your digital platform.  

For more information on how your dealership can effectively manage digital retailing/merchandising in today’s world, and for support implementing your own customized plan, contact your dedicated Shift Digital representative.