COVID and the corresponding digital revolution it’s triggering has proven one thing for digital retailing: DETAILS MATTER. It’s no secret consumers are spending more time shopping online for vehicles than ever before. As a consequence of that, they are more critical of the online shopping experience than ever before. The details of your digital merchandising and online retail experience, even the ones that seem too minute to matter, can have a significant impact on your conversion rates.
Utilizing a highly specialized blend of our industry data and insights, we’ve put together this series on Digital Retailing Best Practices to help you understand what those details are, what impact they’re having on your digital retailing processes, and what you can do about it.
First up: Vehicle Pictures. Believe it or not, real pictures of actual vehicles are one of the most overlooked, and yet one of the most important, details that can impact conversion rates. It’s not enough to grab a stock photo, or a picture of a similar vehicle, or worse yet, have nothing at all. Consumers want to see images of the actual vehicle they are interested in purchasing. A picture of the exact make, model, color, and trim level is paramount to success. Even better if you have a picture of the actual vehicle itself.
Through our proprietary industry data monitoring, we see that simply replacing stock photos with custom photos increases Vehicle Display/Details Page (VDP) views as consumers engage further with your inventory. By taking real photos, you are increasing the chances that a customer will click through to a VDP and submit a lead. Even using a 50/50 split of custom and stock photos increases VDP views an average of 21%.
And as you increase the ratio of real photos to stock photos, those numbers likewise increase. We’ve found that using all, or almost all, real vehicle photos increases the number of VDP views by an average of 77%!
As a point of reference, we also found that dealers with the highest digital lead performance displayed around 80% of their vehicle inventory with real pictures of the vehicles.
While actual foot traffic has decreased in dealer showrooms, traffic to digital showrooms has increased exponentially. For the moment, it’s the only way for customers to “kick the tires,” so to speak. If you’re showing them the wrong tires to kick, 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.
