Spark More Sales with an Optimized Dealership Website

If you’re like most dealerships, you’re likely putting a lot of effort into enhancing your online car-shopping experience. It’s what the modern consumer wants, after all. While a majority of car shoppers still prefer to make the final purchase in person, 70-80% prefer to search for a car and do other preliminary research online. But if your website is clunky to use, or omits important information, you’re likely to frustrate your potential customers, and they may decide to do their research elsewhere.

Meanwhile, dealers collectively pump upwards of $8.9 billion into advertising each year. That’s a lot of money driving traffic to dealership websites. Is it worth it? How can you ensure your website converts the leads you’re working so hard to capture?

An optimized dealership website will deliver in two key areas: it will provide a seamless experience for consumers and convert the leads you’re driving there. However, to get to this optimized state, you have to turn to the data—and continually evolve.

Visibility into the data

The first step in identifying areas for optimization is to look at your website performance metrics. Where are your users falling off the online customer journey? You’ll want to look at things like page views, bounce rates, and link clicks. Heat maps can provide next-level insight into how users interact with each page. Your website provider should be able to provide you with this baseline data; however, to get more holistic and industry-wide comparative data, you’ll need to turn to a leading data aggregator like Shift Digital.

Expert analysis of the data 

Once you have the data at your fingertips, how do you know what it means? In many cases, a skilled data analyst will take the numbers, match them up to the actual customer experience, and craft stories that make sense of it all. The goal of this analysis is to uncover problems with your website—areas where potential customers are getting stuck in the buyer’s journey. Some of the biggest and most common website challenges dealerships face include:

• Overwhelming or confusing site navigation – for example, we recommend limiting the top navigation to five drop-downs with up to seven links each
• An overabundance of links, or links that direct users away from the dealer’s website
• Banners pushing important content or vehicle information down the page
• Unclear CTAs - ideally, there should be a total of three, directing users to test drive/check availability, see the price, and begin the buying process
• Complicated forms – they should be simple, collecting minimal information such as the user’s name, email, and phone (this is especially important on mobile)
• Non-user-friendly mobile experience – for example, make sure that all phone numbers include click-to-call and click-to-text functionality

Action items for improvement 

You have the data, and you’ve identified the problems. Next, you have to marry those findings with user experience best practices and translate them into action items. What specifically needs to be adjusted to prevent users from dropping off your website? A savvy digital consultant can work with you and your website provider to make these recommendations and put them into action. Often, common issues can be resolved with some simple content, design, and programming tweaks.

Let’s get to work

If you’re looking for ways to improve your customers’ online car-shopping experience, and ultimately convert more website leads into sales, look no further. A digital consultant specializing in the automotive sector is your key to gaining the visibility, analysis, and action items you need to get the most out of your dealership’s website.

To learn more about how Shift Digital can help you optimize your digital retailing experience, contact us today.