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.
Last time, we discussed the immense importance of using the right words and vehicle descriptions on your dealership website. Before that, we discussed how using real vehicle pictures on your dealership website can boost conversation rates.
This time it’s all about: Real prices. Just like using the right words, and the right vehicle pictures, displaying accurate prices of vehicles is vital to an online sale. It helps buyers be more confident in their purchase decision, and increases confidence in you as a dealership. Trust is key.
You could think of it as utilizing total price transparency taken the next level. It’s vital to display the real/final/actual price of the vehicle, including all possible total prices—premium options, manufacture incentives, and dealer specific discounts. Those discounts can even take the form of custom online pricing to help you make a sale faster.
In fact, through our proprietary industry data monitoring, we’ve found that vehicles shown on dealer websites with custom internet pricing sell almost two days faster than those without it!
What’s more, our data further indicates that solely displaying MSRP may not generate consumer interest on new vehicles. You should consider adding custom, dealer-specific online pricing to help generate additional leads. Quick tip: Update your DMS export to include Internet Price field and share the location with your provider, who will be able to code the markdown on Vehicle Listings Pages and Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs). You may also want to consider doing something as simple as including a photo of the window sticker on the applicable VDP.
As we’re found of saying, and it’s worth repeating, 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.
