2023 Automotive Conversion Rate Optimization Guide

2023 Automotive Conversion Rate Optimization Guide

A 15-Minute Check Can Create More Opportunities and Sales!

Do you feel like your web presence just isn’t clicking the way it used to? Are you not getting as much business as you did a few years ago? Maybe you’re worried about the competition?

Many of our customers come to us with the same concerns. If you are searching for answers, a fresh website is a great place to start.

Generally, the solution is much simpler and is a better use of your time than a massive overhaul: your SRP and VDP probably just need to be revisited.?

With some minor changes, you could see a massive boost to your lead generation!

In this article, we’re going to share our secret sauce for generating high-quality leads. These are easy to do yourself without bringing in support teams.


What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a way of increasing the number of users who perform an intended action on a website. That action can be anything from buying a product to scheduling a visit or signing up for a service.

Why Should You Care About CRO?

Because that’s how you sell more cars! Your operational management team’s goal is crafting your floor team into a conveyor belt that turns visitors into sales. Why wouldn’t you want your website to operate on the same principle?

There is a ton that goes into a successful website and CRO is among the most important items. CRO is about the long game. You’ll find it well worth your effort.


How Do You Calculate Conversion Rates?

You can calculate your conversion rate using this formula:

(leads generated ÷ website traffic) * 100 = Your conversion rate %!

So if your website gets an average of 200 leads and 5000 sessions (using Google Analytics as a tracker) per month, your conversion rate would be:

(200 ÷ 5000) * 100 = 4% Conversion Rate

What Counts as a Conversion?

Many digital marketing companies believe any action a user takes on your website should count as a conversion. In their eyes, form starts and landing page views are conversions.

Though this type of engagement is important for audience building, we don’t believe it counts as a conversion.

In our opinion, you should only count things that can be converted into a sale. This means:


  • Phone calls
  • Website chats
  • Inventory forms
  • Finance applications
  • Trade-in forms
  • Service requests


In short, a conversion isn’t about clicks and views. It is about the real-world steps that drive your business forward.


How Do You Track Your Conversions?

There are several tools available to you that you can use to track your conversion, such as:


  • Google Analytics
  • Adobe Analytics
  • Your website CMS

Ask your website provider how they track conversions and if you need assistance setting them up. They might already be tracking them!

If you are using a 3rd-party provider for your financing applications, get in touch with your support representative. They will most likely know how to connect all of your conversion tracking tools to your analytics platform of choice.


What is a Good Conversion Rate?

Now that you understand what CRO is and how to track it, what do you do if you find out your results are poor? Do you need to change everything? Or do you just need to make some minor adjustments?

The answer is the most important response in all of web design. Ready?

It depends.

That’s not very helpful, we know! So, let’s dive in and get to a more actionable solution.

The commonly accepted average conversion rate for web leads in the automotive vertical is around 1.5%.

This number will fluctuate. Don’t panic if you’re at 1.51% and a new study comes out that says the floor is 1.75%.

Why? Ultimately, this number is useless for you. This may be surprising due to all the sales pitches from digital marketing companies. But it’s the truth.

The reason why it’s not very useful is because your conversion rate depends on several factors that are completely out of your control. These can be:


  • Location: Rural vs. Urban.
  • Region of the Country: The Southeast of the U.S. is far more hospitable to a Get Best Price button than the Northeast.
  • OEM: A Honda dealer will receive more leads than most Acura dealers. If you can afford an NSX, you probably aren’t likely to put in a lead online.

If you’re a Chevrolet dealer near Atlanta, Georgia, we would not be shocked to learn you have a 10% conversion rate on web leads. However, if you’re an Acura dealership in the Northeast with a 6% conversion rate, we’d be much more impressed.

Keep this in mind!


Your Website is Your Digital Showroom

Here are some tricks and strategies to help you improve your website conversions.

SRPs and VDPs: Keep It Simple!

First things first, a clean, simple website will usually outperform one that is a visual nightmare. If things start to look busy to you, the website owner, they are likely twice as confusing for a customer. Good UI/UX (user interface/user experience) is crucial!

In short: simplicity wins.


Call to Action

Your call-to-action (or CTA) should be readable and clickable on both mobile and desktop. These are the most important items on your site besides your inventory!

On your SRPs, keep your calls to action minimal. Remember, this is the first time a customer is viewing this inventory. Reduce your CTAs to the absolute minimum.

Customers can become paralyzed by choice and will ultimately decide to move on. If you keep your CTAs simple, it’s easier for a customer to focus on finding a vehicle with the right price and less on all the choices they could be making.

CTAs should also create a sense of urgency and appeal to the shopper's needs. “Get Our Best Price Today” has long been one of the best lead-submission-generating lines around.

On the other hand, “Check Availability” is one of the worst-performing CTAs you could possibly use. Most customers know that if they see the vehicle on your site, you most likely have one in stock. And if you don’t, they definitely know you can get them one. As such, they have very little incentive to click.

If you have digital retailing tools, focus more on utility. “Get Financed” or “Start Checkout” do not really cut it in our experience. You are much more likely to pique someone’s interest with “Build Your Deal” - since it eradicates the pressure to finish right here, right now.

If you’re adding more CTAs, ask yourself: “Is this absolutely necessary to have right here on this page?” If it’s not, dump it. Your customers will appreciate it.


Images

Nobody is going to hit the “Build Your Deal” or “Get Our Best Price Today” button without seeing a picture of the car in question. As such, images play a crucial role in your conversion strategy.?

Some dealerships upload stock photos of their vehicles to their website. We advise against that practice.

In our experience, people want to see real pictures of your inventory. By taking a few minutes to take photos of your cars before listing them, you can significantly increase your conversion rate.


Pricing

It may seem obvious, but you could have a website designed by Amazon themselves and if your truck is $3,000 more expensive on your site than a competitor’s down the road, shoppers aren’t going to give you their information. They’re going to call the other dealership.

Make sure your pricing is competitive. We recommend tweaking the following:


  1. Showing discounts before or after the Best Price lead is submitted.
  2. Deciding whether to use Best Price at all.
  3. When compliant, use a red strikethrough to indicate a greater price beyond the Best Price.


If you change your pricing, be sure to change your CTA verbiage as well to match. You do not want to claim there is a better price beyond a CTA only to show nothing!


Forms

This one also seems relatively simple, but it’s missed all the time. Make your customers do the least amount of work possible.?

That means lowering how many forms you require them to submit or filling out the least amount of information on them. This applies to your service forms, credit applications, SRP/VDP Best price forms; all of them. If you don’t like filling them out yourself, your customers won’t like them either.

Requiring a name, address, phone number, and email address is often too much. Instead, only ask for a name, address, and your preference between email or phone number.?

Another possibility is to let your customers choose which of the two they prefer. Requiring both can be overkill.


Think Outside the SRP

Reviews also play a huge role in a customer’s decision to submit a lead.

There are two factors that go into this: average rating and number of reviews. If you have a 5.0 rating on Google, that’s great! If there are only two reviews, that’s less great.

Think of everyone’s favorite e-commerce site: Amazon.

Obviously, you shouldn’t copy everything from Amazon. We created a three-part feature on that mindset, after all. But there are some features that are worth mentioning.

Amazon lets you sort through their inventory from highest to lowest reviews.

Anecdotally, most people who use Amazon swear by shopping with this filter. It’s human nature. Nobody wants to be the first to take the plunge on a brand-new product or business.?

Ask yourself: why would a customer take a chance on your dealership if you are sporting a 3.0 average rating on only 20 reviews? Quality and quantity count.

Customer service very much translates into the digital world. Keep this in mind and get happy customers to leave you glowing reviews online.

For more on how to make reviews work for you, check out our guide .


Videos – More Important Than Ever

A massive change in recent years is the necessity to have video content on your website. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have gotten used to the idea of shopping for cars online instead of in person.

As a result, the text descriptions and feature lists that worked five years ago no longer suffice.

Now, you’ll need to showcase your inventory with video walkarounds and feature overviews so that customers can have the showroom experience right from the comfort of their couch.

Our recommendations for improving your video walkarounds can be found in this article made by fusionZONE Automotive. The key points you should take from it are:


  1. Schedule your videos in advance
  2. Take your time and be thorough/detailed
  3. Have a way for your customers to follow up for more information


Don’t feel pressured to make a video for every vehicle on your lot tomorrow. Do them in chunks, week by week, and make it a habit. Before you know it, it’ll be a natural part of your process and your conversion rate will steadily increase!


Test, Test, and Test Some More

As you strive to boost your conversions, one of the best pieces of advice we can give you is to take it slow and change only a few small things at a time. A/B split testing can help save you a lot of headaches in the future!?

Believe us, it’s the worst feeling changing a website’s layout only to find it performs worse than before.?

Consider starting by changing one vehicle’s layout, then see if it’s working over the course of a month. If it is, then apply it to the rest.


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We hope you find these tips and tricks useful! For more exclusive strategies on how to boost your online presence, subscribe to our newsletter ! We’ll send the latest issues directly to you so you can stay ahead of the curve.

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