Auto Dealership Websites Were Never Designed To Handle Inventory Shortages
Automotive dealership websites are delivering a poor customer experience because they were not designed with severe inventory shortages in mind. In fact, I would call most of the current OEM approved website designs "broken" and in need of an immediate fix.
I discovered this design flaw when I was asked to help the daughter of my neighbor find an Audi Q5 Hybrid that was available for immediate delivery. I decided to search the websites of a few local dealers and the search experience was frustrating. You can follow along with my observations in the video included in this article.
This is not an Audi problem. My experience triggered additional research to see if my frustration with the Audi websites was unique. It wasn't. In short, it appears that if a vehicle is not in stock, website companies remove the model from their website search tools. See the example below for a local Chevy and Toyota dealer, that I used in the video summary.
This design not only hurts the consumer shopping experience, but will also impact local SEO and limit sales opportunities. Here is another example for a Honda dealer which shows that the website makes it challenging to conduct any price discovery on the full line of vehicles offered by this local Honda dealer or place an order for a new vehicle other than for an Accord Sedan, CR-V, Passport, or Pilot:
If a consumer is searching for a new model that is displayed on the national OEM website, local dealer websites should list all the same models.
If a model is not in stock, which is very common today, the website companies should update the Search Results Page (SRP) to include a customized message that directs the consumer to contact the dealership with special handling of an "in-demand" vehicle. This is not an acceptable message when I tried to search for an Audi Q5 Hybrid at a local dealer:
This message implies that the consumer should leave and go check another Audi dealer, which is willing and able to track down a vehicle that matches their search. Also, you have to chuckle at the direction that this error message gives, as it was obviously written by a programmer.
I'm not a graphic artist, but dealers should be able to customize a dynamic banner message when inventory searches yield a "zero" in stock condition, like this:
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Inspect Your Website
Take a minute to inspect your website platform and see if ALL the new car models are displayed. Then check to see what type of error message displays when a consumer searches for a model that is not in stock.
If you are not happy with the experience, contact your website company. Most have programming logic in place to display a message that the specific model is not in stock. Ask for the option to have a dynamic message displayed that is more helpful than what I have found.
Since inventory shortages will continue through 2022, I believe that we have to fix the consumer shopping experience now.
Do you agree? If so, please provide a comment below which is also a great encouragement to continue publishing content for the automotive industry.
Not Everything Is Broken
I did find that Roadster did a great job in handling zero-inventory searches for an Audi dealer. While they are not a website platform, many dealers are directing all vehicle searches to Roadster instead of their native website SRP and VDP pages. Here is an example from Audi Queens, one of my clients, which shows all models as searchable.
The models that are not in stock have a very clean "Build/Locate" tag (circled in red) which is a much better experience than deleting models from the dealership's website, like other platform are doing.
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Freelancer, fond of web design
2 年Interesting and informative post, keep it up! See this article https://gapsystudio.com/blog/car-dealer-website-design/ for a detailed article on the important aspects of designing a car dealer website.
Sales Manager
3 年Brett Jones check this out
VP, Executive Creative Director at Cars Commerce
3 年Really important call-out Brian Pasch — thank you for keeping all our eyes on the ball. At Dealer Inspire you motivated us to whip up this video showing how you can display condition-based banners (no/low inventory on this search = show this banner) and our vehicle build experience. Really easy stuff that can make all the difference between bounces and sales opportunities right now. https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6886018432928686080
President at Tru Images
3 年Great article! I'm shocked how many dealers are reluctant to advertise their in-transit vehicles on their websites. With many vehicles presold, dealers have become a little less cognizant of their consumer's experience in merchandising their vehicles. Advertising the in-transit vehicles should be a no-brainer for dealers and marketing them is vital for the higher funnel opportunities!
Vice President at Frogdata
3 年Brian Pasch we agree with your insights and observations. That's why we created izmo Emporio the first 3D showroom specifically to address this problem. Now you can demo any model/trim for a brand. Would appreciate your feedback. Here's the link to izmoEmporio:?https://www.izmoemporio.com/demo-en-us.htm