Dealertrack Digital Retailing Inflates GA VDP Views
Dealer.com customers are getting an update to Dealertrack's Digital Retailing Software (DRS) that is installed on their websites. The new Dealertrack software keeps consumers on the Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) instead of taking them to another page or offsite; at least that is what I thought.
In the coming months I will be publishing an independent report on how consumers engage with Digital Retailing tools from various software providers, just not Dealertrack. In the report, I will be sharing Button Click Ratios (BCR) and Form Completion Rate (FCR) data for digital retailing software. These are two of the six new marketing metrics defined in the PCG Engagement Project.
While I was conducting some tests, I noticed that the current release of Dealertrack's DRS on Dealer.com websites inflates VDP views in Google Analytics.
When the DRS software is engaged by consumers, a second iteration of the VDP page is launched, which Google Analytics records as another page view. Dealers who use Google Analytics segments to track VDP views by campaign need to take immediate action to update their segment definitions. Most VDP segment definitions trap pages that start with: /new/, /used/, or /certified/.
I have not been able to test Dealer.com's own analytics reports regarding VDP views by campaign to see if they are inflated as well. Dealers who are comfortable with Google Analytics and can compare data should let me know what they find.
Dealers Using Google Analytics Should Watch This Video
For dealers who like to use Google Analytics (or VistaDash) to independently inspect the quality of their website traffic, please watch this video. Then take action to update your GA reports and segments to have accurate Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) counts.
If you have found this video helpful, please share this article on your social media channels.
Learn More About Measuring Website Engagement & Traffic Quality.
When dealers start to measure the quality of website traffic and how they convert (or just walk in) they can make smarter business decisions to increase engagement and sales. The automotive community has to look at engagement, conversion, and sales data with a fresh set of eyes to stop perpetuating bad advertising strategies.
Dealers spend too much money on digital marketing not to inspect engagement and VistaDash makes it easy!
Dealers who would like to learn more about measuring consumer engagement, and how to clean up their Google Analytics account to track conversion, and sales influence, are invited to:
- Attend the Automotive Engagement Conference (AEC) which will be held in seven cities in 2017. Check to see which city is closest to where you live: https://goo.gl/xcKWCw (Atlanta SOLD OUT)
- Attend the 2017 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference (DMSC) in the Napa Valley. Details here: https://digitalmarketingstrategies.org
- Get a demo of VistaDash by contacting Dan Moore: [email protected]
- Call me at 732-672-2356.
If you can't attend either conference, this discussion is included in my latest book "Swimming with Digital Sharks." https://www.swimmingwithdigitalsharks.com/
Retired
7 年Guys. I am retired and have no skin in this game, but to me, stop all the rhetoric and use your energy to go out in the field and ask the dealers what keeps them up at night. You are wasting precious energy bickering with one another.
Fintech Innovator "??"| Credit Fraud Prevention Strategist, SME
7 年Great work Brian! How can we get our DriveItNow digital retailing solution into VistaDash?
Executive Director | B.B.A. in Automotive, Marketing, and Management
7 年Interested to understand how SSL prevents manipulation of Subdomains and URL extensions?
Product Management Leader | Strategy & Innovation
7 年This appears to be US specific implementation and not the case in Canada. Every dealer moving onto DRS in Canada is automatically migrated over to https with valid SSL certificates. Other benefits are enabled HTTP/2 which dramatically reduces download speeds.
Managing Director at AutoSync
7 年This doesn't apply in Canada as we have made it a pre-requisite for the sites to have SSL certificates applied to the domain ahead of the product launch which we are supplying to dealers at no charge with our partners at Cox (DDC and DealerTrack). Mike Kilinski