Do You Look Like Your Website?

It is often noted that people, over time, start to look their pets or their spouses. I suspect that in at least some cases, that may be a good thing.

The question here is, do you, or your dealership look like your website?

Your website, your online digital presence is every bit as real as your brick-and-mortar store. In fact, it gets a lot more visitors than your store does. (If that is not true, one of your immediate challenges is to make it true.)

Let’s look at some statistics:

• 4 out of 5 people will visit the website before going to the store
• Between 60% and 70% of viewers are using mobile devices
• 95% of online viewers expect that prices will be easily viewed
• 76% of people looking at your site will use its appearance as a proxy for your credibility and trustworthiness

The majority of buyers, after shopping online will visit only one or two stores.

What does this mean to you? It means that if your website is not crisp, clean, content and information rich and mobile responsive, meaning that your website can be viewed on a mobile device as clearly and as easily as it can on a PC or desktop then you are losing business.

Your website needs to be a digital property that you are every bit as proud of as
you are of your physical presence. Your website is where people go first and pass
judgement. If you lose them on your site…you will have virtually no chance of
seeing them in your store.

Here are a few keys to making sure that your site is appealing, effective and will convert online shoppers to in-store buyers:

• Ensure that your home page, the first thing people see, attractively provides the key information about what brands you have available
• Make searching for inventory easy and intuitive and make search available from multiple places in your site – not just the home page
• Provide payment based pricing – if people wanted to fill out a lead form to get pricing, they probably would have picked up the phone or sent an email rates (stay legal though and make sure that the advertised payment is, in fact, one that a person with the average credit that you see in your store could actually get)
• Make all the benefits of your store clear – in-house financing, service, parts, pro shop, etc.
• Introduce your staff – make it personal
• NO BROKEN LINKS – when buyers see 401 errors or links that take them to unexpected places, they leave
• Make sure that your site works and is effective on all platforms – the investment in making your site mobile responsive will more than pay for itself in just the first couple of months

One other tip, invest in retargeting. With retargeting, once someone visits your site, you can place ads on other sites that they visit when they visit them. Since your website is not a general purpose or general information site, you can make the
assumption that people hitting your site have the intention of buying at some point.

So, do you look like your website? Are you proud of the way it looks and acts?

Make your digital presence as powerful as your physical presence and win those online searchers – and shoppers – as they begin the journey through the decision funnel.

Myril Shaw is the Chief Operating Officer for Dealer Profit Services. He may be reached at myril@dealerprofit.com