Do you feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel trying to perfect your car dealer website?
It doesn’t have to be exhausting trying to increase lead generation for your car dealership.
Sure you want to do all that you can on your website to catch more leads, but you may just be forgetting a few easy ways to do it.
We’ll pull the curtain back on some of the important aspects you may be overlooking on your car dealership website.
What makes a good car dealership website?
When it comes to creating a solid car dealership website, you’ll want to consider it from two different angles.
Of course, you’ll want your website to attract and cater to customers. But also, from a dealership perspective, you want your website to fit your needs and be easy-to-manage as well.
So for both parties who benefit from a well-oiled website, these are some of the aspects that matter most:
- Practicality: Does your website serve its purpose? Are customers able to research, ask questions, and buy cars directly on your website? Are you as a dealer able to communicate back with your customers on your website?
- Mobile-first: Your website should always be optimised first for mobile. 79% of smartphone users make purchases on their phone. You want to make sure your website is accessible and easy-to-use for customers who are browsing on their phones.
- Easy to update: On your side as a dealer, you want to be able to update your website easily to accommodate the changing trends in user preferences, integrations, seasonal offers, and dynamic communication.
So, when you keep these three factors in mind when making your car dealership website a channel that customers love, you’ll start to see that the features you’re overlooking point back to these foundations.
Don't forget these 5 things on your car dealership website
Although there is no secret formula for creating a website that will convert 100% of your visitors into sales leads, there are a few key ingredients that are sure to help boost lead generation.
Here are the simple things that you don’t want to forget to do on your car dealer website:
#1 Add a chat option on your homepage
At this point, we all know that customers expect an immediate response to their inquiries.
In fact, 46% of customers expect a response within 4 hours. Keep in mind though, that you are 7x more likely to capture and qualify a lead within the first hour of contact compared to just 2 hours.
A timely response can make or break your prospect's first impression.
The most efficient and quickest way to cater to website visitors is through live chat.
We recommend offering live chat (or automated chatbots) on the homepage of your car dealer site because it allows you to be proactive with your customers.
Think of your live chat like a sales representative attending to a visitor who just walked into your physical showroom.
You would want to offer help and guidance from the customer’s first interaction with you. Of course, not everyone will want that help, but it’s important to offer it.
#2 Make "contact us" options easy to find
Not all car buyers are the same, so don’t force them into a box they don’t want to be in.
For example, even though many consumers like to conduct most of their buying process online, others still prefer traditional methods such as a phone call or visiting the physical showroom.
With this in mind, you’ll want to make sure your “contact us” information is easily accessible from your home page to accommodate different preferences your website visitor may have.
If your contact information is hard to find, potential buyers may be frustrated when searching everywhere on your website for a simple answer.
On average, new car buyers tend to visit 2.5 websites during their buying process, so don’t let hard-to-find contact information be the reason you’re contributing to that statistic.
#3 Understand website visitor behaviour
Some dealerships may think that once they’ve achieved their monthly website traffic goals, the work is done.
But, in reality, one of the most important tasks is still ahead: analysing the visitor data and optimizing the website based on that data.
Imagine working inside your brick and mortar dealership with your eyes closed, oblivious to what sections of your showroom customers are most interested in.
That is exactly what you are allowing to happen when you don’t take the time to look into your website visitors’ behaviour.
Pay attention to what your website visitors are telling you through their actions on your pages.
For example, here are just a few of the metrics you should at least be aware of about your website visitors:
- Traffic source
- Time on page
- Pages viewed
- Bounce rate
Knowing these types of behaviours will help you adjust your website as necessary to provide better customer service and a smoother buying experience.
#4 Implement a lead capture strategy
Your website is meant to be more than just an online flyer for your dealership.
It can and should be an interactive space that benefits the website visitor just as much as it helps you collect leads.
One way to jazz up your website so you can provide value for potential customers and yourself is to utilise interactive content.
Interactive content should be your go-to strategy for lead capture in the automotive industry.
Interactive content can take many forms. It can look like quizzes to find the perfect car, click-to-play games for a discount, or pop-ups for exclusive deals, all in exchange for email.
You should use interactive content as a means to collect emails from your website visitors. This way, you will have the prospect’s information to follow-up with, and that prospect will also gain something out of this exchange.
Of course, you can leave your website one-dimensional, but if you want to extend brand loyalty, giving some type of incentive to website visitors, like educational content or discounts, will support you in the long run.
#5 Utilise videos on your website
The power of video is unmatched. In most cases, video is a persuasive, credible, and quick way to evaluate one’s buying decision.
Showcasing videos on popular car models could be a great way to help cut down your prospective car buyer’s journey significantly.
Over 50% of online shoppers say that video has helped them in determining which brand to purchase from.
With this in mind, more than likely, the prospective car buyer will search for videos anyway at some point throughout their research phase.
Consider these type of video methods for your car dealership:
- One-to-one live video call for personalised shopping
- Video reviews from happy customers
- 360 video tour of car
- Test drive video
- Video detailing the best car features
- Video answering FAQs
It doesn’t hurt to get started creating video content for your car dealership website, it will only help you build authority.
Videos help bring your digital showroom to life.
& don't forget your automotive lead gen guide
Have you been wanting to optimise your website for lead generation, but don’t want to go back to square one on your website?
Download our FREE Lead Generation for Car Dealerships Guide to learn the best practices for generating more leads through your website.
