Posts Tagged ‘best practices’

Goals for Your Auto Dealership Website Sales Funnel

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

One of the things we hear from a lot of the auto dealers we talk to is that they are struggling to find the right auto dealership analytics to measure their success.  How does your auto dealership really know if you are doing as well as you could be?  Could you be converting more traffic, making more appointments, or selling more cars?  Here are some reachable goals for your lead to sales funnel, gathered from some of the results we’ve seen at DealerOn:

  • Website Conversion Ratio — 10%
  • Lead to Appointment Ratio — 70%
  • Appointment to Show Ratio — 50%
  • Show to Sale Ratio — 50%

These percentages can be a little hard to understand in this form, so let’s work with real numbers.  Say your dealership’s website brings in 1,000 visits a month.  According to the sales funnel numbers above, these 1,000 visits should yield 100 leads.  In turn, these 100 leads should lead to 70 appointments.

Of these 70 appointments, your dealership should see about 35 of them actually keep their appointment, and your dealership staff should make it their goal to sell cars to half of them.  So for every 1,000 visits your car dealership website receives, your dealership should be selling 17.5 cars.

If your car dealership isn’t reaching these numbers, keep working to improve your sales process.  A few tweaks here and there in your online marketing strategy and auto dealer website can make all the difference.  Contact DealerOn for tips and ideas on how to increase your web traffic, leads, and car sales.

Auto Dealer Website SEO Must Haves

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

When choosing a search engine optimization (SEO) vendor for your auto dealer website (whether it be a third party or your car dealership website provider), there are a few things that your dealership should be on the lookout for.  While these things don’t necessarily indicate a poor SEO company, they may be red flags.

Only Talk About Rankings: While ranking high is important, it’s the web visits, conversions and sales that are really what matters.  Typically, ranking high on a search engine result page leads to those things, so it’s a matter of focus.  Some SEO companies can get your dealership to rank high for meaningless, non-converting search terms.  Make sure they know the difference.

Don’t Explain their SEO Strategy: If your dealership is paying an SEO vendor, they should be able to explain what steps they are taking to better optimize your dealership site, in terms that you understand.

Stop Working: Search engine optimization is a job that is never over.  Just because your car dealership website reaches the top doesn’t mean your SEO vendor should stop working on your dealer site.  The minute they do, your site will be replaced on the top of the search engines.

Can’t Show You Numbers: SEO vendors need to (at a minimum) be able to show your dealership the number of leads, web visits, and profit that their efforts are bringing to you dealer website.  A good rule of thumb for SEO vendors is 1 lead per $30 spent…at a minimum.  If your auto dealership isn’t earning this many leads, you may not be getting the value you could be.

Search engine optimization is an integral part of your auto dealership website.  Make sure you find a vendor that works with your dealership to have the greatest SEO success.

Car Dealer Blogging Tips

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Adding a blog to your car dealership website can be a great tool for increasing your dealer site’s search engine ranking.  This is because your dealership will be updating content often, meaning the search engine bots will visit your dealer website more often.  Also, your auto dealer staff will be able to optimize for the keywords that matter to your dealership.  When your dealership website has a blog integrated, you are able to have control over your website content and search engine rankings.

This is, of course, when it is managed properly.  I found this list of blogging best practices for businesses, and I’ve changed it to fit your dealership.

Let Multiple People Blog: While one person should be managing the blog, it can help to have multiple bloggers at your dealership.  This way, it’s not a huge increase in workload for one person.  Also, different people will use different industry terminology, so the words that you rank can also increase.  Have the person in charge create a blogging schedule so that everyone knows when and what they should be writing about.

Let Your Bloggers Write What They Love: Different people have different interests, even within the same industry and the same dealership.  Let your bloggers write about their interests, whether it is used vehicles, new cars, service specials, etc.  It will help keep your dealership bloggers interested in their writing, and their passion will shine through to your readers.

By following these two tips for corporate blogging, your dealership blog can help increase the search engine optimization ranking of your auto dealer website.

Car Dealer “Don’ts” for Social Media

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Social media can be extremely beneficial for auto dealerships looking to increase their sales…but only when it’s used properly. Social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc), Twitter, and professional sites like LinkedIn can be difficult to navigate for dealers trying to toe the line between “friend” and “business”. Here are some examples of the “don’ts” business using social media should avoid:

Being Impersonal: Most social media is used to connect to other people. Make sure any messages you send are to individuals, not sent as an impersonal mass message. Use first names if possible, and try sending information to potential customers one at a time. If you do send mass messages, make sure you target your audience so the message is relevant for all who use it.

Spamming: Only promote information that is useful to the people that will see it, in this case, your dealership customers. Don’t use your dealership’s profile to send non-industry news articles, game requests, or personal updates. Use your personal profiles for that type of information.

Infrequent Use: If you are going to put a message into the social media world, it’s important that actually log in to check your messages and answer any questions. How many potential deals might you miss if you post a dealership special, but never log back in to answer questions? It’s also important to post on a regular basis so that your dealership always stays top of mind for potential customers.

Social media can be an incredibly cost effective marketing tool for your dealership. Keep these “don’ts” in mind while creating your social media plan, and find out what works best for your dealership.

How Auto Dealers Can Survive Search Engine Changes

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Google is making changes to the algorithm the company uses to determine rankings on their search engine result pages. Named Google Caffeine, search engine experts aren’t entirely sure what these changes will mean for auto dealers that have well optimized sites, but they do have some ideas as to what will change.

The most generic, broad keywords may change for bigger brands, with some websites moving higher and some lower. There may also be a change in which social networking sites will be favored and ranked higher. Of course, most of this is conjecture based upon what searchers have seen while beta testing Caffeine.

Your auto dealership can stay on top of these changes by doing what has always worked: follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices and measure everything your dealership does when it comes to SEO.

This means that your car dealership needs to track every keyword that searchers use to find your auto dealer website. You need to measure your dealership’s placement in Google’s search engine rankings over time, and react accordingly. Your dealership should have an auto dealer website provider that tracks and measures this for you, and helps your dealer website adjust to any changes that Google makes in their ranking algorithm.

By following search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, continuously measuring and adjusting your efforts, your car dealership website will be able to properly react to any changes made by the search engines, helping to keep your dealer website at the top of the search engine results pages.

Best Practices for Your Web Forms

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Forms are at the heart of converting your website visitors into actual leads.  It is through these online forms that they interact with your dealership website, make themselves known to you, and virtually raise their hands to be contacted by your dealership.  When these forms are long and complicated, many web visitors will be discouraged from finishing and submitting.

When you are designing the forms on your website, it’s important to keep these potential leads in mind.  Imagine filling out the forms yourself, and keep these best practices in mind:

  • Keep it Simple – This is probably the most important thing to keep in mind when designing the forms that will appear on your website.  The simpler the process is for your web visitors to complete, the more likely these visitors will be to actually submit the form to your dealership.
  • Only Require What is Necessary – Rethink what information you actually need in order to properly market to your new leads.  While it’s nice to have as much information as possible, some people will be turned off by having to give their address, email, phone number, shopping status, vehicle they’re interested in, etc.  Make as little information as necessary required to submit the form, marking any other fields as optional.  Because identity theft is so rampant these days, many people are wary of giving personal information online.  Reducing the amount of personal information your dealership requires can encourage more visitors to submit leads.
  • Make it Multi-Step – This applies more to longer forms such as credit applications that may appear on your website.  Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, especially online.  Breaking your long forms into digestible sections will help with the completion rates and keep your potential customers satisfied while filling out the forms on your website.
  • Keep It Above the Fold – When you ask someone to fill out a form on your site, the entire form (including the submission button) should be above the fold, the part of the page that is visible without scrolling down.  It is nearly a universal truth in online marketing, that any form that doesn’t require scrolling will out-convert one that does, all other aspects being equal.

Getting visitors to your website isn’t enough these days, you need them to actually submit their information to your dealership.  Ensuring that your online contact forms and credit applications are as simple and as easy to use as possible should increase the number of leads your dealership website is able to convert.

Common Dealership Survey Missteps

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Customer-directed surveys seem to be a blessing and a curse to most dealerships.  OEM survey results can determine so much for dealership, yet are often highly contested by those within the dealership.  So why not find out how your customers feel about the experience they had at your dealership by sending out your own surveys?  Whether through email or direct mail, here are a few common survey mistakes taken from a MarketingSherpa article and from DealerOn’s experience, and how to avoid them.

  • Biased Population – It’s very easy to only survey a certain population of your customer base.  Always keep in mind who you’re sending surveys to, for example: buyers vs. non-buyers, age groups, and income levels.  Decide ahead of time who will receive this survey, either everyone, or a completely random sampling.  If you do want to send a survey to a targeted segment, make sure you keep that in mind when you receive your results.
  • Leading/Misleading Questions – These types of questions include those that are written to lead a respondent to answer a certain way, and also those that are difficult to understand.  To prevent this from happening, have an uninvolved third party read over the questions to ensure they are unbiased and clearly written.  Be on the lookout for judgment words like good, bad, better, worse, etc.  These can push respondents into answering one way or another and can lead to skewed results.
  • Small Sample Size – Typically, a sample size of about 100 will provide a fairly representative sample.  However, it is possible that this sample can get cut up into demographic cells making these samples too small.  Work to prevent this by making sure you select a random sample, and check the results for these smaller demographic breakdowns.
  • Purpose – Before you write the survey questions, make sure you have a clear reason for surveying your customers.  Not only will this help you find a focus and formulate your questions, but it can help you determine what you are trying to get out of the survey results.  Will you use your responses to change your dealership, or are you simply trying to understand how your customer base feels?
  • Consistency and Regularity – The best way to improve your customer satisfaction is to take action based on the feedback, and then re-measure your customers to see whether your changes have impacted their satisfaction.  You want to consistently and regularly ask each new customer the same questions.  You need to have consistent questions that don’t change much over time so that you have a standard scale to measure against.  Ideally, you would ask all the right questions the first time and never have to change your survey.  This is not very realistic, but you need to understand that materially changing a question or the scale for the response (from a 1-10 scale to a 1-5 scale for instance) can compromise the consistency of your results.
  • Length – People have short attention spans, so make sure that every question is clear, concise, and adds to the purpose of your effort.  If the survey itself is too long, analyze which questions will give you the most beneficial results, and use only those.

Surveys can be extremely powerful tools in improving your dealership.  There is no substitute for actual customer feedback on your sales and fulfillment processes.  The most adept marketing companies not only measure their customers’ satisfaction, but also take action to improve satisfaction.  They then measure whether or not the changes they’ve made have been successful.  Using this recursive customer feedback and measurement process is how companies with lackluster customer service become companies with phenomenal customer service.

More SEO Best Practices

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

While it’s extremely important that your auto website provider be an expert in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s also wise to know a thing or two about your own SEO campaign. Having at least a basic understanding of the fundamentals of SEO best practices can help you determine the quality of your website provider, as well as give you more control of the SEO efforts for your dealership.

The following best practices are from a special report written by Jill Whalen called “The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines.”

  1. Long-Tail SEO is Important – I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Most people don’t search for just a single word, but rather a phrase. The benefit of making sure that the content on your website is optimized for these phrases is that you’re optimizing for the individual word as well. For example, if you’re an Acura dealership, using phrases like “2009 Acura TL” will also help you rank for “Acura.”
  2. Be Careful of Flash – The text that shows in flash isn’t read by the search engine “bots” because it’s basically a picture of text, not the actual content. If the search engines can’t read this text, they can’t rank it. While having some flash on your website can help it look nice and standout, be careful not to over do it. A flash-heavy website won’t rank well in the search engines.
  3. Vary the Form of Keywords – In order to change up the content on your page, try using different forms of the same word. Many search engine “bots” are able to match up various forms of the same word (likes plural, -ing and –ed endings, etc), but often don’t bother. Try using these various forms, where appropriate, to vary your content as well as rank for the forms people may use to search.

Of course, this isn’t a complete list of best practices, but it’s a starting place. Learning as much as you can about SEO can help you take control of your optimization efforts as well as help you determine if your website partner is as good as they say they are.