All Posts By

Amir Amirrezvani

In Lead Conversion

3 Psychological Techniques that Can Increase Conversion

I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a dealer that didn’t want to increase the conversion rate on his/her dealership website, but many seem to leave most of the “how” to their website provider. Lead conversion, the act of turning a website visitor into a known contact, essentially boils down to psychology. Knowing how people think and what motivates them to interact with your dealership website can help you create a site design that will help facilitate more lead conversions.

To get you started, here are some of the basic website visitor biases. Keep these motivations in mind while looking at your website. What can you change to help lead website visitors into your dealership’s sales funnel?

All My Friends Are Doing It: The Bandwagon Effect is one we’ve all dealt with since childhood. The more people that do something, the more likely others are to follow along. One way to use this motivation on your dealership website is to add positive dealership reviews to your VDPs. Show potential buyers that others have had great experiences buying from you, and it can increase the chances that they will want to do so as well.

Highlight It: Things that stand out from the background are more likely to be remembered, according to the Von Restorff Effect. As long as you maintain an esthetically pleasing look to your website, go for contrasting colors on your Call to Action (CTA) buttons and any specific information you want to be remembered. Just be sure to use this technique sparingly – if everything “stands out”, nothing will. This is a great area to A/B test, if your dealership website provider allows you to do so.

Pictures Are Better: A picture is worth a thousand words – this old saying isn’t too far off. The Picture Superiority Effect means that images are more easily recognized, recalled, and powerful than text alone. Not only are your pictures giving information to potential customers before they read your content, they will stay with them long after they leave your site. This alone makes it worth a second look at your inventory photos, especially the first image you show. Does it present that car or truck the way you want it to be remembered?

These seemingly simple psychological biases, when applied to your dealership website, can have a huge impact on the lead conversion rate. Check with your dealer website provider – are they taking any of these into consideration when giving you best practices?

In Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

Simple Tips for PPC Conversion Optimization

If your dealership is running pay per click campaigns as a part of your online marketing mix, one of your main goals is probably to maximize the number of sales or service leads for the dealership.  The potential complexity of running numerous, simultaneous PPC campaigns can be overwhelming, even if you have an expert managing your efforts.
Whether or not your dealership is running your own PPC campaigns, it’s important to continuously optimize and improve them.  However, testing (whether it’s a simple A/B split test or a complex multi-variate scenario) can be even more overwhelming. Here are some fairly simple tips to dramatically increase your PPC conversion rates.


Match Landing Page Content Headings to Ad Copy: Make it clear to customers who click through on your ads that they have landed on the right page by matching your landing page headings to your ad copy.  Mirror the message and goals of your ads on the landing page to help drive up conversion rates.


Use Dynamic Phone Number Call-Tracking:  Google will provide you with call tracking within all of your ads (make sure you include that data in making your optimization decisions), but you also want to track the calls that come through from visitors AFTER they click through to your site.  Make sure that you have Dynamic Phone Number Replacement Call tracking; this replaces the phone numbers on your site with a unique tracking phone number each time someone clicks through on your ad, so you can track the call back to the ad (including campaign, keyword, creative, etc).  You will typically receive 4 calls or more for every lead form submission from an AdWords campaign, so you are missing the forest for the trees if you are only optimizing your ads based on lead form submissions.


Run Tests Long Enough:  When testing any of these factors (preferably in A/B format), make sure you don’t cut the test short. For example, if you declare a winner before the length of your typical sales cycle, you can’t accurately determine which test is more successful. You have to make it through a sales cycle to truly test the effectiveness of your tests. Use the “winner” to continue to test what works best for your dealership.


One User Intent Per Ad:  Make sure you (or your PPC provider) are creating ads for each segment of consumer you’re trying to reach. PPC is not a one size fits all endeavor. And yes, this leads us directly into the landing page conversation…


Effective Landing Pages: This is huge for PPC. Having effective and relevant landing pages will not only make your ad campaigns convert at a higher rate, but can also decrease your costs (Google rewards ads with a high quality score) – start with these Landing Page Best Practices to get started:

  • Start With A Goal: What do you want people to do once they click on your PPC ad? Answer that question and build your landing page to help visitors accomplish that goal. Anything that doesn’t help visitors reach the goal you started with may not be necessary.
  • Use One CTA (Call to Action): Try not to confuse visitors with multiple CTAs. Your ad copy should explain what visitors are looking for when they reach your landing page, so make that the CTA on the page a logical next step for someone clicking through on the ad.

Combining all of these best practices can increase the overall conversion rates of your PPC campaigns, save your dealership money, and help sell more cars.

In Lead Conversion

Revamp Your Contact Forms to Increase Dealership Website Conversion

Many of the dealers I talk to are extremely concerned about the conversion rate of their dealership website, and rightfully so.  Converting website traffic into leads should be a priority of everyone involved with your site, from your vendor to your Internet Manager to your GM.  One way to affect your conversion rate is by optimizing the contact forms you use to collect leads.

Reduce the Size: Keep the number of form fields to a minimum; only ask for what you absolutely need to follow up. Many people get overwhelmed when faced with providing a lot of personal information just to get some info about a car.

Design the Mobile Version First: Not only will this help ensure you have mobile-friendly forms on your mobile dealership website, but it helps you focus on keeping the form simple.

Reduce Friction: This could be as simple as making it clear which fields are required (even if it’s all), using in-line validation to correct errors as they are made, or using ghost text to help users know what format they should use.

Make it as easy as possible for your dealership website visitors to submit a lead by simplifying lead forms.  If you have long, complicated contact forms, talk to your auto dealer website provider to see how you can simplify your forms and raise your conversion rate.

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