Birds Don’t Chirp At Night, Except When They Do

If you’ve ever experienced birds chirping, singing, calling or screeching at night, you were probably annoyed by it. Today, businesses including your dealership must be aware of birds chirping into the early hours of the morning. The “birds” are the consumers of our modern, or some would say, post-modern era and they don’t always sing during business hours.

Twitter and Facebook offer us the opportunity to say whatever we want, whenever we want and that presents challenges for most dealers. Contrast the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram realm with how difficult it was to praise or shame a business in 1995. BIG difference. If you’re a little young to remember life at that time, it’s important to know that less that 5% of Americans were using the internet before 1995. Unlike today, where 87% of adults in the USA are on the internet and the percentage grows to almost 100% among those living in households earning $75,000 or more. BOOM!

You have a voice that can be amplified online more than any other time in human history, but… so does every single person that visits your website, sees your advertising efforts, calls your dealership, buys a car from you, services their car with you and so on…

What’s your social media strategy look like right now? Are you one of the many dealerships that have scaled back believing that the effort yields nothing in return? Many dealers started running the social media race primarily focused on capitalizing on a new way to sell cars. Unfortunately, none of us knew exactly how to approach the sales side of social media and totally missed the communication importance offered by social media. Yes, you can and should be selling some cars through social media, but you are unlikely to sell any if you aren’t watching, listening, engaging and answering when the birds start chirping.

One way to be sure you hear the birds is by using social media tools like Mention.  Mention is specifically a listening tool that allows you to hear what’s being said about your business on the web. They recently released an infographic based on Twitter data they’ve assembled and crunched. Along with the data, they gathered opinions on the information from a handful of social media experts. I highly recommend checking it out.

Here are some takeaways:

  • 271 million people are active on Twitter every month
  • Some of them are talking to you, some of them are talking about you
  • Almost 31% of tweets containing a company name do NOT include their twitter handle
  • 60% of company mentions on Twitter are posted when you’re NOT in the office

If you’re looking for a simple way to make sure you never miss a thing. Check out Mention here and download their mobile app to make sure you always hear the birds chirping.

Until next time, may you find yourself and your business more attractive, attentive and aware.

#birdschirpatnight

Facebook Reviews – Are You Missing the Boat?

Your dealership probably has at least one review portal that your marketing efforts are focused on…Google? Facebook? Yelp? DealerRater? Which portal works best for your car dealership? Is your focus in line with the portal your customers prefer to use?

Mike Blumenthals, a local search and Google Places expert, recently created a Google survey to find out where American adult Internet users prefer to leave reviews online. After filtering out the 77.8% of survey takers that self-reported that they never or almost never leave reviews, Blumenthals asked the following question:

When you leave a review online for a local business, which site are you most likely to use?

  • Google – 32%
  • Facebook – 20.6%
  • Yelp – 17.5%

While the margin of error allows for Yelp and FB to be neck and neck, this does show a growth in the desire to leave reviews on Facebook, even though they aren’t necessarily known as a review aggregator.

So, while users prefer to leave their online reviews on Facebook, it’s unfortunate for small businesses like your dealership that Facebook doesn’t highlight business reviews, nor does it really promote them. In fact, it can be downright difficult to find the reviews on your dealership’s business page. What is your dealership to do?

First, continue to focus on Google reviews. They are still the clear leader, and provide the most bang for your marketing buck given their dominance in the search engine market. Having a healthy number of reviews consistently flowing into your Google+ Local page gives your dealership a better chance of a high ranking in Google’s search results.

But don’t sleep on Facebook Reviews. They are a smart company, and they will put more of a focus on business reviews in the future. Given that their platform has almost accidentally become the 2nd biggest consumer review site, it is just a matter of time before business reviews become a highlighted part of Facebook for businesses. Make sure your dealership is ahead of the curve. Spend some time and effort building positive reviews on Facebook, since many consumers are already looking at them, and the number is likely to grow dramatically over time.

As for Yelp, could the recent controversy surrounding the quality and validity of their reviews beginning to discourage consumers from leaving reviews there? If you have shied away from Yelp, one thing you should be aware of is that Google’s recent Pigeon change (which I wrote about last week) has given Yelp reviews MUCH more visibility in Google (see this article by Matt McGee). But, it may just be easier and smarter for the long term to focus on building your dealership’s review volumes on Google and Facebook, since there’s little question about their long-term consumer influence. Has your dealership seen an increase in Facebook reviews?

How Last Week’s Google Update Impacts Your Dealership

In an effort to further optimize local search results, Google has begun rolling out a new tweak to its algorithm that some in the SEO community have tentatively labeled Pigeon. Dealer’s need to be aware of these changes because the Pigeon update is designed to improve local search listings for businesses (like car dealers).

According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Google told them that “the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more”. In addition, Google said that this new algorithm “improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”

It is not clear exactly how all of these changes will impact each dealer, so you should probably Google some of your top traffic-driving organic search keywords, and check the customer experience for anyone searching with local terms like “Toyota dealers near me” or “Ford dealers in Baltimore, MD”.

You should also check your Google Analytics account and compare this last week’s Organic Search Traffic vs. your prior Organic Search traffic levels, so you can determine the impact on your traffic and leads. If you would like any help doing this for your dealership’s Google Analytics account, whether or not you’re a DealerOn customer, just submit your contact information on our site or email me back, and include a comment “Google Analytics Help”.

Many Google users have reported seeing more listings from local directories when making searches – for example, searching for a restaurant name is now more likely to give you results from Yelp, Urbanspoon, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor. This increased focus on aggregate sites may make local search that much more difficult for your dealership website if it carries over into the automotive vertical.

These changes mean it is even more important than ever to ensure your dealership’s business information is the same (and accurate) across the Internet. Google looks for the NAP (name, address, phone number) of local businesses across the Internet, and is more likely to serve up your listing if it is consistent across all sites. Are you using a consistent business name (CDJR vs. Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram)? Is your dealership using the same address across all local platforms? Your dealership website should be the main source for this type of information, so whatever you are using on your site (name, address, phone number) should be reflected throughout the Internet.

If your dealership is confused about where your business information is listed, consider using a tool like Yext. Yext scans local directories to identify and claim existing listings and reports your standings across hundreds of platforms. From there, you can manage your listings, correcting any errors you may find and help ensure that your dealership’s information is accurate where it matters most.

Need or want some assistance making sure your local directory listings are in order? Please contact me or DealerOn and we can help you through the process. It’s something our team routinely does as a part of our Client Results program, and would be more than happy to help your dealership stay on top of Google’s algorithm adjustments like the Pigeon update.

The Responsive Experience: What Car Buyers Really Want

Much of what has been published over the last couple of years about responsive website design has surrounded its effect on search rankings. Google has made it very clear that they want, at a minimum, a uniform URL structure that presents the same basic information to people regardless of device. That is at the low end of what they deem as acceptable, and it’s in place to prevent rankings from dropping based upon inconsistencies between devices.

On the high end, Google wants websites that are built on responsive technology that present nearly the exact same page and information, formatted appropriately to the size of the screen and functionality of the device. Many in the SEO world believe that responsive website design will someday aid in improved organic rankings. Some believe that it’s already happening today.

One reason that Google recommends Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design is the customer experience. Adaptive design websites rely on “user agent detection”. Adaptive websites use this user agent detection code to read which kind of device (phone, tablet, phablet, desktop, laptop, wearable) is visiting the site and then serve a version of the site for that device type. Google has expressly stated that it has found that user agent detection is error-prone and can result in adaptive sites serving the desktop version of the site to mobile devices and vice versa.

What has been lost in the mix is the experience itself. Google and other technology companies don’t just look at whether or not images resize or if text is big enough to read on the small screen. They’re pushing for responsive because, when done right, it can offer a unified experience. There is no other industry where this can be more important than the automotive industry.

The reason is based upon the depth of research. It’s not like buying something off of Amazon. Car buying is normally an extended set of steps that begins with different degrees of research and ends when the decision has been made to seek out an individual car or vehicle type. As a result, car buyers will often visit the same sites or pages over and over again during the process. In North America, it is common for these multiple visits to happen on different devices.

The uniform nature of responsive website design (RWD) makes it ideal for enhancing the car shopping experience online. With RWD, the images, buttons, videos, and text on a page are mostly the same from device to device but presented in a way that makes the most sense. For example, a vehicle details page may have the contact form on the right sidebar when viewed on a desktop, but that contact form can fall in line with the images and information about the vehicle when seen on a mobile device, all aligned within the same column.

With proper RWD, the individual pages can be enhanced for each device and screen size. A perfect example of this would be the addition of a Click-to-Call button that appears on the inventory when the screen is small. Since the small screen usually indicates a smartphone, having that Click-to-Call button makes sense to be available on mobile while it doesn’t make sense to have it present when the page is viewed on a 17” monitor.

Shoppers will often allow gaps between the different phases of their research. By presenting them a responsive experience on your website, you’ll allow for the triggers to remain in place that made them interested in a particular vehicle in the first place. This seamless type of experience enables car buyers to pick up where they left off rather than having to figure out how they got to a particular place on the website the last time they visited.

As you explore your website options and consider the different types of mobile websites available, look deeper into the numbers behind the equation. At the end of the day, a website should encourage lead forms, phone calls, and showroom visits. Adaptive or mobile-only websites might seem to offer a similar experience to the preferred responsive experience, but they do not. Even within the realm of RWD itself, there are good variations and bad variations. As with nearly all things, quality matters. Just because a company slaps an RWD badge on a website does not mean that it’s optimized to bring the proper shopper experience that your customers desire.

Look closely. Let the numbers guide you. Test how each website option operates on multiple devices. Your customers are not limited in the devices that they can use to explore your website. Make sure that you are aware of what they’re seeing and that it puts your dealership’s internet technology in a positive light.

How Expedia’s A/B Test Could Increase Your Leads by 25%

I think that everyone in a dealer’s internet department would agree that their most important digital asset is their website, and the most important factor in their website’s success is its ability to convert visitors to leads.

When I saw that Expedia had published an A/B test in which they dramatically increased conversion rate using the same principals and best practices I’ve been advocating in the automotive industry for years, I was excited to share it.

I am a firm believer that the forms on your dealership website should only ask for the basic information you need to schedule an appointment. Once you bring them into your dealership, where you can actually sell them a car, it becomes worthwhile to ask for more information, like their home address. Any unnecessary information that you request (even if you explicitly mark the fields as “optional”) on a website lead form, simply limits the number of opportunities your sales team has to set appointments and sell cars.

As a part of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) mentality in website design, asking for (even if not requiring) unnecessary information can deter the potential customer from supplying any information to your dealership and lowering your lead volume.

Here are the A and B versions of Expedia’s form from their A/B test. They removed “Company Name”, a field they weren’t requiring, from the billing section of a form:

Apparently, this field may have been confusing visitors who began entering their bank name and address, instead of their billing address. It definitely generated a higher bounce rate than the shortened form on the right. Simply removing a field THAT THEY WEREN’T EVEN REQUIRING, increased their site’s annual profit by $12 million!

So, let’s apply this learning to our industry. Take your dealership’s online credit application, for example. Two reasons that most online credit apps aren’t completed are: 1) the length of the form and 2) the detail of the questions. If a customer doesn’t readily know even one piece of information, or is reluctant to share it, they’ll abandon the process and you won’t have any of their information. Try streamlining this form to only require data that is absolutely necessary to begin the finance application process and start a dialogue with the customer.

What about vehicle lead forms? Below is an example of a typical dealership website lead form. Even though many of the fields in this lead form below are actually “optional” (note that they don’t have an “*”, so they aren’t required), they also complicate the form, distract the user, and lower conversion rate. So as we consider this form we want to ask ourselves – “Are any of these “optional” fields are going to help us sell a car?” Clearly, we’re better off getting many more leads than knowing each customer’s zip code.

Your lead forms simply need to capture a name, phone number, and email address. The rest of these fields only limit the number of leads your site produces. That’s why so many websites in our industry under-perform – the dealers expect that their providers are delivering high-quality, optimized sites, but their vendors may not be any savvier about website optimization than they are.

We’ve repeated this experiment dozens of times on our platform, and I can tell you that every time we streamline a form, our dealer’s conversion rates increase. So, over the next few days, I suggest that you audit your website and identify any fields that aren’t necessary on any form on your site. Send these examples to your website provider and see if they can help you increase your conversion rate. If you can’t get your provider to do this, give me a call. I’ll see what we can work out.

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