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Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
In Web Analytics

How to Use Google Analytics Reports to Speed Up Your Website

We all know that one of the most important traffic sources for the typical car dealer website is Google’s organic search listings.  Google has made it very clear that one of the most important factors in determining where your dealership’s website content ranks on Google is the speed at which that page loads for their users.  Google has stressed that the page load time is an EVEN bigger factor for mobile rankings than for traditional desktop search results.  Did you know that Google Analytics has a Site Speed Page Timings report that shows you the speed for EVERY page on your site in one easy report?

Over the last few weeks, we have written about Google’s site speed insight tool that can show you or your website provider how to lower the load time of a particular page on your site.  But how can you get information about which pages you should check?  The Google Analytics Site Speed Page Timings report shows you Google’s calculated load time for EVERY page on your site, along with the amount of traffic each page receives, and what the Bounce Rate is for that page!

 

Page Timings Report:

Here is an example of the Google Analytics Page Timings report.  To access the report in your Google Analytics account, just click through on “Behavior>Behavior Flow>Site Speed>Page Timings”.  You will get a report that looks like this:

For every page on your site, the report shows:

  1. The time it take to load the page in Seconds
  2. The # of page views during the time period for which you’ve run the report
  3. The Bounce Rate for the page
  4. The Exit Rate

If you use the sort functionality within the report, you can focus on the pages with the highest Load times, the Most Traffic, or the highest Bounce Rates.  You can easily identify the highest trafficked pages on your site that also have high Bounce Rates, and see if the load times for those pages are part of the Bounce Rate problem.

You can even filter this report to just show Organic Search traffic and use “Landing Page” as the Primary Dimension, which will then show you the actual load time for consumers coming to your website from Google or Bing.  Because you also have the Page Views, you can easily focus on the pages with High Load Times, High Bounce Rates and High Traffic volumes, helping you to get the most return from your time investment.

Because page speed is an even more critical SEO factor for mobile, this report REALLY becomes valuable if you filter the traffic to show only Mobile Visitors.  When you create a report that shows pages that have lots of traffic, high bounce rates, and high load times for Mobile traffic, you can use the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool to get actionable information on how to speed up the pages that will provide the most value to your dealership if you optimize them (because they have the most inbound traffic).

If you are investing a material amount of money in paid search advertising, you should run this same report, filtered on your paid search traffic.  You can then isolate any landing pages that are problematic from a Speed/Bounce Rate view.  Once you’ve isolated the problem landing pages you could send the traffic to a similar, but faster landing page with a lower bounce rate, invest some time in fixing the current landing page, or pause the campaign until you have time to improve your results.

 

Speed Suggestions Report:

If you just want to see a list of pages with their accompanying Google Page Speed scores, you can click on the “Speed Suggestions” report just below the “Page Timings” report and get a list of all the pages in your site, sorted by Page views, with the accompanying Google Page Speed score (0-100) and a link to the Google Insight suggestions for improving the page speed.

Google is continuously improving Google Analytics to provide insight into how Google evaluates your site’s content for its organic search rankings and paid search traffic.  Make sure that you aren’t overlooking this free tool that can help you, your website provider, your SEO guru, or your paid search vendor maximize your dealership’s return on their time and efforts.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Mobile

Have Google Check Your Mobile Site for Speed & Usability

Google’s announcement yesterday about the launch of their new PageSpeed Insights’ User Experience rules is really driving home the importance of usability and site speed on your mobile website.  They’ve previously discussed how important the speed at which your website loads (both desktop and mobile) is to their algorithm – site speed can impact the ranking of a website on Google’s SERP, as well as the likelihood of visitors to leave your site.  But at the end of the day, a fast loading site can only take you so far, especially when it comes to mobile devices.

Google is quick to point out that it is not enough to have a fast mobile website if your mobile site is not configured appropriately.  That means that users shouldn’t “have to spend another 5 seconds once the page loads to pinch-zoom and scroll the screen before they can start reading the text and interacting with the page,” because “then that site isn’t really fast to use after all.”  In other words, your mobile site needs to automatically adjust to each device.  One of the easiest ways to solve this problem is to make sure your dealership has a responsive website.

To help web developers improve the user experience on their sites, Google has launched the new PageSpeed Insights’ User Experience rules that identify and provide suggested fixes for usability issues for mobile sites.

These rules cover such things as:

  • Font Size – make sure users can read your content without having to enlarge or diminish the screen.
  • Plugin Use – since most smartphones don’t support Flash, make sure mobile users can see the most important parts of your site. If plugins carry the value and content of your dealership website, your mobile users will miss the most important information.
  • Scrolling – mobile website visitors are accustomed to scrolling vertically, not horizontally. If you aren’t using a responsive dealership website, make sure your mobile site fits the width of the device it’s designed for.

You can use the PageSpeed Insights tool to test both your desktop and mobile pages. Stay ahead of the curve (or make sure you’re caught up) by checking your mobile pages now. Many dealerships are already seeing the majority of their traffic come from mobile devices (tablet, smartphone, etc), so it’s especially important you’re presenting those visitors with the best experience possible.

While having a responsive dealership website will solve many of the usability issues your site may have, it won’t fix them all if you have a bad design. Check your mobile website regardless of the technology it is built upon.

In

A Chance to Give Yelp Your Input

Yelp has been making a lot of news recently.  Yesterday they announced that they have rolled out a new feature that alerts a business when Yelp detects that their company is receiving multiple reviews from the same IP address (for instance the IP at your dealership).  Just to remind everyone, Yelp’s official stance from their blog is “we encourage businesses to take a hands off approach when it comes to receiving reviews”.

 

Historically, dealers have not had the greatest experience with Yelp.  You don’t have to search long to find real-life stories about problems dealers have had working with the review service.  In the dealership world, Yelp is often talked about, rarely praised (see here, here, and here).

Last week, Johnson & Weaver, a shareholder rights firm, announced that they are launching an investigation into Yelp’s business practices, specifically focusing on the validity and authenticity of the reviews of local businesses that Yelp displays on its site, mobile site, and mobile app.  This announcement comes just a few weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that Yelp has received over 2,000 FTC complaints in the last 6 years.

Perhaps in response to some of the recent publicity, Yelp announced Tuesday, using their official blog, that they are looking for help from small business owners – new members for the Yelp Small Business Advisory Council (YSBAC). Created in 2010, this panel gets to:

  • Participate in an annual summit at Yelp HQ
  • Provide input on products under development
  • Brainstorm new ideas for Yelp executives to consider
  • Serve as a resource for other business owners who have questions about the services and tools on Yelp

 

According to Yelp, the YSBAC has had a hand in the following improvements:

  • “Yelp Metrics” being launched to help business owners track customer leads
  • Business owner review comments being visible on mobile
  • Development of the free “Revenue Estimate” tool to calculate the value of leads from Yelp
  • The “Activity Feed” to track when and how Yelp drives customers to businesses

 

I think that we’re all fairly skeptical of Yelp’s intentions in reaching out to local business owners, given the challenges I’ve described above.   Regardless of our industry’s recent experiences with Yelp, they are a multi-billion dollar company that remains the leading local business review website.  So if you’re interested in participating in their YSBAC to influence and shape Yelp’s treatment and relationship with local businesses in the future, there is a simple, 9 question form, that you can complete.  Last year, 26 small business owners were chosen from the over 1,000 business owners that applied to participate.

 

Would you like to share your dealership’s experiences with Yelp?

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.

acacia.grant@dealeron.com'
In Search Engine Marketing (PPC),

The Difference a Combination Can Make

In the seven years I’ve been in the automotive industry, I’ve noticed that much of the thinking tends to be segmented – Internet Dept vs. Showroom, New vs. Used, Sales vs. Service. A lot of times, this way of thinking rolls over to the advertising and marketing your dealership does, including that of your vendors – Paid vs. Organic, Digital vs. Traditional, Print Vs Online.

 

Many industries suffer from this either/or mentality, but the more you can think in terms of “and” (especially in your marketing), the more successful your dealership can be. A recent Marin Software study explored the differences in online marketing campaigns that separated their search and social advertising and those that combined those marketing efforts.

 

Google’s “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” found that social interactions in the path to conversion “assist” other digital channel conversions twice for each time a click on a social ad directly contributes to a conversion.  This stat alone gives cause to manage digital marketing campaigns together, not in a vacuum.

 

In fact, in Google’s “Digital Drives Auto Shopping” study in November 2013, they found that the average consumer has 24 research touchpoints (including Digital and offline media) in their purchase process.   The increasingly fragmented (and often lengthy) road to sale means that when you’re not tracking and managing social and search ads together, you could be missing opportunity and your true ROI.

 

The Marin study found two key takeaways:

  • Customers Who Click on Search AND Social Ads are More Likely to Buy
  • Customer Who Click on Your Search AND Social Ads Spend More

In fact, those that clicked on both search and social ads had a click-through rate 4X higher than those that only clicked on social ads and approximately twice the . More and more car shoppers are using search and social to find your dealership and to help choose their next vehicle.  Encouraging shoppers to interact with your ads across multiple platforms means better conversion rates and ROI for your dealership. Try parroting your social ads with search ads and vice versa; present the same branding message across both platforms to increase click through rate. Retargeting is a great example of this type of combined, cross-channel marketing.

 

Change your marketing focus from the medium you’re using to advertise, and combine mediums to focus on the consumer. How can you best reach your potential customers using all of your advertising options?

 

Interested in learning more? Check out the white paper from Marin Software, The Multiplier Effect of Integrating Search & Social Advertising, and talk to your digital marketing vendors.  Make sure that your Google Analytics accounts are set up to track multi-channel conversions.  Find out what they are doing to help your dealership reach your target audience, not just what platforms they’re running your ads on.

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