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Knowledge, news, and more about Automotive SEO, SEM, and dealership websites
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.

In

Why Your Dealership Isn’t Seeing Engagment on Facebook

Many businesses struggle with achieving the level of engagement they’d like with their Facebook fans, especially car dealerships.  If your dealership is looking for more comments and interaction on your FB page, check out these potential reasons why your engagement on Facebook is less than you’d like.

Inconsistency: Much like blogging, regular posting makes a difference when trying to attract users to engage with your dealership on Facebook.  A user that comes to a page that is being consistently updated and posted to is more likely to stay engaged than one that only has a random post here and there.

Your Fans Aren’t on Facebook: Certain cities and industries are more involved in Facebook than others.  Check out your competitors to see if they are having success using Facebook.  If your community isn’t particularly engaged with dealerships in your area, don’t give up.  Try tactics no one else is doing, but at least you’ll have a baseline.

Your Posts: While only posting sales announcements may be informational to your fans, it doesn’t leave much room for interaction.  Photos typically draw the most interaction, but each post really needs a call to action. Ask users to leave a comment, ask them a question, or use a fill-in-the-blank question.

Overall, focus on your brand and community.  Be interesting and post things that you would want to see from a local business.  Experiment to find what works best for your dealership.

What do you find generates the most engagement on your Facebook page?

In Best Practices

Winning Answer from the DealerOn Webinar with Bill Wittenmyer, VP of ELEAD One

Katie Wagner, ISM at Swant Graber Chevrolet-Dodge-Ram-Ford, was the winner of a 500 name GoldDigger Campaign Gift Certificate, valued at $1750, during today’s weekly DealerOn webinar.  The prize was donated by ELEAD One – they also lent us their VP, Bill Wittenmyer, to present CRM strategies dealerships can use to maximize their profits.

Listeners were asked to share the most innovative example of customer follow up or lead generation ‘that actually worked’ in their dealership.  Here is Katie’s response:

“We use video in our newsletters and monthly web ads from their sales consultants to service adv.-When an inquiry hits our CRM we take a walk around video of that vehicle too. (Video may take more time to edit/publish/etc. but it proves to be beneficial overall). Customers love to know that we care because we really do!”

Such a great idea!  To find out more ways your CRM can help your dealership maximize profits, grab the recording of the amazing webinar Bill put on for us.

Also, check out the DealerOn FREE weekly webinar series for great tips every Thursday.

In Mobile

Google Announces Mobile Website Guidelines and Recommendations, Finally!

It’s official!  At SMX Advanced in Seattle, WA this morning, Google has finally announced guidelines and recommendations on how to build mobile websites that work best for users and Google.

Google recommends building your mobile site with a responsive design approach.  This means that your mobile site uses the same URL as your main site, and serves the same HTML, but uses CSS to change how the page is shown on the device.  Google says this is best since one URL makes it easier on users and Google doesn’t have to crawl multiple pages on different URLs.

Their second-best option?  Device-specific HTML.  This means that the same URL is used, but the mobile version serves different HTML and CSS depending on the device that is detected.

All of this is a little technical, so make sure you talk to your car dealership mobile website provider to see which approach they are taking.  You can read the full release from Google here: Recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites.

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Priority SEO Pages for Auto Dealerships

If you’re doing the SEO for your own auto dealer website, it can be difficult to know where to focus your energy first. Here are the pages you should start optimizing first to get the most bang for your SEO efforts:

 

Main Navigation Pages: Your home page and those that have direct navigation from your home page (mainly your inventory) should be optimized since they are the ones potential customers are most likely to find. Also, if people are linking to your site, they are probably linking to your homepage or inventory pages. Back up these link “votes” by optimizing these pages to help their rank in search engine results.

Your Most Profitable Vehicle Pages: Help potential customers find the vehicles that bring in the most money for your dealership. Optimizing your more expensive cars and trucks, as well as your service and parts department pages will help interested buyers find these dealership website pages first.

Your Best Performing Pages: Which of your website pages provide your dealership with the most leads, highest time on site, and lowest bounce rate? Spend some time here to help interested customers find these pages in their search engine results

If you’re using a third-party SEO company, or your car dealership website provider is responsible, make sure you ask them which pages they focus the most SEO effort and energy. While each of your dealership website pages need to be optimized for search engines, make sure your SEO provider is paying special attention to the pages that will ultimately help your dealership sell more cars.

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