How to Sell More Cars: Make Shopping Easy

Car shoppers start their research and enter the purchasing cycle when they want to, not when a dealer tells them it's time.

No matter where consumers start their buying journey, they are likely to end up on your dealership’s website. So it’s on you to always be prepared for your digital visitors by providing the best user experience that ultimately generates leads.

Delivering an Optimal User Experience

The experience a visitor has on your website can directly impact the probability of a sale. More than six in 10 site visitors will stop gathering information or not buy the product under consideration if the website does not meet their needs.

Can your dealership website answer these questions for your visitors:

1. Where am I? – The first thing every website visitor wants to know is “Am I in the right place?”
2. What can I do here? – Do not make your visitors think. Show them exactly what they want with big easy buttons that take them where they need to go in a single click.
3. Most importantly, why should I do it? – What reasons have you provided to convince visitors to do business with your dealership over any other?

Clean, informative, and organized websites help visitors more easily gather the information they are looking for. Pull website analytics to see what links are being clicked on the most, what pages get the most attention, and even how far down the page visitors are scrolling. This data can help with the arrangement and focus of your website.

Don’t frustrate shoppers by hiding the content they are there to find. To keep them engaged, put the most important content where you know they'll see it.

The following links should be the most accessible and easily identified:

• New Vehicles
• Used Vehicles
• CPO
• Schedule Service
• Specials
• Contact Us

Finally, don't overwhelm your site visitors with every single promotion you offer. You know what people in your market are searching for, so make that information easy to access.

Generate Leads

Once you have provided the information a visitor wants, you can then ask for what you want: the lead or the appointment.

Form leads are essential for collecting contact information to use in ongoing communications. Actively work to gather that information rather than passively waiting for visitors to volunteer it.

The information you gather can be used to determine visitors’ location, the stage of the buying process, and even their level of interest. From there, you can target them with messages tailored to their immediate needs and begin to establish a relationship.

Pages that convert have four main elements:

1. Headline – This stops the visitor and makes them want to look at your offer.
2. An offer – Your offer must be clear, compelling, and credible.
3. A call to action – What do you want the visitor to take? If you don’t ask for what you want – and don’t do it in a clear way – don’t be surprised when you don’t get the lead.
4. Customer benefit – Most importantly, if you can't tell your visitor what’s in it for them, you’ve wasted your efforts in all the previous steps.

There is a social expectation to repay favors, a simple theory proven successful in everyday life: pay-it-forward at the coffee shop, holiday gift exchange at work, or even a smile exchanged with a passerby.

Show your visitors that if they are willing to invest their time and information with you, you are willing to give something in return. Providing their contact information to you should get them more than your email campaigns. Offer a gift card, test drive, or service discounts.

You are already investing money in attracting attention through your marketing efforts. Make it worth it by focusing those efforts on targeted incentives that are proven to turn website visitors into dealership customers.

Customers want what they want, when they want it. It's up to you to be the one they get it from. If you need help making that happen, call 855.NKD.LIME or email info@nakedlime.com.