I wrote a post back in the summer comparing two similar dealers in the same market to illustrate the impact of web design on lead generation. One dealer was doing a lot better than the other in generating web leads despite similar traffic numbers. After listening to a year of complaints about how bad business is, I finally convinced the dealer with the "worse" website to take my advice and redesign it according to my recommendations. The site content was not changed much at all, only the page layouts, some graphics, etc. It's amazing how small changes can impact business so much. Here are the actual numbers from the three-week period immediately before the change compared to the three-week period immediately following the change:
Before:
Site Visitors: 1452
Pageviews: 10,212
Contact Forms Submitted: 7
Credit Apps Submitted: 9
Overall: 1 lead for every 91 visitors
After:
Site Visitors: 1599
Pageviews: 10,716
Contact Forms Submitted: 24
Credit Apps Submitted: 41
Overall: 1 lead for every 25 visitors
The site statistics have not changed much at all, but by making some adjustments to the site layout, this dealer has increased his conversion rate to 4 times the amount it used to be. We run into these sort of problems on a daily basis. A dealer may want to do something on his/her site that they think is a good idea, but I wish more dealers would listen to those of us who have been in the online media industry and have seen how much business these type of "mistakes" can cost. Going off the last 3 weeks stats, let's assume this particular dealer had 27,716 visitors for the last 52 weeks. If they had the same conversion rates they see since the redesign, that would be 1108 leads. With the old conversion rates it would only be 304 leads, a difference of 804 for the year. As a dealer you know your closing ratios, so would it be worth it for you to make a small change and have a crack at an extra 804 car shoppers over the year?
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4 comments:
well...all lilttle things matter a lot when it comes to dealership marketing...and as you said, the layout brought in 4% sales is awesome...people should write their such experiences that really helps other dealers out there
I agree, we just changed our website this past fall. We've always received a good amount of business from the web, but now receive about 80% of our business from our website. We created a custom classified area that is complimented by a PDF print out that seems to help our clients alot.
Great post. I am suprized that so many dealerships still have sub-par websites.
well. all lilttle things matter a lot when it comes to dealership marketing.
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