How to Improve Your Dealership’s Website Productivity

On this week’s episode of Kain & Co., David Kain, president of Kain Automotive, discusses how to make your dealership’s website an easy-to-use and efficient business generator.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

David Kain: Hello. I’m David Kain. I’m President of Kain Automotive, and welcome to Kain & Co. here on the CBT Automotive Network. Today, we’re going to talk about your website productivity. All of us depend on our website to be a business generator. Perhaps it just provides information, to give directions or phone numbers for them to come in, whether it’s a mobile device or they’re using their desktop. Your website productivity is critical to whether customers engage with you and then come in and buy from you.

I want to talk to you about a ‘Best Idea’ that was presented at one of our 20 groups, and I got the good fortune of moderating three Digital 20 Groups. I’ve got two internet BDC 20 Groups and one straight Digital Marketing Manager 20 Group, and man, after nine meetings a year, I am just really rocking with great ideas. One that came up and actually one the Best Idea at a recent meeting was how to reword your tools on the website so that they are more effective. The number one conversion tool on most websites or the number one button typically is the one that says, “Get E-Price.”

For years, customers have probably wondered, “What the heck is an E-Price?” Obviously, it’s an electronic price. Most customers are used to it. They see it on all kinds of online retailing platforms, so when they see it they know that means, “I’ve got to get my price.” One thing that we’ve learned is that doesn’t have near the resonance with customers that it used to. The idea was presented that customers are real-time when they’re shopping for a vehicle, and one of the phrase changes that this dealership implemented, the double… The leave volume at the dealership was to change from “Get E-Price” to “Get today’s best price.”

Shockingly, that simple turn of phrase, giving the customer the impetus to know that this is live marketing pricing, if you will. We hear that all the time, but today’s price is what I’m interested in if I want to buy a car today. If I want someone to fill out a form so that they can get that, we need to make sure they know what the outcome is. It’s frustrating for the customer when they fill it out to not get any kind of a discount or anything of that nature, so I would also encourage you for your BDC team or your internet team to give them a couple of bucks to where they’re able to provide some level of discount when the customer reaches out.

When we message them back, whether it be by telephone, by email, or by text messaging, we want to get across that we’ve got today’s price and it’s going to be worth your time to reach back out to us so that we can provide it. In an email, be transparent. Give them what they were looking for. I take great comfort in a study that was done years ago by CDK and it basically says that if you give a competitive price, someone will pause 60% of the time and engage with you. There’s still going to be a large percentage that are going to continue shopping, but a very small percentage are going to hold out for the very lowest price.

Most of us when we buy something just don’t want to be taken advantage of, so offer today’s best price, cause that customer to realize, “Hey, let’s find out. Maybe they come back another day and we bring them back into the market a couple times during the week.” Be aware we’re going to have that transparency, but give them the stimulant to know that we’ve got something good for them today and today really was a great day to shop for a car. I think you’ll enjoy it if you give it a try. If it works the way it did for this dealer, you should see a nice climb in your leave conversion rate on your website.

Thanks for joining me for that idea. My name’s David Kain and I will see you next time here on Kain & Co.

This has been a JBF Business Media Production.