Investing in Your Website Data to Invest in Your Vehicles
Properly maintaining a dealership website involves a lot of moving parts. From ensuring your inventory is accurately booked out and competitively priced and taking quality photos of your vehicles, all while staying on top of incoming showroom traffic, setting appointments, answering calls and following up with fresh leads, it can be a tiresome process. But during all that time, there’s one great tool which is always working in the background to help you if you know where to look- it's your website analytics data! With the right analytics data, generated from interactions from real people looking for a vehicle on your website, you can let your customers’ interactions help dictate what vehicles you should be stocking your lot with.
On the surface, website analytic data can seem overwhelming. It can be easy to just focus on the number of leads produced, the bounce rate, and the number of new and returning users to see if your website is gaining popularity. But what should you be doing with all that other data? Your website provider should be furnishing your dealership with data which can be used to positively influence which vehicles you have in stock, leading to better online foot-traffic, more leads, and ultimately more sales. In this article we’ll cover 3 key data points.
- Top Trafficked Vehicles on your Website
In the website analytic data example below, you can see that highlighted stock number: 6164 - 2011 Ford F250 has had 147 pageviews and 19 leads filled out, just on this one vehicle detail page alone. But what does that mean? If it hasn't sold yet, is it priced too high? Is there not enough good quality information to accurately describe this vehicle so the visitors are resorting to filling out a form? Are there only two photos available so more are being requested? Are people filling out the make an offer form and sending in extremely low offers? Does the vehicle have too much damage to sell quickly?
Through the use of analytics reporting tools like the one above, you can more quickly identify vehicles which you may otherwise think are positive performers that are actually not performing well. You can use that information to make minor adjustments to your existing and future inventory to get those vehicles off your lot quicker. Not to mention, you can also start tracking your sold vehicle data and pair it up with your top trafficked vehicles on your website. This combination of information can help you focus in on which vehicles you should be trying to win at your next auction, or when providing trade-in value to customers who may have a vehicle that falls into your "easy sell" category. You can even extrapolate this data further to see if the weather and season changes are changing with your website searches. Has your buying area been experiencing multiple storms recently causing the search for AWD/4WD vehicles to skyrocket? Do you even have enough 4WD/AWD inventory selections available to keep up with the demand, or are you forcing visitors off your website to look elsewhere that has a larger and a wider variety of 4WD and AWD selections? By learning the answers to these questions, it can help refine your website’s priority level as it displays to new and returning customers. Because let’s face it, the inventory is what your website visitors want to see.
- Breakdown of Search Results Page Advanced Search Utilization
Another key data point you should absolutely be keeping an eye on is HOW your website visitors are searching your inventory. In the provided inventory search results website data example below, you can see that a majority of visitors are auto selecting all the inventory to arrange by pricing (low to high). The price search breakdown can show some general price points of what a majority of visitors are comfortable spending.
This focused customer search-based data can help guide the vehicle price point you may want to consider investing in and where you can realize larger profits. By allowing options within a specific price range, it can help engage your website visitors to place themselves on a vehicle without forcing them to your competitor down the street who may have a wider selection of vehicles in those specific price points.
- Breakdown of Keyword Advanced Search Utilization
One final data point to consider is how your website traffic is searching your inventory based on keywords. By actively tracking this area for data points you may find searches for inventory you haven't thought about carrying nor have carried in the past. For example, by investigating the data points below, you see multiple searches for "box truck" or more high-end vehicles such as "Corvette" and "Challenger". You may not currently have these vehicle searches in stock, but have you in the past?
By checking these three key areas regularly, you can help your dealership forecast trends and be prepared to have certain types of inventory readily available. It can help build inventory plans throughout the coming year and for years to come.
If you'd like to learn more about how a ProMax/Blackhawk Digital website can help you, call us at 800-322-9034 ext. 229 or email us at WebsiteSupport@ProMaxUnlimited.com - we'd love to speak with you!
