Automotive Alchemy
Welcome to 'Automotive Alchemy', a podcast that dwells in the cavernous depths of data, unearthing precious gems of wisdom to illuminate your path to digital marketing success. As alchemists, we understand that each nugget of information is a vital ingredient in our elixir of knowledge. So ready yourselves as we embark on an enlightening journey through the arcane world of data-driven automotive marketing.
Automotive Alchemy
Cracking the Conversion Code: Essential Strategies for Boosting Car Dealership Sales
Ever wondered why your dealership's digital marketing campaigns aren't driving the sales you expected? In this episode of Automotive Alchemy, Shean Kirin reveals the secrets behind the conversion metrics that truly matter for car dealerships. Forget superficial metrics like clicks on directions; Shean breaks down the vital indicators such as leads, phone calls, and form fills that pave the way to real sales. Listen in as he exposes the importance of holding your service providers accountable and decoding analytics to track actual sales conversions, ensuring your advertising dollars are well spent.
Imagine a dealership website that's not just sleek but also a conversion powerhouse. Shean discusses how simplifying the user interface, enhancing site speed, and selecting the right button types can transform your website's performance. Learn why excessive third-party scripts and intrusive pop-ups could be killing your conversion rates and how targeted social advertising can enhance consumer engagement. With these strategies, you can optimize your site for a user-friendly experience that leads to better sales performance.
Ready to stay ahead of the curve in automotive digital marketing? Shean touches on the future trends like cookie management and native digital retailing, and how innovations like penny-perfect payment systems are setting new standards. He also shares insights into SEO's evolving landscape, emphasizing the need for technical optimization and high-quality content. Discover how leveraging data analytics to personalize user journeys can significantly boost mobile conversions.
Join us as we turn automotive challenges into golden opportunities with a glimpse into the future of digital marketing and dealership success.
Welcome back to Automotive Alchemy. I'm Sean Raines, your host, and I'm joined by the premier dealer, alchemist, sean Kieran. What's going on, kieran? How are you? Welcome back?
Speaker 2:I'm doing excellent, thanks. How about you, sean?
Speaker 1:I'm doing really well.
Speaker 1:Last couple of episodes, your partner in crime, Jeff Clark, did a couple of fantastic episodes on OTTC TV.
Speaker 1:I was really happy to get those episodes recorded, just because I don't think there's enough content like that out there for folks. But today, well, for the listeners and the viewers, we're going to talk conversion a bit Specifically, conversion as it relates to websites and digital marketing campaigns organic social posts, all kinds of stuff, but mostly around websites and digital marketing. We're going to dig in there. You know, if this is something that you've been letting your website vendor kind of off the hook on, or you don't talk to your digital marketing providers really in depth. You're going to love this episode because we're going to talk through some of the things that really probably should be front and center almost all of the time. So, without further ado, I want to jump right in and it's just a guess, Kieran, but I'm thinking that your audience definitely for sure would like to know if conversion has kind of always been a cornerstone of importance to you Meaning for me that's also in your retail days and has it influenced kind of your desire and what you do today in helping dealers through Dealer.
Speaker 2:Alchemist I. I think that conversion is probably one of the most important parts. That's why we advertise right, if, uh, if you're advertising doesn't produce phone calls, doesn't produce leads, doesn't get people in the door, then why are you doing it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. It's almost one of those that kind of goes without saying. But, um, it is some saying, but it is sometimes more than surprising to me how folks don't really. I think the surprising part is how often the suppliers of these services, where conversion should matter to them, that they're kind of not held accountable, which kind of blows my mind. Curious to know conversion means to you, like in the context of digital marketing for car dealerships. What does it really mean? And I guess that's probably such a broad question that maybe it also is going to be where you'll jump into maybe what it means within websites, because it kind of can mean a few different things as it relates to, then, paid campaigns as well yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think the best way to look at websites is always to think about conversions. A conversion is a lead. A conversion is a phone call. A conversion is a form fill a chat, a text. You can have visits now that you could show as a conversion, but ultimately it is someone interacted with the dealership and all advertising. We're trying to drive conversion. Conversion is what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it really is. Do you differentiate? Or maybe how do you differentiate between conversions that's really website traffic specific versus digital marketing campaigns?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the way that we look at everything is that in the end, the end goal is to get the true conversion. Let's call it a sales conversion. That sales conversion is the phone call, the form fill, the chat, the text, one of those. And so in order to get there, it's kind of like we're looking to the road to the sale, just like in selling a car. In that road to the sale, I want to know where did they enter? Did they get to an SRP? Did they get to a VDP? Where were they at in engagement time between those? And then, ultimately, did they submit a form?
Speaker 2:Advertising works best when we assign values to those that are proper, because when you set up advertising properly, you attach the analytics to the AdWords campaign, you make sure that everything is properly coded. So in the back end of Google Analytics, we're properly firing every single one of those conversions and measuring all of them. And then, last, we're differentiating between the advertising quote-unquote conversion, which is the SRP view, the BDP view, the road to the sale, if you may, and then the actual form fills or the true conversions themselves, because ultimately it's always about the true conversion. On the website. It's the exact same thing. You know directions is not a conversion.
Speaker 1:No matter how much you may have a vendor that tells you how great it is, directions is not a conversion.
Speaker 1:No matter how much you may have a vendor that tells you how great it is, directions is not a conversion.
Speaker 1:A conversion is a lead. Years ago, when that metric of hey, you got people that are clicking on your location or map got lumped into, that's a conversion event, how could they not push back on something that was really clearly just a justification for charging for services, where it was very hard for somebody to prove any real conversion, which conversion always feels like love to know what your thoughts are, but I've always felt like conversion means that they were drawn much, much closer to actually being a true sales opportunity. Like, certain conversions are not a guarantee that you're going to actually still get a sales or a service opportunity, right, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't irrelevant, right. There's these, like you've mentioned this before. There's there's like micro conversions. It's like this almost evolutionary process of conversion where some of them, you know, might not be a strong signal, but some of them, as they get closer, it should be drawing somebody much, much more near the opportunity to do business with them.
Speaker 2:And just because somebody clicked on a location or a map, seems like a stretch, a real big stretch A long time ago now, because I guess I've been out of retail for eight years. But when I was in retail we couldn't track conversions as easily on the website. And of course we had some third parties that came to us and they wanted to justify the size of that invoice they were sending us right. So they would tell us well, you had 197 directions visits. These people clicked on your location. There's 297 directions visits. These people have clicked on your location.
Speaker 2:And then for a little while we were tracking on the website side because we were just trying to keep up with what the third parties were teaching us to do and in reality what you find is that it just doesn't matter. So I think I like keeping things simple. Simplicity is did they contact the dealership in person, digitally or via the phone? Turns out that's a lead and that's a conversion and that's ultimately what matters. And then, inside of advertising, how we build those is really important Because if I look inside of advertising, you could run a generic brand and regional campaign. You can have tons of conversions happening from those campaigns.
Speaker 2:And then you look at your actual sales efficiency and you're not very sales efficient. You wonder how come I'm spending all this money but I'm not selling more cars. Conversely, you could spend less on the brand and regional campaigns. You could spend more on other forms that would drive that phone call traffic instead. Those organic or those uh, those website visits become organic website visits. Those website leads become organic website leads. They're not being claimed by the ad company at that point because they were done organically, but now the dealership's selling more cars. So just all conversions not equal. A great way to look at it is how sales efficient are we right? When the new company takes over, what's the number one goal? Increase market share, because that's the metric when the market's up, when the market's down, you're kind of in the same place in your zone. That's how it is. So if we're doing a good job, we should see those conversions turn into sales and we should increase market share. Don't you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I think, as I as I listen, it also would make sense. I think dealers would also need to focus on and be prepared to realize that those conversions that happen, the conversion events that happen, that aren't as significant, they may be relative. It's a reason why it's important to work with somebody like you guys, because some of them may just be clues to get you closer to the more meaningful conversion events. This whole it's like a, you know, like I said, it's kind of like an evolving process and some of those earlier ones are no, they may not be as uh, important.
Speaker 1:In fact, one point of micro conversion could lead somebody in maybe more than one different direction. Maybe it's like the point where you converted into that page, like you said, of SRP or VDP. From there is the next step. Well, yeah, I want to communicate with the dealership. So there's a few different options, like did they fill out a form? Because it's going to go into a CRM and email is going to essentially be the preferred communication. Or did they choose to pick up a phone? Did they text someone? If that was an opportunity? Is there a messenger connection somewhere? All of those things are really, really important and I think it's important to kind of break down. I want to ask you a little bit from perspective of common mistakes. I know a lot of the people in this audience really appreciate when you kind of break down well, here's some of the common things that are done that really you should try to avoid. So I guess help us out with that part. What are some common mistakes that dealers are making when they're trying to optimize their websites specifically for conversion?
Speaker 2:So I love this question because when we dive into an account from an advertising perspective, one of the things we're always doing is looking at the conversion buttons themselves. And the reason we do that is that how well they're laid out and how well they're put together is going to directly affect our success. And it just so happens that we have a website and, since our website company is a Toyota certified website provider, we're deep in tune with what works and what doesn't. And so some of the most common mistakes are number one all these pop-ups. You should not have pop-ups all over your website. Frankly, if you have one, have it engaged when your customer's engaged on an SRP or a VDP, but that pop-up that they have to close on the homepage, it lowers the engagement rate and makes them more likely to bounce. So that's number one. Number two would be let's look at the actual number of forms that we have on the search results page.
Speaker 2:I see dealers all the time with four or five buttons on every vehicle on the SRP, and that's overkill. Two to three buttons, that's an overkill. And by two to three what I mean is one sort of vehicle-related confirm availability, get E price, get my best price, unlock price, one trade value, my trade, what's my trade worth? Something like that. And then on mobile, click to call, but on mobile only, and that's what goes on a search results page. You don't need the shopping button, you don't need any of these other things on that page because they're overkill.
Speaker 2:And then, once we get to the VDP, you can put a couple more buttons there. You would add digital retailing so what's my payment? Or get pre-approved, and at that point you've got four buttons. You've got my kind of price button or availability button, I've got my trade button, I've got my payments button or my digital retailing button, got a credit out button, and then on mobile you've got a credit out. That's the best practice. And the more buttons you have on top of that, the more it's going to fail every single time great answer.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm I'm guessing that, in addition to those things that you just mentioned, especially things like pop-ups, that it's, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I I'm also thinking this is probably something that dealers should be aware of around site speed and how the how this, basically the technical side of the website's performing. Um, yeah, because that obviously, the all of these little things that break down how to improve conversion, part of it's set up, like how is your website built in the first place, like you just mentioned?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know like third party.
Speaker 2:One of my favorites right now is all these dealers put Comply Auto on their website because you do need a content cookie manager on your website preparing for cars. The challenge in there is that if you set that up so that the consumer has to manually opt in to be tracked and everybody automatically mops out, you ruin your ability to track anything on the website. So all of your conversion from advertising, all that money you're spending on your website, you just threw it away. Well, you're still getting conversion, but you just can't see it to track it or do anything about it. Plus, Google can't see it to track it and do anything about it.
Speaker 2:Because there's two ways your advertising is optimized. One of them is we, as the vendor, optimize based upon what we see from a result. The second one is the way Google optimizes it based upon the results that they see. So you want to be able to track as much as you possibly can. Plus any of those scripts that's slowing down your website is slowing down your conversion. So on our website platform, our highest website scores an 80 on the Google speed test Figure. That one out right Fastest website I've ever seen in automotive. His conversion is about 10% higher than everybody else's. Yeah, that's significant yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a huge difference, and so his philosophy is keep all the junk off of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember there was a provider that kind of weaponized the site speed tool many years ago and I remember having to kind of like defend that a little bit. But then, once you realize that and I'm glad that you're sharing that, because for dealers that tune in and listen to this, it's still really important to realize one site speed tools are actually still free. You can go to webpagetestorg and others, not that you have to make yourself an expert in this area, but it does tell you the truth because it literally is a third party tool. That will you know. When I used to use it on an almost daily basis with dealers, I would tell them what I'm about to say right now, and that is look for some of these add-on tools that represent themselves as what you're talking about with comply or pop-up add-ons, that are mainly there for lead generation or try to quick start somebody or play a part of the sites better.
Speaker 1:It can be catastrophic somebody in or play a part of the sites better.
Speaker 2:It can be catastrophic. Well, a lot of these guys. What they want to do is they want to put new buttons over all of your search results pages and over all of your vehicle details pages so that they can claim that lead themselves. So let's say I'm an ad company, I put a script on your buttons, those things come into your CRM, they come underneath my name, so I get to look like a hero.
Speaker 2:The thing is is that that script slows your website down, and because it slows your website down, you end up with less leads, and so, in the long run, setting the website up properly and speedily is the best practice 100% of the time, and you don't need other third-party buttons to make up for it. If you just build the website properly, it's just that simple. And if you don't build it properly, then all of a sudden you end up with all these scripts and the customer goes to click on your website on mobile. 30 seconds later, when it's not loaded, they're off to another website, and that's what you've got to avoid, right? They're not looking on their desktop, they're looking on their cell phone, and you've got five seconds, maybe six. So these websites that take 10, 15, 20 seconds to load. They're not shopping there. They don't want to deal with that.
Speaker 1:So true. Is the average conversion rate in automotive on an automotive website still kind of the 2% or sub 2%, or are there any new benchmarks or stats relative to conversion rate or the, I guess, the average for websites?
Speaker 2:in automotive depends on how you advertise. So let me give you some examples. We believe heavily in properly built social advertising and when you look at properly built social ads automotive inventory ads or Facebook ads where you scroll to see the vehicles those ads behaviorally target people in order to show the car that's most appropriate for the consumer. Interestingly enough, when you look at those customer clicks, what you find is that, even though you've got some retargeting and some conquesting going on with that actual advertising type, that consumer clicks on your website 2, 3, 5, 10, 15 times before they convert. And when they convert, they convert as direct, organic traffic. So they heard about you on social media, they clicked on you about you on social media. They clicked on you numerous times on social media. They finally converted the 10th time as a direct visit because the URL was saved in their browser.
Speaker 2:Now the challenge is that that social ad has a major amount of picture engagement, a major amount of vehicle engagement, and when you see that that social ad is properly deployed, the dealership sells more cars. However, the lead conversion percentage on the website goes down. So is it effective? Is it not effective? I deployed it and we sold more cars, but I look like I'm doing worse because my conversion percentage is lower on the website. So I'll just tell you all conversion is not created equal and it's about a holistic look at the entire picture and saying, based upon all of these advertising types, what is my real metric, depending on where your store is right.
Speaker 2:So we've got a bunch of stores in some pretty large cities, so we'll just use Southern California as an example. Your conversion is going to be a little bit lower when you got 100 dealers in the 50-mile radius of you. That's how it goes. If I'm the one dealer for the one brand that's in the town that's a two-hour drive your conversion is, of course, going to be higher. So I think the most important system is to understand the exact dealership's metrics and then attract those month after month, because when you track that conversion you can look to see hey, I made this change. Did it impact my conversion numbers? So it's a trick. Question is ultimately what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this next question I have for you is we have kind of a segue here, I think a little bit um regarding campaigns like digital marketing campaigns. How can dealers or how would you recommend that they measure for their digital campaigns, for success like, are there? I know a lot of people talk ga4. You have done a couple of episodes on getting through some of the messiness of that GA4 transition, so maybe it's GA4 related, but how would you recommend to dealers that they effectively measure success from digital campaigns?
Speaker 2:So I'll tell you two stories right. Story number one is on your website. So I'll tell you two stories right. Story number one is on your website. In today's world, you can get 100% transparency in where that lead actually came from, what the click path of that lead was. So in the back end of our website, for example, we know that that customer started as a Facebook click, became an organic click and converted as a direct click, even though it's a website lead, inside of the website and the CRM. So you can track all of that right now, although most websites don't track it.
Speaker 2:So because of that, the best practice is to ensure that GA4 is properly set up. My advice is to ignore the 700 conversions that people are going to set up for you with hours and direction views, and I spent one minute on this site and I played with the pictures on this site. We don't really need to track all that. Let's just track leads, let's track phone calls, let's track chats, texts, direction or just kidding store business and with all of that, that gives us an accurate number of what that success looks like and then you can directly see it in GA4. It is the best way to know what's happening with your digital efforts across the board. Is it perfect? No, it's still not perfect, but it's the best it's ever been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent, excellent feedback. I'm curious, going from digital marketing campaigns and success tracking to get your thoughts on the role of SEO driving organic traffic and conversions to the dealer website. What, in your mind, is the role there in terms of the SEO play? What in?
Speaker 2:your mind is the role there in terms of the SEO play. So I'll tell you a lot of what we pay for in SEO in today's world is a waste of money. The blog posts, the random pages about the arcade or the model comparison pages In today's world those things don't help you right. Your success is directly related to your conversion ratio and what's happening in the engagement that happens on your website, and so, from an SEO perspective, today's proper way of doing things is both technical and content. But the content needs to be carefully curated. Seo is going to be.
Speaker 2:What are my directory listings online? The citations? It's your name, address, phone number that we've been hearing about for the past decade. In addition to that, it's making sure that the technical side of the website is properly built out. So your alt tags, your alt data, is properly built and it's the right length with the right keywords. Google cares that it's properly written. So if you stuff a bunch of keywords in there trying to act cool, you're not going to score as well. It reads it, and if it reads like a human wrote it, you're in better shape.
Speaker 2:And then, last, once you get all that technical side done, the proper amount of contact is going to be model research pages, because in there you get the best of both worlds. You've got syndicated content, meaning that that content matches the manufacturer's website and it flags the manufacturer's website is where that content came from, so that you don't get downgraded for having duplicate content. It gives the consumer what they want to have and we find that when you have both of those included, that's the best practice and you sell the most amount of cars. I'll tell you a quick story. We took over the advertising for a store, and the provider that they had has been charging them a fortune for SEO, for a very long time right.
Speaker 2:So, as they've been doing SEO, they talked about all these blog posts, all these random pages that they were building every month and some other things that they were building behind the scenes. That probably weren't the best practice, let's just put it that way. And so I mean many thousands of dollars, thousands and thousands of dollars. We did away with that. We put them on our program. We did away with all the advertising towards brand and regional and did it to, instead of 70% of their money being spent on what was essentially organic traffic, we dropped it down to about 25%.
Speaker 2:It looked like the organic traffic went down, but the store started selling more cars, because real people are interested in buying a car from a dealership. What they're not interested in doing is reading about an arcade, right? Or they're not coming to your model research page. They're probably going to check car and driver. Call me crazy, but I think that's probably the way that's supposed to work. And said, and the data proves that when you make SEO the focus, that way your conversions go up, your stats work better and you sell more cars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the SEO side, the organic side. For a lot of people I know in the dealer world most of the dealers they would never want to raise their hand and have to explain the difference even between SEO and SEM. I've made that joke many times over the years, but partly because it's true, and nor should we ever really expect somebody at the dealership to have to explain all these things. But they know it's important and so when you share about that, I think it's really important for dealers to absorb that type of knowledge and realize, okay, seos people say it all the time it's not stationary, it's kind of always moving target. I guess you could say, with some core tenants that are always at play, who you are, what you sell, where you sell it. You mentioned it Name, address, phone number, schema.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that are core to good search engine optimization, but there are things that change that were at one time really effective and even considered to be well. That's really smart and progressive, like let's juice up the more blog articles, right, let's be pushing like just you've got a content machine of blog content and that element that wrinkle alone within organic has changed dramatically, both for direct to consumer type marketing, like dealers selling cars to consumers. It's also changed big time in the business to business side of marketing the providers that the dealers use, those business-to-business plays. They also were doing the same thing with blog articles, press releases. It's not to say you shouldn't do any of those things, but your expectations of what should come back from them and how you play those tools and how you work with them is really really critical. So I'm glad you're sharing about that.
Speaker 1:Moving on, I want to ask you to discuss a bit of the impact of the user experience, and you mentioned this a little bit already, but I'd like to kind of circle you back a little bit on. You were mentioning the overlays of buttons, like the design on the web. When you're talking about redesigns being done at the VDP and SRP, which are typically two pages, by the way, where a lot of conversion happens, that's right. I want to kind of swing you back into that and just a little bit more on the impact of that user experience for people, because it does bear an impact on conversion pretty dramatically.
Speaker 2:Let's start with that homepage. The homepage should have everything above the fold where you can access it easily, and so right there on that homepage screen they should be able to find new vehicles, find used vehicles, search for service, get a trade appraisal, or have the search box there and live search for whatever it is that they're looking for. That's the minimum standard right now. Search box there and live search for whatever it is that they're looking for. That's the minimum standard right now, when they can click easily into that vehicle and find what they're looking for inside of the first click. That's how you know you're going to be successful. So that's rule number one, because when that happens your conversion rate goes up.
Speaker 2:Rule number two, when we look at UX, is simplicity is important and you want consumers to be able to see it. Is simplicity is important and you want consumers to be able to see it. You want a little bit bigger pictures, right? Smaller buttons. You want it easy to read. You want to make sure that they can see where they're at, because they know Whatever truck, whatever car, whatever SUV they're looking at, they're looking at it at multiple places before they got to the dealership. So they're not going to be tricked. They're going to look at the pictures. They're going to look at the descriptions. They're going to look to see if it's a one owner vehicle on Carfax. They're going to look to see the factory warranties. They're going to look these things up and once they find those, they're more likely to convert when it's easy. So the best practice is keep the information where people can see it, keep it simple and make sure that it's fast to convert.
Speaker 1:And if your buttons are blended into the background because you want this really neat experience and they can't see where to click, chances are you're going to have less conversion. Yeah, yeah, no, what you described sounds like a good customer experience, and that's the critical part there is. If you're doing things that literally make it so that you wouldn't even want to have an experience on your own website, what do you think your consumers are thinking?
Speaker 2:They're probably 10 times more frustrated. Well, I mean, we don't want to talk about it ever, but do you think they've shopped on a Tesla website? Of course they have. Do you think they're on the CarMax website? Of course they have. And so your, your competition is those guys. It's I mean your. Your competition is those guys, it's, I mean it's, it's the ease of doing business that happens over there, and I mean, I'm not concerned about the cars and their business model, I'm just talking about click to a website, get to a button, submit your information, find out what your payment is.
Speaker 1:It should be simple yeah, yeah, it's just we've come too far from a technology available to all of us consumers to not realize that making sure that the experience that someone's having mobile or desktop version on your website needs to be completely sold out to a great user experience Anything and everything you do that compromises or chisels away at that great user experience. You only have the mirror to look in to find out who's then responsible for not making those changes. And, of course, sometimes that's a little bit extreme. Maybe it's you just got to choose the right providers that know that on your behalf, because if it's not something that you can spend a lot of time on, you just need to choose a provider who you can trust. Well then, that's probably a whole other podcast episode on how do you actually really trust the people that you're writing checks to.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I digress. I want to take you a little bit into leveraging, and is there a great place where dealers can leverage data analytics to improve conversion rates? And I've? You know, I kind of have a feeling I know where you may go on this, but anyway, I want to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:So the thing about data is that we have got more access than we've ever had before and, interestingly enough, who do you think has the best ability to manipulate data? You, your CDP, google, facebook? I'm probably thinking that might be Google and Facebook, right? I?
Speaker 1:would agree.
Speaker 2:We want to understand and know what the visitor path is, and so, anytime someone will allow you to track them, you want to know what that track is and the ability to personalize websites. Those things are coming forward in a very nice way right now. Nice way right now. Ideally, what I would say is that we want to know where the consumer came from so we can make it as easy for them to get to the same place as fast as they can. That's the key to leveraging data. Data should make it easier for them to get to where they want to be. That's where it matters. You can plug in a little bit of that CDP data, depending on how you have things set up, but in reality, track the visitor from the beginning until the end, know what their visitor path is and make it simple, and if you do that, a lot of that analytical data that's out there becomes irrelevant. Is what really happens?
Speaker 1:Are dealers still curious, or I should not say still. Are dealers still curious, or I should not say still, because it's always going to be a minority in terms of percentage of dealers. But is there still I don't know an interest, an appetite from dealers for A-B testing, split testing, multivariant testing? Is that something that dealers really still consider? Is it something they should still consider? Is that a big deal for people to really, you know, set up kind of elaborate A-B tests? It used to be talked about a lot. I don't hear people talk about it as much anymore, but I'm thinking it's probably still valuable.
Speaker 2:I think that what happened is, after COVID, things were so easy that I got easy, and when it got easy, we forgot to innovate. And so, if I look at it now, I've got very few dealers that talk about A-B testing. They just want to say what they read or what someone told them and assume that that's right. The reality of it is anything you change you should test. You should A B test at all. You should look to C, because two dealerships in the same town may have different buttons that work based upon their demographic, and split testing is something every provider can do, and if they can't, well, you should probably switch providers. All the good ones can do.
Speaker 2:And so it is the color of the button, the verbiage on the button, it is how many buttons you have, and while there's some absolute best practices, I'll tell you what isn't a best practice Knowing the difference between what's going to convert better get ePrice, unlock, price unlock, my best price, confirm availability. Any one of those may convert better depending on where someone's at. So some places you find the blue button, some places you find the green button, some places you find the red button. It's not always the same. So A-B testing should be one of the most fundamental parts of anyone's strategy, because we should use it in order to optimize that website and the conversion in order to sell the largest amount of cars website and the conversion in order to sell the largest amount of cars.
Speaker 1:I thought you might answer in that fashion, which is great. I didn't think that that was dead, and I think that that's probably still something that dealers should be aware that's available to them, especially if they're struggling. Not all dealers are struggling in this area, but usually most of them probably could use a little bit of help, so that's certainly good to know. How important is mobile optimization for car dealer websites in terms of as it relates to conversion?
Speaker 2:I would tell you it's more important than desktop conversion. So mobile, as a general rule of thumb, is going to be at least two-thirds of your website traffic, and if mobile is two-thirds of your website traffic, and if mobile is two-thirds of your website traffic, then you should probably spend two-thirds of your time on it optimizing it right. So mobile is absolutely more important than desktop and it should be the first thing you look at for every page and everything you put on your website every single time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't disagree with that. I think since the days of mobile Geddon or whatever people were calling it several years back like that's what seven, eight years, seven years ago, six or seven years ago, doesn't matter how long ago I just I know from that time period the algorithm changes, even that are relative to mobile versus desktop. All of the website providers that were so slow to make their site platform responsive, that were also so slow in responding to the types of conversions that are going to happen on mobile and the way that that should go down. For example, if you click that phone, does it just call the number or does it give you a? Back in the day, there used to be providers that would have a long drop down and you have to pick that number and then it would take you to another. It's like two or three or four clicks before you're actually even calling.
Speaker 1:And same thing with every other really important mobile conversion opportunity was, at least in the beginning people didn't have it figured out very well and it's critical.
Speaker 1:Another one of those places where you mentioned earlier in the episode kind of gets into even time and user experience. That's a perfect place to lose the customer because the experience you gave them on mobile was awful, and I didn't have this built into this episode. I think it just bears saying. Because we're talking all around this, I think it would be a good thing to tell dealers listening in it's like go and do some of these things yourself on a regular basis. Go onto the mobile version of your site and the desktop version and be a consumer and walk through the process. I know you're a big advocate of that, of just people like go eat your own dog food, as they say, because you might find things and that typically makes the relationships with your providers better, because even if it's something you caught and you weren't particularly happy with, but you might have a question with, that's how you get better and that's how you draw closer and build.
Speaker 2:What if the manufacturer installed a script for some kind of a coupon or some kind of a pop-up or a gift card and you didn't even know it was there? What if that gift card that they installed on there slowed down your website to a point where it didn't work because they installed it in the wrong place? Because it happens, if they install that script in the wrong part of the website, it can slow down the website, and those things happen right. So we have to go look at it on a regular basis and really the advertising company, whomever's doing that, they should check it when they go log on to right. It takes everyone doing it at the same time because when it breaks you're not going to know until the next one of your people logged in. So let's say they threw a banner on your website that was gigantic and slowed it down to a crawl.
Speaker 2:It's not your website provider's fault that that happened. It was that someone put a banner on it and didn't minify it before they did that. Well, let's say that happens and nobody finds out for a week. How much business do you think that cost you? A lot, is the answer yeah. So you got to check, you just got to check it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:When I was young, my general manager used to walk across the lot and pick up trash. And I would ask him, I would say why do you pick up trash? And he said well, I know that if I pick up trash, everybody else will pick up trash. And so what do you think we all did? We picked up trash.
Speaker 2:Well, same thing for your website. You don't have a lot now You've got a website. If you don't check that website every once in a while as a general manager, as a marketing director, as a sales manager, an internet director, all you're doing is you're inviting something to be broken and two weeks later, when you're wondering why your month isn't going the way you expected it to, you find that something was broken on your website and nobody knew. So don't be that person right. Inspect it and make sure you avoid those problems and if not, work with us. We'll inspect it for you.
Speaker 1:We're happy to I think you just came up with a fantastic uh service or perhaps just a uh free training module in the future that dealer alchemists could, now that you guys are in the website business too, you guys could come up with a little, um, quick tip training videos on how to evaluate the pages of your website, and then they could use that in exactly what we're talking about, and so it wouldn't put the pressure on a GM or even a sales manager to be like I don't know how to talk everyone through the website, but all of a sudden now we've got a little trainer video that says hey, so I think that's right.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I think note to self yeah notes to marketing and training teams yeah, that's a good one, I like it yeah.
Speaker 1:So, um, without telling me the names of any dealers, because we don't need to be, you know, telling your competitors, hey, go talk to these people, but perhaps share the brand of call it what you want a success story dealers that you've taken on where improvement has happened around conversion rates. You know where improvement has happened around conversion rates. You know and you can truncate, like just many story, but I'd just love to know just the things that come to the top of your mind. Maybe one or two dealers where this kind of happened and all of a sudden man, their conversion went up X percent and they sold this many more cars, cause I know you have a bunch of those stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so here's one that I like. So we do a lot with Toyota. We're pretty fond of them, as you can imagine, and so, interestingly enough, we have a major amount of Toyota business in the LA market and so, included in that, we have three of the top 10 Toyota stores in the United States on our ad platform. I didn't realize it until a couple of weeks ago, because we're just trying to take care of people, they're just trying to do the best job they can, and that's how it goes Well. Interestingly enough, the dealers in that market have been referring us to each other, because what we found is that when advertising is done right, everyone performs better, well, collectively in that market. The dealers that are on our platform are some of the lowest inventory dealers in the United States. So how do you know you're doing a good job? I would say selling 100% of your selling inventory. That's probably the definition of a pretty good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Absolutely. Who wouldn't want that? That's not really a problem. I mean, it's kind of a problem, but it's not a problem. It's the best problem to have. It's the best kind of. We're selling everything we got. Um, a lot of dealers right now are not saying we're selling everything we have. So, uh, that's pretty fantastic. Um, I got a couple more questions, um, before we get ourselves closer to a parking spot on this episode. So so bear with me, Karen. I got to get a couple more answers out of you. Let's just look into the crystal ball future trends, digital marketing, wise that you think could impact conversions. Do you think we're kind of on the same road we're going to be in, or is there some things perhaps that might emerge that'll change things up at all?
Speaker 2:No problem. There's a few that we think are a really big deal. One of them is cookie management. Right, we know what's coming with cars. We know what's got to be out there. Integrating it into the website properly means that it doesn't slow the website down, and so these things should be integrated. You don't need a third party if it's integrated. Well, we launch an integrated solution in the upcoming months, and so it'll be before the end of the year, and at that point, you don't need to run another script, because it was just built in from the beginning, because that's how you do it correctly Along the theme of built in correctly native digital retailing right on the website, so you don't have to log in and go try to figure it out.
Speaker 2:It's just automatically got the penny perfect payment on every vehicle according to the best leasing finance programs out there, right from the very beginning, because you can build it in from scratch, and so one of our updates is all of that integrated into every SRP and every VVP, and so one of our updates is all of that integrated into every SRP and every VDP, and I think that that's going to become the new standard. The new standard is going to be I don't need to go log into some really slow tool that opens up four windows to try to go through this entire buying process. I can just get a penny perfect payment right there and then pull the trigger and make a decision. That's what a consumer really wants. So those are the two of the big ones that are in process. You know the personalized websites. I know that there's a couple of companies out there that have dove in deep down that path. We've been a little bit slower to move in that direction, just because when you start really diving into a consumer search pattern, what you start to realize is that they switch vehicles pretty frequently, and so you know you may be putting them on the wrong car if you're personalizing it.
Speaker 2:So there's just. To me it's ease of use. It's getting the consumer to the right place in the first click, making it as easy as possible and then making sure that the information is not difficult to get to. So that's kind of where it's all about. Website speed is the best innovation anyone can have, and website speed is the most important thing on the planet. There is nothing more important. I'll tell you another thing we did. One of our templates has got these video sliders, where every slider contains its own separate video. Well, you can properly encode the video so that it doesn't slow it down. It's actually equally fast on mobile. So little things like that are just technical innovations that come because newer software is out there to run a website with, and as we put the website on this newer software, all those slowdown issues and crashing issues that you've had in the past, those things are gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're also kind of answering this other question, one of the last ones, not quite the last question, but I was going to ask you a little bit about how you guys at dealer alchemists kind of stay ahead of the curve, because everything changes, you know, and some things remain the same, but there's always nuance, there's always these kind of new variations of things. I talked to Jeff about it on, I think, both the CTV and the OTT episodes about. You know, conversion as it relates to digital marketing campaigns and how much money is invested. To get me to see your check out all of our toyota tundra ads. We have so many. We have too many tundras on the ground here in granbury, texas, sean, we want to pull you out of your 2019 tundra. We know you don't even have 50 000 miles on it and you've totally customized it to be your favorite truck you've ever had. But we're really trying hard to get your attention and I was telling him that with all of these things, we're trying to get people to convert on in a digital campaign.
Speaker 1:These same dealers spend heavily in their digital campaigns and in a lot of cases that's part of what you have to do. But what this particular dealer close in my neighborhood had done was the first dealer that I ever. It ever caught my attention was somebody who was using connected TV, ott, toyota dealer specific Intundra inventory. They know enough about me all the magic working through my Wi-Fi and all the connected TV because we have cut the cord for years, have cut the cord for years that got my attention and created at least one of those early conversions that made me go look at their inventory. I was like I'm just now.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of interested literally from watching that, and so I know you guys are dealing with all of that all the time and thinking about what's the next thing and how do we blend in maybe an expanded package for somebody, because they're not doing some of the OTT stuff and it needs to be a part of that, and so I don't know if you have thoughts on that. I just I think the audience would be interested if you're like, these are some of the things we try to do to stay ahead of the curve and making the right recommendations, because the dealers trust you guys to give them a game plan, and that includes hey, this is coming. It won't be here by the end of the year, but early 2025? It sure as hell will, and we want you to know about it now. Like, like, how do you stay up on it all?
Speaker 2:this is a little bit longer of an answer, but when we built our company, we have a big vision. The big vision is to innovate advertising and automotive. So we look at it as advertising and automotive has changed so much right In the last five years. It changed more than in the last 50. So if you look at that and you look at how Google innovates, how Facebook innovates, how every one of these things is changing so rapidly, well, those changes aren't going to come from me. You know we just won an award from Inc Magazine as one of the best workplaces in the United States. We're an automotive ad tech company.
Speaker 2:I don't hear a lot of automotive companies winning awards for best places to work. Maybe it's because we're a little rough around the edges, maybe not. I don't hear a lot of automotive companies winning awards for best places to work. Maybe it's because we're a little rough around the edges, maybe not, I don't know. But my theory is that our innovation is going to come from our people and our dealers. It's going to be the dealer saying I have an idea and I'm curious about could you do this? You know there's little things that are changing right, Like Bing is becoming a little bit more relevant all of a sudden, out of nowhere, right Around the first part of the year. It may be something you actually have to spend money on again, or Google has changed the way that it operates. There were times before when you were very careful about where you spent performance max money. Well, they've optimized some of that conversion now and it's starting to convert a little bit higher. Well, they've optimized some of that conversion now and it's starting to convert a little bit higher.
Speaker 2:So the thing is is that the right partner is constantly looking at everything evolving and is trying to evolve with it, and that happens when you've got employees that are highly engaged, that love what they do. That don't turn over all the time when the company takes care of their employees. You want to know what doesn't innovate. A company that just got bought private equity company because they've got no reason to innovate at that point. They just got paid. That's what they really did.
Speaker 2:So I'd say your best innovation is going to come from these smaller companies small to midsize that are aggressive and know that we can change the market. So the true way is look for the small people, look for the people that are trying to innovate and ask them why. Ask them what their why is. When you find that their why is to improve an industry that's taken care of their family for decades, that's probably a good chance. You're going to get a company that's going to find something cool and figure out how to help you sell more cars. I think it's why we're successful. It's not a direct answer as to what cool tech is coming. I think we're a little bit of a lull for some of that right now. But what's going to happen is we're going to get towards the end of the summer. The development curve is going to hit an overdrive. And what comes right after that? Nada? What does everybody want to release before NADA? Their newest, coolest stuff. And I can't wait to tell you what we got coming, but I can't do that till later.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a perfect place for us to bring this one to a close. So, sean Karen, thanks again for a fantastic episode, a lot of great content for the audience. Thank you for spending your time with us. We always appreciate that. If you're watching on YouTube, hey, subscribe. You will then know every time a new episode hits that environment. We're watching on YouTube hey, subscribe. You will then know every time a new episode hits that environment.
Speaker 1:We're always talking about the insights. These discussions are always around kind of the technology, future technology, marketing, and you usually always within the automotive sector, and sometimes a little bit of power sports and RV, those adjacent industries. So, once again, yeah, thanks for joining us. Automotive Alchemy exists to give you those types of insights that you're really looking for, without bias, so you can make up your own mind and make positive changes in your business. If you want to go deeper, take advantage of the complimentary digital audit that Dealer Alchemist will do for you. That's right, it's completely free. You can go to dealeralchemistcom, you can get in touch there. It's super easy. And, of course, don't miss our next episode. We're going to continue to take all these automotive challenges and turn them into gold. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Sean.