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
Dissecting Dealership Websites Part 1: Home and About Us
Unlock the secrets to transforming your car dealership's online presence with insights from Shean Kirin, founder and CEO of Dealer Alchemist. In this episode, Shean shares how understanding your target audience is crucial to optimizing your website for maximum conversion. Discover the power of a streamlined, minimalistic design, and learn why cluttered web pages can deter potential customers. Shean seamlessly ties these concepts to the design philosophies of leading companies, providing actionable strategies to help you craft a user-friendly and engaging online experience.
Explore the pivotal role of storytelling and authenticity in crafting compelling "About Us" pages. We discuss how dealerships can leverage genuine narratives and community involvement to foster trust and establish strong connections with their audience. Hear how Subaru of Wichita and Auburn Volkswagen successfully integrated their core values into their digital presence, resulting in increased community engagement and customer loyalty. Uncover practical tips for incorporating authentic stories and conversion points into your website to enhance customer interaction without overwhelming them.
Mobile optimization is no longer optional—it's a necessity. This episode emphasizes why a mobile-first approach is critical, especially when two-thirds of your traffic is likely coming from mobile users. Learn from real-world examples of common pitfalls and discover best practices for creating seamless mobile experiences. We also provide guidance on optimizing website layouts for conversion and the importance of collaboration with website providers. Don't miss this opportunity to refine your digital strategy and elevate your dealership's success with expert advice from Dealer Alchemist.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Automotive Alchemy. This is the official podcast of Dealer Alchemist and I'm your host, sean Raines. Today we're going to jump deep into the heart of car dealership websites. You know what? Nobody's talking about this anymore. We really need to be so. Specifically, we're going to focus on two pages. This is probably going to be a multi-part series, so you'll want to come back for more, but specifically, today we're going to talk about things relative to the homepage and to the About Us page. All of these things are really important in determining whether visitors convert into leads or sales opportunities or they don't. So hopefully, you will be on the edge of your seat for all of this. Of course, our guest today and almost as always, the premier dealer alchemist himself, sean Caron, founder and CEO of Dealer Alchemist, true expert in digital marketing and, of course, website optimization. Welcome, caron.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, sean, I'm looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:Good, good, good. Well, I'm just going to give the little bit of, I guess, grease the wheels into this and say how, in your mind, how do dealers improve websites for better conversion and overall performance?
Speaker 2:Well, long before we offered a website solution, I was consulting and advising dealers on this exact topic, and so over the years, I found a step-by-step breakdown to help dealers understand and identify problems and how to solve them. So I'd like to walk through those steps. If you don't mind, we can use the information below to go through all six steps. I think that keeps it pretty simple.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect. So we talked about this and I know you and I've had conversations about these steps of breakdown, which I think is really smart. So the first one that you, I know, have talked about a lot, is just making sure that you understand who the target audience, like the dealers do actually need to understand who their target audience is, and I guess, in keeping with this kind of just breaking the seal on this, why do you think the homepage and the About Us page ended up being crucial for car dealer websites?
Speaker 2:Well, the homepage is the first point of contact for everybody that lands on the site, and so not only does it set up the entire experience, it's crucial for capturing attention and ensuring that consumers get into inventory as fast as possible. So many sites are cluttered, trying to look like a party, because 15 years ago, that was the goal. However, in the days of Apple and simple websites, that's not what a consumer wants to do anymore. It's all about simplicity and ease of use, and the About Us page is how we build trust and credibility. It shows that we're actually people, not just some money-hungry car dealer trying to steal everybody's money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know that you dig in a little bit on this kind of targeting the audience, where you kind of I've heard you do this before in sessions where you're asking the dealer audience questions about like well, who are you actually targeting? That's right, and so if you were asking a dealership like well, who is your target? What are some of the things that they might want to be focused on?
Speaker 2:I think there's two parts there. So the first is, as you said, who is the target audience? Who do they sell the majority of their cars to? Is it a place where everybody that comes into the dealership the majority of them are new customers that haven't bought there before? Is it a bunch of repeat and referral customers? Is it a heavy subprime presence? Because those things are going to dictate what you put where on the homepage. And then the next portion becomes what's the primary action that the dealership wants people to take? If you're like most dealerships, we're looking for phone calls and we're looking for lead forms. Well, if you're looking for phone calls and lead forms, our goal is to get the consumer to inventory as fast as humanly possible. Because I got a newsflash for you they don't submit leads on banners, they submit leads on inventory.
Speaker 1:So true, very, very true. So that's good. I think targeting is really important, Understanding that audience. You make some great points there. You could say that I guess this would be oversimplifying, but the Mitsubishi dealer wants to make sure that their page from homepage into about us page and all that inventory is really relative to that audience, which is not the same buyer as somebody that's walking into a Mercedes or a BMW store. So and again I just people are not talking about this as much as I think we need to be, so I'm glad that we're coming back around. Step two for you is what you call basically analyzing the website layout and navigation. So from a conversion, I guess, optimization standpoint, what would you say are some key elements that a dealership's homepage definitely needs to have?
Speaker 2:Well, so your key elements are going to be clear value proposition, prominent call to actions, high quality images or video of inventory customer testimonials, easy navigation, making sure that contact information is easy, accessible, and so what we notice? Right, I go back to the party. If the website is busy and there's buttons everywhere, the consumer gets confused. You have ever heard that phrase paralysis by analysis. When you give people too many options, their choice is to not choose an option, and so instead it is an intuitive design making sure that all of the buttons are above the fold and easy to get to, so that in one click they can get to where they want to be, and that is one of the most important pieces across the board. Now, also, easy navigation. It's got to be clutter-free. If there's clutter everywhere, it's like I've got all of these boxes on the homepage above the fold. The consumer gets confused, and the second they're confused you're less likely to get a lead.
Speaker 1:Those are great points. I mean, if you think about that, I don't know that and I've worked for a few website vendors I don't know that there's enough dialogue and conversation with the dealer around. Well, how is the website going to be laid out and why? Why is it structured that way? Why is the navigation going to be built in a particular way and sometimes even making changes to it? Those are really really good points. How do you think like from a design and layout of the homepage? How does that influence really visitor engagement and maybe even conversion rates?
Speaker 2:Well, let's think about a couple of examples. If I've got a clean, intuitive design that's easily able to get the consumer where they want to be quickly, then there's no friction. They are not confused, they go exactly to service. They go exactly to new vehicles, exactly to used vehicles. The search bar uses Google contextual search, so it works correctly. Or I've got this big banner. If there's this big banner and it takes four or five clicks for them to get in there, the consumer is already falling apart. We used to think big banners mattered, because it used to be, that was the billboard. Well, banners have gone the way of the billboard. How do billboards work in car business advertising anymore?
Speaker 2:Don't think they really do, and banners, interestingly, are the same. Our data shows us that the banners on the homepage don't matter. Instead, you're much better with a clean image and easy access to inventory. That is, it's the number one way of getting there. Prime presence, or your dealership, is known for trade-ins maybe ensuring that those are also easily accessible so that the most important parts of your website are where they can get to first.
Speaker 1:I like that. What do you think about a wavy air dancer guy? Was that going to help me sell more cars? What if I put a video of him on my website?
Speaker 2:As long as he's on the homepage video and he covers up 50 to 70% of everything, then it will totally work. Right, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, my goodness, I love it. Okay, well, step three is the evaluation of visual design. So aesthetics Can you share some common mistakes that you see that dealerships make on their home pages that are negatively impacting conversion?
Speaker 2:I think every dealer should do themselves a favor and should go visit a Tesla website, or should go visit the Apple website and spend a few minutes navigating it, because what you're going to quickly notice is that the car is the star. We've heard it in marketing for as long as I can remember right. So common mistakes are always cluttered designs, slow loading times. I've got a responsive website, so it's set up for mobile. No, it's not. You need to make sure that on a mobile device it looks good. Just because it was quote unquote.
Speaker 2:Mobile optimized doesn't mean anything. What does it actually look like on mobile? Have you looked at your own website on mobile? Because too many times there's either too many call to actions that take up three quarters of the page, or there's no call to actions and you can't find one. So we're either overwhelming visitors with too much information or we're failing to highlight the key areas. Either one of them really hurts conversion. So when you're talking about visual design, simplicity is important. Less is more, and every pixel matters. When you look at something and it's off by one pixel matters. When you look at something and it's off by one pixel, your mind knows something is wrong, and so the art department. The person who is in charge of ensuring that that design is flawless needs to manage so that every single pixel is perfect, and when they do that, consumers don't know why they just want to be on that site.
Speaker 1:And it's all about ease of use. It's always about ease of use. It sounds like the dealers should also kind of be asking themselves if the visual design, if it is aligning with what the dealership's brand and values are, like that matters.
Speaker 2:It really does. I think that every brand is unique and every brand has a customer base that they're most likely to serve, and so, when you look at, we used to get mad at website providers and manufacturers for wanting to pigeonhole us into a limited number of providers, but you know why they do that. They do that so they can control the image and keep the image the same and, interestingly enough, like Toyota went to this TTDS 3.0 world, it works incredibly well and it's because they got tired of all of the junk and said we want to keep everything clean across the board on all of our websites. And what's happened? Across the board, the user experience is spectacular.
Speaker 2:There's some other brands out there that are a little bit less, that don't seem to care as much about things being clean, and what do you end up with? You end up with people confused, a weird pop-up on the homepage about something that doesn't matter to the consumer, or everything on top of each other. There's white space, which is the place in between things, and white space matters Not everything, and not every space should be filled. As a matter of fact, white space matters Not everything and not every space should be filled. As a matter of fact, white space drives someone's vision to a specific point you want them to focus on, and so proper aesthetics means that the white space is in the right spot, the font sizes are correct, the font type is correct. We didn't overpower it with this enormous, gigantic banner that doesn't mean anything and no one's reading anyways, right? Or you ever look at that banner on mobile? Because that's comical. You know, on mobile you probably are going to find that banner doesn't really work. So just an interesting thought there on keeping it clean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a great point actually actually on what happens in the mobile environment. Whether it's banners or any types of graphics. I think a lot of times dealers don't realize that trying to go with the multiple banners, multiple things that you can scroll through too much of that type of content and it depends on platforms. Some platforms will automatically kind of regulate down to you just have one primary image. But the ones where they're trying to clutter up all of that stuff that the dealer usually is in their thought process, seeing from a desktop perspective, if a lot of that is allowed into the mobile platform it absolutely has a catastrophic effect, not just from a user experience, but it slows down the site. You can I mean we, if we have time in the episode we're actually going to have some visuals for those that are, that are viewers as well as listeners to these episodes. We're going to actually get into some actual examples of sites where we can just kind of look at some things and break down some some of the good, bad, and and and the ugly.
Speaker 1:But I want to get to step four. So step four we're examining messaging and content, which is always really important. But we were just talking about a little bit about speed and performance. So I think I'm going to move quickly to basically asking you on messaging and content. What would you say that? A couple of things dealers should be asking themselves, and why back to your initial goals.
Speaker 2:What are your initial goals? Is my content clear and engaging to drive towards that goal? For example, we want to throw this gigantic message about how much we're taking off of the retail price of this vehicle. Well, you know, most consumers aren't driven by that. They're driven by the exact vehicle that they want to purchase and they've done all the homework before they clicked on your website. They know not only what are you selling it for, but what all of your competitors are selling it for. So less is more almost across the board, because in the end, it's going to be do you have the right vehicle? After it is, do you have the right vehicle? Can I get to it easy Then? What is my payment going to be? With how much now? And it's always in that order.
Speaker 2:And so along those lines, I think, keep it clean, right. Make sure that your loading time is fast, because if your loading time is slow, it means they get stuck on things they don't want to see. Also, ensure that when you look at images, the images aren't too big and they're optimized correctly for mobile. There's things the website provider can do, like they can cache the website. Caching the website properly leads to a faster load speed time, and that's what a newer site provider is going to do. Is they're going to ensure that it's cached on their end so we never slow down those speeds?
Speaker 2:We also want to look at, you know, when I think of the dealership. How is that dealership going to treat me? Do they have the vehicle I want? What does that vehicle cost? How are they going to treat me? It's the most common three questions that every consumer is going to ask.
Speaker 2:So do you have testimonials? Where are they? How easy are they to see? What is your Google rating? If you've got a Google rating below four in today's world, that is an extreme problem. Google rating below four in today's world, that is an extreme problem. It's not a small problem, it's an extreme problem. You're talking about 15% or 20% less leads, whereas if you've got a 4.8 star rating and you can prominently put that and allow people to look through those reviews on the homepage, on your vehicle details pages, it increases your conversion rate dramatically. The VDP is the new model landing page in today's world. How easily can I see the content? How easily can I convert? Can I call the dealership with a question or send a question? And, of course can I easily figure out what my payments are.
Speaker 1:I think that's really critical and I love that you actually mentioned things about you know, just, you know reviews. There is something to be said for messaging and content that is on your page, right, when you're at the dealership's website. Other places that are very critical to your business, like your Google business profile, which you're going to roll up, reviews and, depending on how well you're optimizing that environment, offers and all kinds of other places for people to interact with you, some of whom never even get to your website, but the messaging there could be very, and should, be consistent with what they see on the website itself and other places. Right, you've got social. You know social profiles and pages and all kinds of different places where people may be interacting with you, and so there's a lot of, there's a lot of. I hate to bury leads, as they say, but there's a lot of gold in what you were just sharing, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, let me tell you a quick story that's relevant to this. We recently launched a website for a Toyota dealer and he said I really need you to move my content pages over. We said, okay, fantastic, we'd love to help you there. He said I've got 80 of them and of course we said excuse me, how many pages do you have? Well, I want to move all 80.
Speaker 2:So we looked in Google at the relevancy and the number of people that had been to every one of those pages and what we found was that no one had been to half of those pages in over two years. And on top of that, we had weird pages about an arcade. No one cares about an arcade when they're at a car dealership over there. That SEO company that sold them the arcade blog is trying to pad their numbers. That's all they're trying to do.
Speaker 2:And there's an interesting thing in Google Google does pay attention to the conversion ratio of your website, and so when you take low quality traffic, like a blog post where there is no engagement and there is no interaction, the low engagement, low interaction, low conversion is destroying your website quality. So content is about giving people what they want where they want to see it in an easy manner. Really, the only content that's relevant in today's world is a model landing page, and that model landing page really should be syndicated content, because these paragraphs that we all used to type up five years ago all they do is drive people to think about things and not convert. So, in a world where conversion and lead counts matter, less is more. Let's focus on real content. Don't try to fool Google. You can't fool Google anymore Just throwing that out there. It's not possible. They've gotten a little smarter than us with the billions of dollars that they have in place, and so keep it simple and focus on your audience. Anyways is the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are great points as I move into step five, which is the review of conversion points. A little question to kind of get us into this step what are some strategies for integrating customer testimonials? I know a lot of people and reviews and we just because we you just made me think about this talking about reviews. But in integrating those testimonials and reviews into an about us page, does it help? Is that a good thing to boost conversions?
Speaker 2:So, yes and no, it's nice to put the positive messaging on the About Us page, but I would tell you to do yourself a favor. Look at the quantity of people that visit the About Us page on the website and what you start to notice is that it's not very big. Now, there's two things to say about that. The first thing is, if they visited that page, it's because they did it on purpose. They do care about you as a dealer, as individuals, and what do you do so in that world? Putting reviews there that are positive, allowing people to see that you do things, charitable events, right.
Speaker 2:How do we give back? What do we do? Those things matter because they're going in inventory. Next, the best place for that is actually on your VDP, because that's where every consumer is going to end up. They're going to end up on a search results page or a vehicle details page and on either one of those they're going to convert. And so we'll get into that on the next episode, because we would run out of time. I mean this is a subject for one episode alone, because we would run out of time. I mean this is a subject for one episode alone, but I believe the best practice is keep those pages positive, keep them in a world where you see what you do well and they see the positive things that you give back, and then keep it simple.
Speaker 1:What are other things that?
Speaker 2:we think we might put there so a mission statement, the history of the dealership, some introduction to teams, maybe awards, community involvement. It's all about being authentic, I think. Instead, your conversion goes up when you're authentic. That's the thing to remember. And conversion points are about keeping things simple. If you throw up a button on every single corner of every single page, you end up with nothing. When buttons are everywhere, people don't click on them. Put them in single, easy-to-see spots, in the most relevant spot on the page, because that's where people are most likely to convert. You get more conversion and better conversion with properly placed buttons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of great points you shared there. I really like the idea of one. It is very important for people to realize one go see for yourself how many people are actually really touching that about us page so that you're in alignment with what you may do or not do on that page. It doesn't mean that you should do nothing there. Alignment with what you may do or not do on that page it doesn't mean that you should do nothing there. But to what you shared, adding things that bring value to knowing that the person that goes to that page did it intentionally right. There are just not people that are like all of a sudden just haphazardly landing on your about us page. So the people that are going there, they're kind of looking for something other than the boilerplate content that your provider might've put out there for you and they might actually be very interested to know about and you referenced this things that you're doing in the community charitable events, sponsorships that you have, whether that's the youth sports teams or all the other great things that dealers do. It's a great place to put those things and I would argue that in this day and age I think that the consumer right that whole. You're step one of that target audience kind of knowing who they are and making sure that you're putting the right content In what you're saying on the About Us page here.
Speaker 1:I think it really makes sense to think that shouldn't necessarily be so much like, hey, we won the President's Club Award and we sold lots of cars again, because I don't think most consumers are caring about that as much as they're caring about, oh, my goodness, you're sponsoring such and such what team. Oh, I know somebody that plays on that, or my kid played on that team. Or we play against them in the same league. Or you guys did what for pick your cause, same league. Or you guys did what for you know, pick your cause. I love that. That's a wonderful thing and that personalizes the dealership. It shows your personality. It is also a little bit of a open window into the things that your dealership cares about, because you're investing in those things sponsorships and community activities and all that kind of stuff and it does definitely deserve a place. About Us feels like a right place. I know some dealers under the About Us menu will have tons of other pages that can be visited.
Speaker 2:I think that's overkill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it. If you want to have a meet the team and you want to put all your staff out there, that's great. But that About Us page is such a common page on websites, and has been for decades, that if somebody actually goes there, again intentional, let them get a feel for what you really care about, like who you really are, and definitely don't let just kind of the boilerplate content be there, because, again, the person that goes to that page is very much intending to consume the content there and I like that. You actually added some thoughts around. It's okay to think about the About Us page in terms of, well, what would be the right conversion to put there? Maybe it's single track, there's only one call to action there but it has to be relative and it has to be simplified and on message. I think is really critical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you'd want a generic contact us form. A generic phone number is all you would want there. Yeah, anything else is is. You know? That's not the point, and the reason you put something there is because that's where you get job applicants, people that need to send you something and don't know how to send it any other way. That's where it's going to go, so it's better to just give people an avenue that allows it to be easy than it is to confuse them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like the idea of the About Us page being that kind of. It's meant to be the catch-all. Maybe even put your why by there. This is why we're different, this is why you'd want to buy from us. This is who we are in the community, as opposed to breaking out multiple other pages. Also, if they're not going to, by the way, visit your About Us page, they're probably not going to go to the extensions of that page, which you could probably roll up on one page.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, good stuff. Let's move on to step six, testing the user experience on different devices. I like this. Before I let you just go on this one, let me ask you a question what role does mobile optimization play in the effectiveness of the homepage?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll give you a tip. Every website provider should build their website mobile first. You don't build your website on a desktop and scale it down to mobile. You build the mobile experience first and then you allow it to expand to desktop. It sounds simple, but this is a paradigm shift in how we look at everything. And why does it matter? Because two-thirds of your business, on average, is going to be on mobile. If two-thirds of your business is going to be on mobile and you were I don't know a betting person, maybe if you went to Vegas and gambled a dollar or two, would you gamble on a 33% chance to succeed or a 67% chance to succeed? Which one of that would you put more money into? That's why it matters. And so in our world, we believe that mobile optimization is everything, and so, when I look at most websites, I see mobile as an afterthought. It is a. I wanted to make it responsive so that I could check all the boxes and get the manufacturer off my back, because I don't need to worry about this. I just need to sell cars. Sound like someone you maybe have known before, spoken with before. Need to sell cars. Sound like someone you maybe have known before, spoken with before.
Speaker 2:Instead, that mobile experience is all about on that homepage. In one click, without scrolling, can I get to where I want to be. And so I need to know what it looks like on an iPhone and an Android. I need to know what it looks like on an iPhone Plus or Pro or Max. I need to know what it looks like on a small tablet. The amount of 11-inch tablets are unreal, and these new tablet speeds are so quick that a lot of people use them instead of a computer, and so we have to know what that experience looks like, because that's the new growing segment in that experience. They start on mobile, they move to tablet when they're sitting on the couch, because they have a couple of tablets at home in today's world, which is crazy to me, right, and so I want to know how does it perform on mobile?
Speaker 2:How does it perform on desktop? How long does it take to get into an inventory screen? Can I click into it and load the button, or is it still loading Once I click into that screen? How easily can I scroll and get to vehicles? How easily can I sort?
Speaker 2:I found one the other day, and we couldn't figure out how to filter vehicles, which you can imagine. That's a problem, right. And then last, of course, are the buttons touch friendly. You should be able to touch anything on that and get to it. I saw one where the phone number was there and I went to go, click on the phone number. And as I'm clicking on the phone number, I'm realizing this doesn't work and I'm thinking to myself how many phone calls did they lose when two thirds of the traffic can't even click on their phone number? And all I can tell you as a website owner right, because we build websites is that when you build the website, you think about these things up front and you make sure that every element works properly on mobile and then afterwards you scale them to desktop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all super important. Every time I listen to you share and then it makes me think of these real world scenarios as well, and I can tell you there was a number of times in my life, uh, talking about websites with people, especially when mobile geddon was a huge thing and everyone was terrified about it. Everyone was trying to make their sites responsive as fast as possible. Some decided to seamless, whatever that means. But in the responsive world, one of the things that we would recognize is that there were providers out there I don't know if there still are, but that phone number example that you just gave, there would be an icon that you can interact with, but it didn't really do anything. It didn't call the dealership, which is what it should do immediately. One touch and you're calling the dealership one-to-one conversation but you'd have dealers or it's one icon in the far upper right-hand corner of the page.
Speaker 2:Okay, so here's the exercise. Grab your cell phone and try to click on the far right upper right-hand corner of your phone. Most people's hands are not big enough to do that. Do you think that's working for driving phone calls into the dealership? Probably not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you think that if you have a phone icon and you have somebody touch it and instead of telling the dealer that it's in their best interest to make that ring a phone in the dealership right now, we'll give them the option of no? No, you touch it and it'll give you a dropdown and so you can choose. Do you want to talk to sales? Do you want to talk to service? Do you want to talk to, you know, whomever Like? It blows my mind that you would take an experience that should be one touch. The phone is ringing to a one touch, two touch, three touch. How many times do I have to touch this thing before I'm actually calling the dealership? We do some crazy things on the mobile experience. So listen, audience, you kind of heard Karen really lay this out. Mobile friendly is obviously critical and we've been talking about it for years, but again, nobody's really talking about a lot of this stuff anymore and I think there are reasons for it. I'm not going to drop it on this episode. You'll have to keep tuning in, but I don't think it's in the best interest of dealers to stay in that in the shadows of we're not talking about this anymore. It's very important to be talking about it and, as Kieran was just talking about, when you make sure that your website of course let's just talk about homepage, about us page but if the homepage itself doesn't look, act, feel, if it's not truly mobile friendly, the experience for your customers is terrible from the very beginning. The first impression is awful. Probably it's going to have a bad effect on how many people bounce off of your site and it definitely will not increase conversion. So you want to fix that part and you laid out a couple of good questions that I think dealers should ask themselves around this topic how well is your website, your home page, mobile perspective? How well is it performing from a mobile perspective? Are these mobile optimizations in place to make sure that, like these examples of touch friendly buttons, and what happens when we do touch them? And those are all really really critical things. So, yeah, really good stuff.
Speaker 1:Step seven a little bit of more focus here on this about us page. Why do you think and we've we've talked about it a little bit but why? Why do you think that it gets overlooked as much? Do you think it's simply just because there's not as much traffic there? Why do you think that it gets overlooked as much. Do you think it's simply just because there's not as much traffic there, or do you think it's just kind of a? We just don't really want to think too much about it.
Speaker 2:So I was looking at websites thinking about this and it's interesting. Half of websites the dealer has a story to tell and they want to tell the story and in that half I think it's excellent. The problem is, in half it is the most canned content you've ever seen and the dealer doesn't have a story to tell or they don't care to tell it. Their whole thought is I just want to sell cars. Well, I've got news for you. Why matters? Dealers buy from people they like and people they trust. I have a friend, danelle. She says all the time Danelle Delgado, people want to do business in life with people they trust and like. People that they know help them win.
Speaker 2:And when you get to an About us page and it says I am a Chevy dealer in Denver serving Aurora and Centennial and Littleton, their first thought is what is? What is this? Well, first you wrote that content. That that's 10 years ago when you wrote content like that. Now it actually does the opposite. It actually tells Google that you don't know what you're doing. It downranks your website.
Speaker 2:So instead of canned content, there should be a quick few things on that About Us page always who are we? Who are the owners? Why are we in this business? What makes us tick? Do we have a mission statement? Do we have a vision statement? And I'm going to tell you if you have one, really live it. My favorite is when I see one that says about building trust and I think to myself this is the least trustworthy place I have ever done business with. Your mission statement is building trust. Do you realize that when you have building trust in your mission statement and you've got a packed price on your used car website and every consumer calls you and realizes that that new price is $1,500 higher, they are never coming back?
Speaker 2:I'm not saying you can't pack it. You can do whatever you want. It's your store. I will tell you that when cars comes out, there's going to be a lot of lawsuits that are going to come out that are going to really go against that. But if you have a vision statement or a mission statement there, just make sure it's real, make sure that it actually is who you are. Those things are not aspirations, they're who we really are. And if you don't have that, what is my? Why buy messaging?
Speaker 2:I worked for a store once upon a time and said I don't have a, why buy message? Why buy from me? Because I want to make money. I thought it was funny and then I thought to myself okay, well, I got to market this, so how am I going to do that? And they didn't give away a single thing. There were no giveaways. You know my favorite example we do not wash used cars in this dealership.
Speaker 2:Why would I clean a used car? And I thought to myself so that 50 cents that you're spending to make sure they get a delivered nice, clean, used car isn't worth it to you and you're wondering why you're struggling. This may be the reason. So think up some. Why by messaging and make it count. It doesn't have to be that you've got a free 100,000 mile warranty. It just helps if you do. It doesn't mean you necessarily have free maintenance, it just helps if you do. But there's got to be something about the way you serve and take care of people that's driven there that speaks to someone. Someone doesn't speak at them.
Speaker 2:And so let's say, I get 15,000 visitors on a homepage. I might get 500 on an About Us page, right? The problem is those 500 people came there. That's 500 people that were there to make a decision on if they should or shouldn't do business with you, and so, on the grand scheme of things, it sounds like we should spend no time on this because a small percentage of consumers click on the About Us page, click on the About Us page. By the same token, if every one of those people purposely click there and their goal was to decide if they should or should not do business with you, the words you put there really do matter.
Speaker 2:What's my history? You may be a new dealer without a lot of history. What did you do beforehand? Why did you choose the car business?
Speaker 2:I know a guy that has a dealership in the South True story. He was the right place, right time to be able to be the guy at the dealership and it is almost dumb luck that he was able to get the manufacturer to say yes. People would ask him on a regular basis why, and of course they have a lot of rude things to say about it, but the guy's care factor is exceptionally high. Why did he get into the car business? Because he wanted to show people that you could do it differently. And so what we told him is that should be all over your homepage, because I know him. When you go into his dealership, you feel it. You feel that every person there simply cares, and it's interesting. They're an extremely high grossing dealership. Their care factors off the charts, interestingly enough, so is their gross profit. So I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. I think that instead, you can put something there that matters, you can demonstrate that you care and you can still not work for free. All that stuff is completely real.
Speaker 1:That example is I don't know if there's a better way to say it that's about us content that is so compelling that it earns a spot on the homepage right. And it makes me think of a couple of examples I would just like to share. For the episode, he and Scott Pittman. They took Suzuki of Wichita to the stratosphere so much that Subaru was like we're going to put a Subaru point in Wichita. They were awarded that and then, man, they did so many things under that brand. Of course it's a bigger story from that. But just staying with Subaru of Wichita, you mentioned something like hey, if you're going to have a vision or a mission statement, you need to live it. And they loved the Kaizen culture framework and they had it printed in the dealership and it was in their handbook and they taught everybody and they lived it. I was in that dealership a number of times, including Saturday morning sales meetings before the doors were opened. I know how they addressed their own people. I know whether or not they were really following Kaizen culture, even when people couldn't see what was really going on. And they were, and massively successful. They had so much success. Maybe they're still at I don't follow them as closely but they did all kinds of things like that that were about us. This is who we are. That also earned its way onto the homepage because people cared about those things and they were extremely charitable in the community. They were very involved in doing the kinds of things that sponsored the things that really mattered to people. And a second example that I've always loved and he has moved on since then, but he was there for a long time is Matthew Welch, who was the general manager at Auburn Volkswagen, Auburn, Washington, just South of Seattle. They had so many tie-ins with the Seattle Seahawks and things that the community was loving, of course, all of that stuff. But the thing that I thought was most compelling about him was the real story, Like why they do what they do. Their tagline is like or was making lives better, one VW at a time, that kind of thing. But it wasn't lip service because he's a very deeply faith-based kind of guy. That mattered to him and it drives the way he treats people, treats people in his community how they sell cars. It permeates through their culture.
Speaker 1:Every single month, their website on the homepage, the About Us page, the Every page. Every single month. The website had a bit of a change, a little bit of a background. Color change didn't ever compromise the brand, but the change was in sync with what they were doing that month in their community. Perhaps that's the month where they're just all in on helping to raise money for the boys and girls clubs locally to help kids, Maybe after school programs, maybe it's breast cancer awareness month. On and on and on. Just all the things that matter to them. Let's feed the homeless, let's fill up up the food banks, let's fill up all the banks that are taking care of, um, you know, single moms, um, it just was unbelievable and it was a real thing.
Speaker 1:And again, I can speak personally because I stepped foot in the dealership and I got to know matthew and I'm like these are real deal people. It's about us, us who they were, and some of that content those dealers did put up on their homepage because it was real and it mattered. And those dealers were very successful with something that I think some dealers are like well, we don't have a story to tell or we don't want to do that, that's too touchy, feely or whatever. But the reality is is that sometimes that's a big unlock for people, that what would normally live on an about us page. If it's powerful and it's real, it might actually be the thing that draws people in and saying man, I want to do business with these guys, I want to buy from them, I want to be their customer. Just make sure it's not fake. You can't fake caring. You said people's care factor is high. The only reason why you know that is because they're not faking it.
Speaker 1:You will be found to be an imposter if you fake that you care about anything 100%, I agree really good. So there's a couple of things that I want to do here in the last few minutes. I want to, I want to share a couple of websites on screen and just like we'll just kind of review, like what we're what we're seeing, what we what we're what we're thinking.
Speaker 2:So yeah, this will be a little fun.
Speaker 1:And this is we're not making fun of anybody, we're just you know, we're just talking, buddy. We're just you know, we're just talking. So the first one we'll share let's go to. I'll share this screen, this window. You can tell me if you see it. Okay, let's see what we got.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, look at us. I see us about 50 times 50 times.
Speaker 1:Well, we don't want that. I'll stop that, because what I want is I want this window and you tell me if you see hey, there we go, it's better. Okay, good, all right. So on this website, go to a website and the first thing and this is a common thing you'll see is a pop-up on screen. What's your initial thoughts on when you get a pop-up? It's the first thing. It takes over. You basically get this lightbox effect. So you know that the site's back there, but they're wanting to put an offer in front of us.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's a few things here.
Speaker 2:When the pop-up pops up first and it makes the assumption that every consumer on that website cares about that, the vast majority of people are going to turn it off and get a little frustrated. To turn it off and get a little frustrated I am a large believer in the properly served type of pop-up. A behaviorally based pop-up for people that are on a VDP, on an SRP, but haven't made a decision yet, is an incredible way to go. However, that there we're advertising a specific vehicle to every consumer that hits that website and all we're really doing is turning them off, because if they're there for service, they're not happy. If they're there for a different vehicle, they're not happy, and so this violates the rules that we talked about.
Speaker 2:Those rules are pretty simple Can I get to one click within seconds of getting on that website? Do I immediately know the second that I get there where I want to be and where I want to go? And instead, with all these moving parts and all these moving banners, we're throwing things in front of consumers that they just don't care about, and I would argue that, regardless of how successful the store is, they would be better and more successful without all of this on the homepage, keeping it simple and allowing the homepage to simply convert that right there. That ought to be their homepage, not the banner.
Speaker 1:I started clicking on that banner because I wanted to show those required fields keep popping up, and then, of course, the banner went away because I clicked off of it and didn't realize what was going to happen there. But um, for those I mean.
Speaker 2:So in all, fairness, I'm not a fan of a bunch of banners on the homepage and if you're going to have them, keep them before. You're not allowed more than four. Let me say that one more time. You are not allowed more than four banners on your homepage because, first, 90% of people didn't see banners number two, three or four harder to click into the next part that they're really going to get into, which is the actual vehicle itself or service itself, or trade appraisal, any one of those things that you can put by having it properly laid out.
Speaker 2:homepage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Good, good stuff, the pop-up. When I started clicking on the fields, most of them were required and then I ended up making it disappear, which I did that a little prematurely For people that are just listening to this. We're looking at a Mitsubishi dealership site. The first thing we see was a pop-up. That was an offer and it had multiple fields and as I clicked into the fields they were all required and then that went away. And now we're looking at the homepage on desktop of a site that has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight scrolling banners and their offers like buy three tires, get the fourth for a dollar. That's a pretty common promotion in our industry. Then there are some incentives based in terms of 0% APR for 48 months and down payment information on new Mitsubishis. They're advertising their military rebate of $500.
Speaker 1:Then there is the star the outlander goes platinum, and then a button directly into inventory, which should be the very first thing on their website. And then some more. Oh, here's some more. Rally art returns and so a lot of promotional content. Then here's the well, here's the other one. You can search their whole inventory, but, to your point, there's too much going on here. It's forcing people. One people are not going to see all of it, but some people might just bounce right out of it because it overwhelms them as we scroll down on this page. I want to get your thoughts on that, Because now there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, there's eight more banners underneath the first eight banners.
Speaker 2:So for so, for those who are not before, how do you think we're doing here? The real question is where can you put these messages that people are actually going to see them? Yeah, because there's a. There's, there's a, there's a. There's the extra warranty. That's on the mitsubishi. That should be on every vdp and every srp of every mitsubishi. That should be on every VDP and every SRP of every Mitsubishi. That's where that should be?
Speaker 2:There is hiring. Can you put a banner on the website like a mini banner, a one sentence high banner on the top that pops up that you can click off, that says we're hiring. Come join the family. There's the family guarantee. I would much rather see that on every one of my VDPs and, quite frankly, if I was going to have something up there that was buried behind my search bars, it would be about that family messaging. When you've got a brand as strong as that, you want everyone to know it and you know it by keeping it the focal point of who you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely yeah. So this I mean this is, I think, like a lot of sites. I got a couple other ones that I want to look at before we conclude, but I think this is a common story for a lot of dealers there. There's there's always some good and then there's so not so good. Instead of calling it bad, it's just there's opportunities for improvement, usually on every single dealer website out there, and in this case, if it were me, I would be doing a pretty comprehensive test if I needed to prove to the decision makers that some bigger changes needed to be made.
Speaker 1:And you just gave some really great advice on taking some of these things that right now are getting prime real estate at the homepage and putting those things in places where the people that really care about them are going to be able to find them easier and not be overwhelmed, because once you see the slider moving this quickly, I don't know what interval they have it set on, if it's two, three seconds, but if there's a lot of copy on the slide, you feel rushed Like. This is an example. I want to digest what's on this right now Mitsubishi incentives but then it moves pretty quickly, and those are things also to think about too and those are things also to think about too is like well, if you really want people to digest some of those things, then the layout for that there could be potentially a better way to present it and also then track what happens with conversion rates. And again, I'll say it again, there's just not enough people that are still talking about this topic, and so if there aren't people talking about it, then the dealers aren't getting really good advice and counsel and perhaps even free consulting on some things that they should probably be doing. So I want to look at a couple of other examples.
Speaker 1:Here's the next one. This one struck me because I found another that looked exactly the same no-transcript, but in this case this dealership and this very next one, same dealers. Oh, here's another pop up, but I'm going to close off this one. These sites look very, very similar. So we're looking at two Mitsubishi sites in the same market. They're all within, you know, 20, 30 miles of each other in the DFW market, and these two sites are very, very similar Basically the layout, the menu structure, the navigation, it's all the same, the only difference is real here, so let's talk about some best practices here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do that. Best practice number one is you've got a menu bar up top. Do not put a mini banner below it. That mini banner for the Outlander stops people from seeing the buttons up top of it, and you just lowered your conversion because they don't see the buttons on top. So if I'm going to have a mini banner, the mini banner goes below the conversions, that's where it goes.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, and so, in order, I've got my menu bar above Yep Wow. And underneath the menu bar I've got my search area, and so I love that. I've got an open search bar there. That's great, that it's easy to see. Not ideal for it to open like that. That is not how that's supposed to work. As a matter of fact, I may have to give you another. The next show.
Speaker 2:We'll give you an example of what that's supposed to look like. It should look like Google, where, as you're typing, it's showing you the results. That's how it should work. It's called contextual search and it's the only way people know how things operate, because everyone knows how to operate Google, and it's the only way people know how things operate, because everyone knows how to operate Google. These shop new and use, schedule service and current specials no consumer sees those and no one's clicking on them. They can't see them. They look like part of the back end image. So what would you do to clean this up? You would move this zero for 48 below the shop new and used. You would make sure that those were buttons that people could see and they could realize are actually clickable. And that search bar needs to come away from 2015 and come into 2025 is what that search bar needs.
Speaker 1:And if you happen to be, I love that. If you happen to be one of the listeners and you're not viewing this yet and you're not seeing the YouTube version of it, this is one of the search bars where it looks like open search. It kind of looks like you're on Google and it says search by make, model, etc. And so when you click into there, you probably would expect that you're going to get a blinking cursor and it'll let you just start free typing. But that isn't what happens. When you click in there, you actually get a drop down where you could type some stuff in, but it also has a drop down for all inventory, new inventory. It's an interesting array of some hyperlinks to things that maybe they think is going to save the consumer some time. See what the conversion data looks like once this hits, because I think, to your point, it's probably having a negative impact versus just letting people go, because that's the whole concept of the contextual kind of universal search that everyone's used to thanks to Google. And then the other thing that Kieran was just talking about is on the homepage. Imagine seeing a big hero image of cars and then having three calls to action one for shop new and pre-owned one for scheduling service and one for seeing current specials. But it's all text overlaid onto that main hero image so it does not necessarily look like they're anything but titles of things. It does not make it look like you could click on them because they don't really look like interactive buttons or calls to action. And so just throwing the Mitsubishi Red behind those and deciding whether you want rounded or non-rounded corners would be an improvement to help.
Speaker 1:And again, this is an example of something where, if you were going through this with the dealer and saying, hey, these are some things that you might change Also, we would tell people, by the way, put a stake in the ground and track these changes and don't do 100 at a time.
Speaker 1:Pick three, maybe a month that would be of high value, and make those changes and then check the performance of those things so that you don't overwhelm yourself or get so deep that you don't know where you started in the first place. Let's look at one more different provider so we get a different look. So this one, all these sites, I think there were a couple from Dealer Inspire, a couple from Dealercom, one, this one's dealer on and this one I thought looked better. I know Mitsubishi tends to sometimes have a lot of dark background sites, kind of like Acura used to do. Maybe they still do, but I I I'm not sure how I feel I I both like and then I also have concern over throwing the pre-qualified banner you just mentioned. Like the banner and as its relationship to the navigation can be a concern and it can.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mitsubishi is one of those ones where I think I understand why they're putting that banner there. Maybe on their brand, but I'm not sure I would do this on other brands.
Speaker 2:So you've got that banner up there, which the reason those generally get up there is that the company, the third party provider, takes over the website. They do a website takeover and all of the prime real estate gets taken over by their imagery, and then they tell you this is why I'm doing so well and you're like, interesting, but all the rest of my leads are not going so well. Well, in this exact example, what happens is that because I've got that up here, all of a sudden you just became a subprime dealership and I got to tell you, maybe Mitsubishi doesn't have as many consumers as they used to, but they don't make a bad car and the people that do drive them do like them, and so I would much rather not alienate the good credit consumers that saw a vehicle and are curious about that vehicle and are looking for a reason to choose Mitsubishi. I'd rather take that and bring it below these buttons or, even better, make these buttons a little bigger and integrate this into that button.
Speaker 2:There's no reason Git financing can't say Git pre-qualified, no social security card, no social security required. I mean that fits in here with ease. You can do that inside of a button with no problem. It's interesting that the buttons all sit here, with all this dead space on both sides and a true responsive website. What happens is you're you don't end up with all this dead space in the middle. This is meant for a viewable window in the middle, so that that's you know they're capable of doing better. Just throwing that out there, cause we know those guys, we still love those guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just you know like get their best work because their best work is out there. Yeah, and you make a really good point because, um, there are things that get added on, uh, from people who are not the website provider. Um, in this case there's already one here and it's basically given it, being given top prime real estate. And, to your, your point again, and I'll do my best for you listeners, we're on another Mitsubishi website here and it has a nice, it's a pretty clean design, one hero image, not multiple banners. But they've put an offer banner at the top right under a top navigation structured site for getting pre-qualified, and I haven't clicked on the banner yet, but it takes you into. It says it's powered by TransUnion, so it's clearly, you know, kind of a pre-qual, you know easy way to get people into whether or not they can even afford to buy. So I understand that.
Speaker 1:But its placement, as Kieran was just saying, feels like it should actually be below. And what would it be below? Well, right underneath this pre-qualified banner, you see that they have 226 vehicles available. I'm going to guess that that's new inventory, might be new and use. I don't know the exact size of this dealership, but that's when they're, that's where they have kind of their search features as well, if you want to do drop-down search, and they also have that open search that we were talking about on the previous site.
Speaker 1:This one looks like it actually works the way it's supposed to, which is type anything into the search box and it'll start to identify what it has relative to the search. But that pre-qualified banner at the top really feels like it belongs below. And right now, before you have to scroll below the fold on this site, you have a series of four buttons one for getting financing, one trade appraisal, one schedule service, one view specials, which probably could be moved up. But again, I really I think it's important that you had mentioned that. You know you could get your website right out of the box and it might be just fine and you might be adding, because there are a lot of people that want to add stuff to your website, but you could be giving somebody permission to add things in places that may not be helpful.
Speaker 2:And maybe, yeah, let me give you a little piece of advice for every dealer out there. Your website provider knows where these things should go and where they shouldn't go. It doesn't matter who they are. Obviously, I have my favorites, because we are a website provider, but best practice is best practice, and before we were a website provider, we worked with a number of these companies and, frankly, we had good relationships with all of them. We still do advertising for clients on all of these different brand websites, and so I'll tell you do not ever let a vendor take over your website. It's up to you to choose where to put these things, and if you're unsure, there's a performance manager that works at the website provider whose entire job is to make sure that these things are in the right spot. They just have so many clients and no dealer wants to really talk to their website vendor every month, so they're waiting for you to call them is how that really goes.
Speaker 2:It's a shame you don't see this on mobile, because when you see it on mobile, you've got this gigantic logo and everything else is squished so low on it that you can't even figure out where to navigate. So it's just you know. This is why you got to do these things on mobile first. Two thirds of your traffic came into this dealership on mobile. They never saw this website layout, even though I do like this website layout. I think it's a nicely done website layout, but what does it look like on mobile? That starts to get scary.
Speaker 1:Very, very true. Well, this has been a fun episode to talk through and I think it just kind of opens the door to start having more conversations about this, really to help all dealers. Again, I sometimes am surprised that age-old but very valuable components of digital marketing strategies. Obviously, you need a website. Every dealership has a website. Most dealers, if they've been in business for five or, let's say, 10 years, you've had more than one provider of websites.
Speaker 1:But there does tend to be in this area of our industry for dealers, there does tend to be sometimes some lackadaisical or maybe lazy thinking and adherence to best practices. And one of the last things I'll say before I give you the final word is for a dealer. I think that it's really important to remember that this environment is the one where you spend all this money in digital, whether it's paid for your SEO services, for all your Google advertising, all the things that you're doing to try to get people to this environment, whether they're having the mobile or the desktop experience. That's a lot of money Every single month, every single year. It's a lot of money, and so that's why episodes like this and why we'll do a multi-part series here, that's why we need to continue to talk about these things, think through these things, show examples of things to help you get better.
Speaker 1:It's really critically important that that environment is held to a high standard, because it should be. You shouldn't be settling for well, I don't even know what my website's conversion rate is on average. Or well, I don't even know what my website's conversion rate is on average. You should, because you spend a lot of money pushing people there. That your expectation is they're going to turn into a sales opportunity or a service opportunity or both, and that's why we're going to keep talking about it.
Speaker 2:So final thoughts. Kieran, I really think, just pay attention to your website. I think that we spent so much time on it before that what a lot of dealers have gotten is numb. We think that we're to a point now where most of this best practices should be in place. We were selling enough cars and making enough money for long enough where we lost focus on how important this piece was, and I'm going to tell you, if you're not as successful as you should be or want to be, this is the first thing you should be looking at.
Speaker 2:You'll find that you can spend a whole lot of money in advertising. Drive it to a website that's ineffectively built and you can blow a whole lot of money. It's like going to Vegas and coming back with nothing, not even a good time, and so I think instead, let's pay attention to the details of the website, get to know your performance manager and be realistic about the changes. I can tell you on our platform, you'd make a change. 97% of those are done the exact same day. When they tell you it takes a week, that's not okay. It doesn't take a week. It can be done sooner if you matter to them and if they tell you that it's going to take a week, that's because you don't matter to them. So visit your homepage, visit these things, get some expert advice on those buttons and get them addressed, because when you do, you have more phone calls, more leads and you sell more cars and ultimately, it's always about selling more cars.
Speaker 1:For sure Very good. Thanks for sharing your insights today with us. Kieran, appreciate it. It's really clear, I think, for the audience both homepage about us page and of course we'll continue to dig in on all the pages of the website but they all significantly impact your dealers conversion rates. So to the listeners and viewers, hope you found today's discussion valuable. I hope you found some things that you can implement some of these strategies on your own websites. Of course, if you have questions about it, go to dealeralchemistcom and hit up the team. You can easily schedule some time. It's absolutely complimentary and free just to talk to the team at Dealer Alchemist and find out if there's some things that they might be able to help you improve with. And if they can help you do that, then you might realize that they might be able to help you with a whole lot of things in your business.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe. If you're especially on YouTube, like the episode Automotive Alchemy, well, we exist to turn all these challenges into gold, so stay tuned for more advice on optimizing optimizing your whole digital presence. Until next time I'm. This is automotive alchemy. Thanks a lot, karen thank you stopping the episode.