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
The Required Elements of A High Performance Dealership Website: Part 1
What does it really take to create a dealership website that performs in 2025? In this episode of Automotive Alchemy, Dealer Alchemist’s Chief Revenue Officer, John McAdams, unpacks the essential components of a high-converting digital showroom—rooted in decades of hands-on retail and e-commerce experience.
Listeners will gain clear, actionable insights into what separates top-performing websites from those that simply look good. From the non-negotiables of mobile-first design to the strategic use of AI, dynamic inventory tools, and behavioral lead generation, McAdams emphasizes the importance of simplicity, speed, and user intent. He also challenges outdated design trends and discusses how dealerships can align digital marketing with real operational goals.
This episode covers:
- Why mobile-first is no longer a trend—it's a requirement
- The dangers of website friction and how to eliminate it
- Smart strategies for real-time inventory and ad targeting
- How behavioral intelligence can enhance lead generation
- The ROI pitfalls of outdated digital practices
- Conversion benchmarks and what success really looks like
Whether you're rethinking your current site or planning a full redesign, this episode delivers practical guidance for turning website visits into revenue—backed by one of the most experienced voices in automotive digital strategy.
Subscribe for more real-world insights from experts helping dealers grow smarter every day. Learn more at www.dealeralchemist.com
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Podcast Directed and Produced by: www.hiredgunsagency.com
Welcome back to Automotive Alchemy. Yep, we're back with another fantastic episode. I can't wait. Actually, we're gonna talk about something that well me and the guest who you know, john McAdam, is back with me. We're very familiar with this topic and I don't think it actually ever gets enough attention. So today, I think what you'll end up kind of hearing are some of the things that maybe are the making of like a blueprint for like an ultimate dealership website. We want to talk through some of the things that might be still trends. Some of these trends it's funny, we would consider them trends, but they've been around for a long time. Tactics, but specifically for it's the year 2025. In 10 years from now and you're watching this episode it'll be interesting to see if we're still talking about things that we were talking about in 2015 or even the year 2000.
Speaker 1:So my name is Sean Raines. As always, I think I've never had anyone else host. It's always been me Back with you and John McAdams, Chief Revenue Officer at Dealer Alchemist. You just are the audience that always comes back for great stuff, and we do want to say at the top of this episode everybody that watches, and when you're downloading episodes, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:The podcast continues to grow and so today, as we kind of talk about this blueprint of ultimate dealership website, we're going to talk about things that you've probably heard about before but maybe not completely in depth considered around mobile first design, and do you guys use chat and are you using some sort of artificial intelligence chat bot? So John's back and I always want people to know that experience to me is like the greatest differentiator. And John has 30 plus years and the thing that makes him that dual threat is it's balanced on both sides of our industry and automotive. If you have 15 years or more on the retail side, running multiple stores as a general manager, taking them from the red to the black, that is worth people's respect and attention. And then John also has all this great experience taking that retail experience into helping as a service provider. So welcome back, john.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. So it's always good to be here and talk to you about these things, sean, and hopefully the audience is coming back. Know the conversation that we have. You know my goal, uh, is the same today as it was probably 30 years ago when I got into this gig, which is I just want to help dealerships grow, and in my mind, that's selling and servicing more cars and making more money doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've always kind of been that guy. You've been the guy who, I think, before people started putting growth in their titles or the consideration of how they really wanted dealers to think of them, you were already doing that when I first met you. That's kind of what I thought of you as like you're a guy that can understand that kind of the nuance, detail and the ins and outs of anybody's operation and figure out places where they should grow. And sometimes that's depending on what the dealership's going through. It may not necessarily be relative to their website or maybe what they're doing in paid digital or might actually be something more fixed ops related. And that's where I think drawing from all of that retail experience makes you extremely valuable to dealers.
Speaker 1:You can not only sympathize that they're going through an issue, you empathize because you felt it and dealt with it yourself. So you know that, which I think is huge. So well, listen, as we kind of jump into websites, I think for some people it's always just good to know that depth in terms of perspective and experience. So the first thing I want to kind of dip your toes in the water with is based on the fact that you've been around dealership websites, automotive websites for decades. What about 2025? Gets you kind of excited or things that you're seeing? Are there differences but opportunities relative to the year?
Speaker 2:we're already almost into June, crazy right, we're halfway through the year of 2025 here pretty soon and I remember being on a podcast with it at the end of 2024, kind of thinking about 2025 and here we are halfway through it already and I've seen a lot of great things. I think we've seen a lot of interesting things in the car business over the past five, six months, things that you know. Maybe we didn't see coming, maybe you know, we heard about and didn't know how they were going to affect this, but you know, regardless of the fact, you know, you know this industry is responsible for a large amount of the gross domestic product, right, like, listen, just look at how much money we add to the bottom line at a local, a state, a federal level in this car business. You know. So when things start to, you know, move and shake in one way or another, there's a lot of good chances that the car business is going to be affected by that, positively or negatively, right, it's just that it's the industry we're in and I remember, you know, after 25, 30 years of doing this, doing this, when I started off selling cars and made it to GSM and used car manager and then I finally made it as a director of e-commerce for a top 25 dealer group and then, because I could fix a printer, sean I became the director of IT and director of e-commerce for a top 25 dealer group, which was interesting. But some of those things that I learned back then from the sales floor, working up through management, getting to that director of e-comm job, you know are starting to come back and apply today and we'll talk about those in a few few minutes, and you know.
Speaker 2:Then then you start looking at some of the trends that have happened in the past and you always have to look for the history to find out what happens in the future. You don't repeat it, right? So you know, have we gone through some crazy things in the car business over the last 20 years that put us back on our heels and made us rethink how we do business. Has it made us rethink? Should I, if I can't acquire, you know, any more new vehicles or they're not going to ship them to me, or they're going to have high tariff taxes on them should I shift my operations towards used cars? And then, how do I acquire more used cars to turn them quicker through the shop, to get them on the front line to sell, and or should I go after my fixed ops business and say how do I really strengthen that part of my business? Well, I ride out this part of the storm, right, because, let's be honest, this is just another storm we're going to ride out.
Speaker 2:The auto industry is not going to disappear and EVs didn't get rid of the internal combustion engine. The internet didn't get rid of brick and mortar dealerships. So there's a lot of exciting things in 2025. That's really starting to really creep up, I would say, in a faster pace than maybe some thought of, and I'm going to love and hate to use the acronym AI.
Speaker 2:I think it's way overused by people who don't really understand AI just because they think AI is cool. I remember when the terminology CRM was cool, right, and people didn't have CRM and then, all of a sudden, because I didn't have a CRM, maybe I was an ILM, an internet lead manager, compared to a customer relationship manager tool, right? So there's all these things out there in the business that and I think you and I talked about it before it's not that dealers are fearful. I'm not fearful. I don't think you're fearful. None of the dealers I know are fearful or frustrated to a degree, right, because here we are again. I feel like Muhammad Ali showed up again and they're going to punch us 100 times. They're going to see if we get back off the mat. The answer is yes, we are, because we always do. But I think AI has a huge part in this business.
Speaker 2:And what I would say to many people if you're anywhere, from a salesperson all the way up to the dealer principal level, now is the time to get on board and think of how you can use AI to your benefit, right, and not just from a vendor perspective. But think about this. I'm just going to throw something out there crazy, just crazy. I'm not sure if anybody's even thinking about doing it. Maybe some people are. You could upload your CRM data of unsold prospects or your DMS data of people that you sell the service to into a couple of AI tools and have it sift through the data and analyze the data and spit me out the top 10 people most likely to either upgrade their vehicle today or top 10 prospects that are unsold, based on the vehicles I have in inventory and the rebates and census I have. That should come back in and buy a vehicle.
Speaker 2:For some dealers, that's thousands of records, 20,000 records, 100,000 records, even a million records that people would have to go through Excel and sort through and use all this human intellect to get through. But yeah, so think about how AI can help you and grow that entire process inside your dealership. And that goes on and on to fixed operations, it goes on to F&I, it goes on to sales. So keep that all in mind that I fully believe that AI is here to help us in the car business. But, sean, I remember this moment in 2002, maybe even 2000, when the Internet kind of cruised around and Google wasn't around Like I've been here before. Google was here, just for the record, and I used to call it the Vista and Metacrawler, right.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:Google came around and I was like who came up with this stupid name of this, whatever it's going to be search engine at that time, I'm not going to use it because I'm way too sophisticated. And here we are. You know, 20 years later, google is the big gorilla on the roof. Right At that time, there was some fearfulness that the internet was not going to be here, so let's not pay attention to it. The other fact was that the internet was going to destroy the brick and mortar part of the business for the car dealerships. That didn't happen either, right. So AI is not here to slow us down. It's not going to take over our dealerships, it can only make it better. But as I'll say now, as I said then, if you lean into it, there's a good chance you're going to win. If you lean away from it with, let other people be the be the pioneers, they will definitely win. And then we have to play catch up. So great things coming in, uh for sure in 25 still yeah, and you, you mentioned a couple things.
Speaker 1:I don't want to bury leads, um, I thought it was really interesting that you you shared a perspective that I think, uh, is unique to automotive in terms of embracing things that are adversarial, or challenges that come rolling through, you know, and one tsunami after another and and you mentioned tariffs and that's like the current thing right now. But even these kind of adversarial or more challenging consequences that we suffer through, they also deliver opportunity, and you were, in kind of a roundabout way, saying that when our industry finds itself in these challenging moments Some of them are monumental over decades and we're back on our heels, I think you said it's okay to get excited about that as an opportunity, because it really is. I mean, some of the greatest opportunities that we have as individuals, as businesses, certainly as dealerships, come when we're back on our heels, like what are we going to do? How are we going to innovate? How are we going to? You're literally forced to solve problems that maybe never existed before. You're literally forced to deal with the challenge that you've never experienced before and the thing that I We've talked about this a little bit, even on other episodes that in 2025, to look at.
Speaker 1:Oh, here's some things that I'm kind of excited about. That's kind of a refreshing way to think about. Hey, we got this tariff thing. Obviously, we have a new federal administration and they're trying like every administration does. No matter how you line up on politics, you got to hope that they're wanting to do the best thing for the whole country and everybody there, whether they always do a good job of that or not. Of course they don't, they're humans too but it's had a massive effect right now on kind of global economies and obviously, with this tariff thing. To look at that as this is another opportunity to figure out what parts of our business are not touched by this and that we do control the parts of our business are not touched by this and that we do control the parts of our business that it does touch. How do we work our way through this in a way that we're going to learn something and we're going to have an opportunity to be stronger and better and more capable than we were before this. That's a really unique way of putting your mindset in the place where you're going to be a winner versus a loser, and so I just I wanted to make sure I kind of pulled that.
Speaker 1:Hopefully I was able to articulate what you were saying there, because that's what I was hearing is like dealers have done this type of thing over and over and over. Do we like it? No, and it's never fun to just keep getting like elbowed and kneed and kicked down to the carpet and like, ah, more band-aids. And then you figure it out. But I'll tell you what. That's probably one of the reasons why the automotive industry is so integrated into our country, the world, the gross domestic product. You know. The automotive industry has been like that for a long time. Well, I don't think it would be if it wasn't an industry that's proven, that it can actually take it on the chin and say we're coming back even stronger than we ever did before.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to make one other point just about AI, and I'll make it very quickly. Just last night I started with a couple of friends that I got invited to be a part of co-lead and AI study group totally for free, that we actually told dealers like, hey, if you want to do this, we're gonna do this in the evenings. And last night was the first meetup. It's going to go over, I think, an eight week period, and last night we had a group of dealers who, like, they're not, you're right, they're not afraid, but there's some frustration and they want to know the truth. They want to know where all this applies.
Speaker 1:So we thought, with all the people that want to monetize every single thing in our industry, we thought, well, why don't we do something that we don't want any money?
Speaker 1:We just want you to follow these rules and this time and show up for these things and do the homework, and you're going to learn for free from people that just want to share their knowledge. And, oh my goodness, it was awesome. One of the first things that they did last night was hey, let's look at expert, concise comparison of the top three selling EVs and what that might mean. Are they one of your brands? It was very cool and the feedback was awesome. So I just wanted to say that, for dealers that are thinking about what you said about AI as an opportunity, there's also learning opportunities. Like, unfortunately, yeah, you got to go kind of get back out in the garden and spend some time out there getting some dirt under your fingernails, but again it ties back into. If you do that, you are once again going to be kind of reinventing yourself or adding another layer of capability that you only would have had if you had decided to put your shoulder to the wheel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to lean in and thanks for not sending me the invite for that. Maybe one day I'll be in the cool kids club and I can get an invite to that. But I was trolling social media the other day and I laughed because it pertained to me. Here, here comes a. You know, here comes a post and you know it was sponsored. So it was an ad and it said guys over 50, eight week course on how to learn AI, don't get left behind, right, and I was like I'm over 50. Does that apply to me? Should I, should I jump in on some of that action? You know, and and I started thinking, well, I'm already into AI, right, like, like, I lean in. I lean in when most people lean out. I lean in, um, if it, if it, if it excites me, or or or I don't know enough about it and I can get challenged by it.
Speaker 2:Ai was one of those things and you know I'm I'm excited about AI and uh, and there's a bunch of friends my age that wouldn't even know what AI is if it bit them right. And, luckily for them, some of their jobs don't require AI and they won't be affected, hopefully, by what's going to go down the pike, but for some other folks you can't really ignore it, right? You can use it personally. You can use it professionally. I use it professionally and personally all the time. When I want to go to a restaurant now or I'm looking for the best Italian restaurant, I use AI. I don't go to Google and ask Google anymore. Google just tells me what they think I want to hear.
Speaker 2:Ai has learned about how I ask questions. It's learned about the response and then my response to their response, and it's now learned me at a great deal at a very fast pace. So it knows what to stay away from and what to go with. And I ask it crazy questions and it always comes back with some awesome answers. I'm like, wow, that is awesome, right. And so I would urge some folks if you're a little hesitant about it, start off small, either professionally or personally, and see where it goes and listen. You're not resigned to just chat GPT Like there's Claw. There's tons of them out there. There's more than I could possibly remember. By the way, some people told me they didn't know that AI could quickly build ads and images for ads, right, one-sheeters, I mean for the desk when they come in the door Like it's limitless if you just get in there and start thinking about it. So dip your toe in the water, maybe jump in the deep end, get your swimmies on, see what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely A lot of learning there. A lot of learning there. Um. So from this website perspective, we have for gosh since the mobile geddon era you know what is that 10 years ago like almost, yeah. Um, mobile as a design concept still remains obviously really important, because the high percentage of people that's the version of their site or that's the experience they're going to have on your website, it's really really critical. Are some of those things? I mean, I want to get your thoughts just in general on that for dealers that are thinking like, well, what are the boxes we need to check but make sure they're really good?
Speaker 1:When we think about mobile, because you and I, when we were at the same place, same company, selling websites, that was pretty interesting because at that time they ended up having something that was pretty disruptive to I won't say their name, but really one of the big boys on the block, disruptive to I won't say their name, but really one of the big boys on the block, big girls, big boys, big girls, whatever you want to call them these days.
Speaker 1:Um had all those things that were like little icons that would drop down and have like three or four phone numbers to choose from. It's like well, this is the worst customer experience you can give to people, versus just click that and it starts calling the dealership. Can you just share some of those thoughts like today where it's like I'm a dealer and I'm like what are the things relative to what's happening that and it starts calling the dealership? Can you just share some of those thoughts like today where it's like I'm a dealer and I'm like what are the things relative to what's happening on that mobile experience that are really, really critical, like the must haves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I'm glad you're. I'm glad you're bringing this topic up Right Cause I feel like you and I have been doing this in the website space for automotive for a long, long time. It doesn't make me an expert I hate the term. It doesn't make me a guru. Listen, don't ever call me that, please. I've just really done a lot of homework from a sales perspective and from a really nerdy data perspective, because, remember, my only goal is to help them sell and source more money cars and make more money doing it. So I have a very short path I have to get to. So everything in my brain that I would always help dealers with had to have that outcome. If it didn't have that outcome, it didn't excite me. So does it help me sell and service more cars? Yes. Does it help me make more money? No, okay, not excited. Does it help me do both? Okay, cool, I'm on that train.
Speaker 2:You know, back then, mobile responsiveness was the hoo-ha of the day, like, look at this, we're mobily, responsive. And you know, at that time, more than half of your customers were online using mobile. Right Now it's over 85%, 90%, you know, that's the last number that I read 90 percent of all consumers use a mobile device, right, so? So let's just be honest, like that's. Let's call it 90 percent. So there's 10 percent that still use a desktop or a tablet or a desktop. You know, a laptop versus a desktop.
Speaker 2:But what has happened is these multiple devices now show up in different places, right, so you know, I might start my journey on my mobile device while I'm sitting at my house watching streaming TV, right, and I might decide, ok, well, now the screen's a little too small and I need to show my wife something. So I'm going to reach over, grab my tablet, my iPad, and say, hey, let's go take a look at this. Reach over, grab my tablet, my iPad, and say, hey, let's go take a look at this. And then, when I want to make a really big purchase like a car or a house, I'm probably going to move on to a laptop, something I get really comfortable doing because this is a bigger purchase for me. Now, that's me and that's my generation. I know some of my younger kids they'll buy an entire house on their cell phone. Different world. I get it. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I read every little detail of every little contract that rolls through. They're just like where do I sign? Oh yeah, just hit, sign, sign, sign, move on, right, so.
Speaker 2:So we have to take that into account. So being on a really solid mobile presence for your website has to be the first thing we do, right? And just think of how you would use your mobile phone not driving down the road at 60 miles an hour. None of us do that. But let's say something like that were to occur. You want it to be super easy and super frictionless and super one thumb touch, right, like one thumb touch. Nope, nobody's sitting here with two fingers anymore touching their cell phone, trying to squish in and pinch out. Nope, nobody really does that anymore. Right? So make sure that it's very app-like. Your website should be very app-like. It shouldn't just be a slimmed down version of your desktop site that captures 10% of your traffic. So what does that look like?
Speaker 2:For example, if I were to go to a website today and you put the hero banners up and there's five of them scrolling by, which we're going to get to in a second. We're going to get to those hero banners in a second, everybody, don't worry, I've got the monkey and the circus all queued up and ready to go. And then at the bottom of every hero banner, you've got those 18 lines of super fine small print disclaimer. And now you move that over to a mobile device. I can barely see the image now because you've got this disclaimer on there. I can certainly not get the disclaimer at that point, but all the ability for me to use my thumb to get to where I want to go left me. You frustrated me because there's more friction than I needed to. And why is this so difficult for me just to get to the X, y or Z model or the trim that I'm looking for? I'm in a hurry, we're all in a hurry. Make it easy, make it frictionless.
Speaker 2:So in the past and I am guilty of this, sean, and you're probably guilty as well, but I'm not going to throw you on the Titanic with me Back in the day Hero Banner, hero Banner, hero Banner. This for $2.89 a month, that for $3.49 a month, that one for $5.49 a month. And they scroll by, they scroll by and as dealers we're like, oh, that's awesome, because we're all showing and looking to it from a desktop. We're like, wow, that's awesome, especially in the conference room on the big screen. Man, it presents well, but when you look at the data behind that, how many people click on the banner? How many people click on banner two, banner three, banner four? It's going to surprise you.
Speaker 2:By the way, and remember I am guilty of having dealers put three or four core model banners on because, as a consumer, here's what I got your website, sean, and I'm like I'm so in. Look at that banner, honey, would you look at that banner on that website? Let's not go, look at the car, let's wait for the next banner to come by in three seconds. Never happens. So give your website the best ability to get them to where VDP, an SRP or schedule service. Maybe the fourth one? I'll buy your vehicle or sell me your vehicle. Right For me. Those are the big four.
Speaker 2:I could be talked into a fifth and I could easily play on a fifth, but at the end of the day, if I'm a consumer and I'm on your website, Sean, I don't care how I got there. I had a Google AdWords snag me. I had an AIA ad from Facebook get me. I had a direct mail piece of the QR code. I ended up at your website. It doesn't matter how I got there. Auto trader, whatever they got me there.
Speaker 2:When I'm there, as a consumer, the only thing we should be thinking is how do I make it so frictionless for them to get to the vehicle or the SRPs that they're looking for, to make their own decision right, and then have them be able to click to call, have them be able to fill out a form fill, which I know we can get into a long discussion about form fills, live chat. There's a lot of ways right, phone, phone me. But I was on a call today with a dealer and their marketing person told them that all of their Google ads you know $2.89 a month we got $13 at $2.89 a month, right, when they click it. It went to the specials page for new vehicle specials and I was like, okay, so let's just take the experience. I find the ad. I go to Google Ad Preview tool. I find the ad, I click on it. It gets me over to the specials page.
Speaker 2:In this case I was looking for the model that was four specials deep on the banner ad, so I had to do some scrolling to find it. It all looked the same, so I I actually missed it. I had to go back up and find it again and I was like, oh cool, 49 a month, four thousand dollars down. I had to hit another button to get to the inventory. In my mind, that's a. That's a little bit too much work for me. Why can't I just go from the ad itself, whatever? Whatever the vehicle is, let's go with the model, forget about the trim, the model, and drop me on an SRP with all the models and, by the way, at the top of that SRP put your banner for that particular model. If that's what you want to see, let's do that and I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:This is an interesting mathematical equation because you know me, I love KPIs and I love dealership operations. I said, hey, how many visits do you have a month to that website? I hear 45,000. I'm like that's awesome. I said do me a favor, what's your conversion rate? Let's just make it easy, let's just do phone calls and lead forms. Conversion rate Hold on A quarter of 1%.
Speaker 2:I said are you happy with that number? And they said well, what should it be? I said, listen, the industry's average has always been 1.8%. For the last 20 years it never has changed. But I know sites out there that will convert 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% if done the right way and don't provide friction in the middle of all that. And so that was a lesson in mathematics. Like what do we expect? Hold ourselves and our vendors accountable to it. If somebody tells you from anywhere, including me, that the number is supposed to be X, verify it, call it out, figure it out Right. If I tell you the number should be five and you're like John, that's a bad number, I want it to be 10. Well, let's go figure out how to get it to 10. But don't just take what they say as the gospel, because maybe it was just easier to land those people at the special page for that company. Just land them at the special page.
Speaker 1:And when they say I didn't sell any more cars.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't control the sales process. Mr and Mr Dealer, we brought everybody to the website.
Speaker 1:You didn't sell the car. I got news for you, although you were probably as tempted as, let's just say, a Cy Young pitcher that's about to throw a ball at someone in the dunk who's going to go in the dunk tank. So you know you're putting them underwater. And you probably decided not to do that based on this 45,000 number, because I guess for me, especially if I was feeling a little salty, I think I would say to a dealership like that, when it's like a quarter of a percent in your conversion, I'd be like and I really want to know how much you spent getting 45,000 people to the page, because pretty soon you're either going to spontaneously combust or you might even kill some people when you found out how much money, because you spent even more than $45,000 getting people there for about 112 opportunities.
Speaker 1:So, now do the math. How much money did you spend for the 45,000 divided by 112 opportunities, that quarter of a percent? And now you're like, oh right, so dealers, what you're hearing Johnny Mac talk about the dollars and cents behind that, whatever your numbers are, when you're thinking about that and they're hitting a mobile page and you're getting lots of traffic. This is an example of things when you're trying to kind of blueprint for well, what should we be knowing? What should we be doing in 2025? There's a lot of attention around the KPIs and really what should be happening, because digital brought us all of the data points and so if we have all the data points, then let's not forget to do sometimes the reverse engineering mathematics of whether or not it's really, because even just because you can see that level of detail doesn't mean you can then make yourself absent of the dollars and cents that got you there Because you pay for all of this. I call it digital exhaust. All the digital ads create an exhaust or an off output of what we get to look at in data, but usually the way that we talk about it from an investment and all the dollars and cents we never steer towards the do you know how much money you just wasted because you didn't know the difference. And I'm not dunking on dealers here. It sounds like we're dunking on dealers. Yeah, this is us talking about something just candidly, because it's a point of awareness that you're not going to go and hear people talk about on a panel. You're not going to have a whole bunch of website providers jump up and talk about that part of things because it's uncomfortable. There are always some kind of uncomfortable truths out there.
Speaker 1:And before we completely leave mobile, one of the things that I think is great that you're also talking about is friction is kind of the common term for it, and I use that sometimes, and sometimes I just say it's just friction is kind of the common term for it and I use that sometimes, and sometimes I just say it's just the simplicity. Like, don't. Don't make the experience of your um website, whether somebody's using, uh, your website from their mobile, phone, tablet, desktop, regardless of where they're going. Don't make, but maybe especially on mobile, don't make it feel like it's some kind of virtual fun house where you're making people step through hoops of like, well, I clicked on the phone thing and now I got to choose from numbers, or it's got to be simple. You click on that. I mean the sites you guys build, john. I mean, if I touch sales and that phone icon, it just sells. I want to call the dealership, it just will call the sales number, it will call the service number wherever I'm trying to be directed.
Speaker 1:That type of design is really important because of why it removes friction or it keeps it simple, and it's the same thing for being able to access what you kind of articulated of the most valuable things that are going to happen on a dealership's website. Anyway, all of those things have to have a very low barrier to entry or a low barrier for your beloved website visitors, by the way, that you pay for that are not cheap to get there, that you don't end up turning them off before you got the opportunity to show them all the stuff that they came there for in the first place. So remember that, dealers out there, when you're thinking about the mobile experience simplified, simplified You're paying for people to get there. Even if you're like, oh, they came in organically, you're still paying.
Speaker 1:You've got to have some sort of SEO effort or something in play, there's still cost to get them into that experience, and if you have a design that literally repels them before they had the opportunity to see what you brought them there for in the first place, you're doing yourself a great disservice. So let's talk a little bit about navigation. Actually, my last comment is kind of a good segue into this, because having navigation is really intuitive, meaning it's super, super easy. The aesthetics on the website you want your website to look great, but you don't want to choose so much style that now the sudden user experience is more difficult, but it looks cool, and so I want to get your thoughts on that as well. What's working? What are some of the things dealers should be doing and keeping their eye on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, simple is better. Honestly and I know that sounds easy but it's actually quite difficult sometimes our historical nature of what we've learned over the past 25 years, when digital became what it was, was right at the time. It has evolved and it's now changed. So now it's where it's wrong. Yet we still hold on to these older concepts, the banners that we talked about. You know, older concept. No, it's how I did my newspaper, so I'm going to put that on my website. Right, makes sense. Makes sense at the time, you know, but that doesn't apply today.
Speaker 2:You know, when we build websites simplistically, you know, not only from the homepage but to the SRP and the BDP page. You know, on the homepage, you should build it as if the shopping experience from the consumer side mattered. Remember, there's only four or five things that they're going to do at my dealership. They're going to buy a car, buy a used car, buy a new car, they're going to schedule service or they're going to want to sell me their car. Really, that's about it. That's 98% of what they're going to do at my store. So why don't we just give that to them upfront and not make them hunt around through sub menus? Or maybe that's under financing, or maybe that's about us, or like listen, it's important to have those navigational tools there for the people that still need that, but for the ones that are coming to your website, you know for the first time that decided on that brand that you sell and decided that you're the store I want to begin my journey with. Let's not make it more complicated than it needs to be, right. Let's give them those quick CTAs off the homepage. But even more important, sean, like when we use Google Chrome or Firefox or any of the engine browsers that you use, there's always one thing in common there's a box right here and you just start typing what your brain's thinking I'm looking for blah, blah, blah, blah, right. How do I fix? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Where's the red? You know, use, you know blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where's the red? You know, use. You know blah, blah, blah, blah, right.
Speaker 2:And if you transfer that theory back over to websites in the car dealership world, why would we not do the same thing? Put a google-like native search button bar at the right there in front of people. Easy right there, so they can just easy right there, so they can just type what they're looking for, because that's how consumers do everything else online. Forget about the car business for a second. You go to Amazon. You just type what you're looking for. You go to Google. You type what you're looking for. You go to Firefox. You type what you're looking for. You go to Tesla. You type what you're looking for. By the way, not a big Tesla fan for all you Tesla lovers out there, sorry Listen. Cool, cool ride. Not for me. I'm an ICE guy at the end of the day. But if you go to their website, it's sleek, it's slim, it's sleek, it's slim, it's easy. Boom, boom, boom, right, and that's what we have to really build it off of right. It's not the way we used to do business. It's how people do their consuming today.
Speaker 2:If I go to a new, a new uh srp page and we've always got these filters on the left hand side we all do we'll build websites. Why do we want another click? If I want want to click on a Model 1, model 2, model 3, shouldn't it just auto-respond with what I'm clicking? As I click it? It should just change all the vehicles in my search over here. Why would I have to do all that and then go down and hit the search button to then have it paint on the right-hand side.
Speaker 2:I was on a dealer website the other day where I had to first click the make button, but I was under noon and they only sold one make. Why am I doing this? And then I hit search and then I had to go back. I had to go to the model and I was looking for two different models but I couldn't select two of them. I had to select one, hit search, select two, hit search. And the whole time. When I hit search, I could update filter, I could see the whole thing on the right-hand side change.
Speaker 2:And I said to myself I don't know, I don't have that experience anywhere else in my entire digital world. I don't have that anywhere else. So how do we still have that today? And I reverse engineered it, to use your term, and I said, well, maybe that's the way it should be done. And I looked at it for a long time and then I got really techie, geeky, nerdy and the answer was no right. The answer was absolutely not. I was literally. That was providing so much friction for me. And that's what the one thing we're trying to solve right. What if?
Speaker 2:On the VDPs and the SRPs on a mobile device. If I happen to like a vehicle, I could easily click to call. And some people will tell me well, I do have click to call, john. You just got to scroll all the way back up to the top and then go to the header and go find that little icon for the phone. I'm like, but I'm not driving down the road at 65 miles an hour. As a disclaimer, I'm on a vehicle.
Speaker 2:Why not just hit the button that is on every SRP and VDP that has the phone number that's clicked to call, right? Or how about this one? I was on a website the other day. It had an overlay of a phone number and then had a click to call number that was different. And the third thing I had, I had a different phone number. I'm like, by the way, the one in the, the one in the overlay, is not click to call, it's not click to call, it's not click to call. So why is it even there? Why do we even do old practice Right? I get why we're doing it. Trust me, I was. I was a sales guy who made that a best practice 10 years ago, maybe 15. Yeah, or 2025. It doesn't apply anymore.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, uh, that's painful. Well, so here you're saying a bunch of things in here Good stuff, clear use of calls to action. Every time I hear like CTA, it doesn't matter, we have so many acronyms I always feel this burden. I guess the old dealer superhero side of me I've always wanted to be the Batman to the dealer's Gotham I always feel like I always have to repeat what do all these mean?
Speaker 1:So for you dealers that don't know most of you do, but maybe some of you have no one's ever told you it's a call to action and you have them all over your website and some of your website providers, just out of the box.
Speaker 1:That's the way your website comes. It's like it's filled up with a bunch of them and sometimes you've got multiple CTAs on the homepage and for different purposes. Oftentimes you're going to have multiple calls to action on the search results pages or SRPs, also on the vehicle detail pages, but they can be overutilized and they exist on every page of your website. If you've got a finance section on your site and service and parts and maybe you've got a body shop or whatever, you have CTAs all over the place, which means that the consumers, your visitors, you're trying to lead them to that for a clear purpose. And so if you overutilize calls to action, you sometimes will paralyze people in their decision-making process or the consideration process because you just made them think about one extra thing that took them off the main track that you were on.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, with that, sean, think about if it's the right CTA and the right name. Have you ever gone to Amazon and decided you want to buy something and it says check availability? No, no, that doesn't exist in Amazon. You know why? Because it's on your website on Amazon. I expect you to have it, I expect you to deliver it. That's the expectation level, right.
Speaker 2:When I go to a dealership website, you show me a picture, an actual photo, of a brand new vehicle. You show me 27 beautiful photos inside, down front, backside, top, bottom you name it of actual photos, not OEM photos. I decide I want that. That's for me. Yeah, why would I check availability? It's on your website. You have all the pictures, only to click on it for it to give me a form fill. Yeah, what? Why? Why wouldn't you say check availability, have it, say yes, click here to reserve your time to come see this vehicle. Instead, it's just a form fill, right, but I expect it to be there, right, it's on the website. So, by the way, check availability has been around for 12 years at least yes, it has, and it's.
Speaker 1:it's's interesting because I think that we once were maybe a little bit better of following trends outside of industry around conversion and what we should be doing or not doing with our websites and I don't have an affiliate. I just need to make this recommendation because back when you and I were at the same place selling websites and stuff many moons ago, one of the guys in the C-suite just trying to protect all the names turned me on to a book called you Should Test that, written by a guy named Chris Goward with a G. You can still buy this book on Amazon and again, I get nothing out of this. I just want in this conversation, for people to and I know you know about that book too. You probably read it back then too. I probably read through that book two or three times and it absolutely changed the way that I would help our dealers understand what they should be doing, especially on all their website environments, but really any environment if it was their Facebook page or wherever else where there could be some conversion that brings people into their orbit to potentially do business with them. And you should test that talks in extensive detail around calls to action and what you do or don't do and things that we've already talked about on the podcast episode.
Speaker 1:Uh, already like hero images that are like scrolling in and out. How many should there be? What should they say? Um, there, there's a laziness factor sometimes that comes into the website design of even. Well, we do have some things, uh, that are meant to be promotional the hero sliders or whatever but do they all click to some destination? Do they all link to something that's relative, or any of them like dead pages? Who's checking them on a regular basis to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do? Because that's prime real estate. There's just so many great things in that book, so you should test that. I highly recommend it to people. It is still very relevant to this day, really good stuff.
Speaker 2:Read it, for sure, a couple of times. It's a good read and, by the way, I'm the guy that goes back and reads things two or three times and I feel like I need to go back and revisit and enrich myself. That might be a good refresher for me, for sure.
Speaker 1:Last thing I'll say about this book. I want to give this two short stories. One, it's just a takeaway. When I first started reading the book, I literally couldn't put it down because it wasn't speaking specific to the automotive industry. It was speaking specific to website design and why you should test things, and it gave this example of how best practices aren't really best practices when it comes to website design.
Speaker 1:And then what really happens when you're talking to and so if you're a dealer and you've had this experience, it's one of the reasons that I would say, as the host and yeah, there's bias to this, because this is the official Dealer Alchemist podcast but it's why you should talk to John or somebody from his team about what they're doing with websites, because most of the time when you're a dealership and you're like it's time to switch a website provider, you're going to look, you're going to be shopping around for a new website. Most of the time when you're there, the pain points are like you're just trying to get past it as quickly as possible. You're very aware of why you want to make a switch, but when you get asked the questions by new providers well, what do you like? You usually say, oh, I like this website and this website and this website, and those are all websites built by other providers, oftentimes the known providers of websites to car dealers in the industry, most of whom have been around for years and years and years and years and not saying anything good or bad about any of them. But usually somebody has brought a new design trend into the industry.
Speaker 1:Many years ago, somebody brought in like animation and video headers so that you got like and there was some good and some bad to that, but it was really popular because it was an aesthetic that everybody was like well, it just looks cool. Even if you think that it has some performance degradation concerns, it looked awesome, so everyone started doing it and then it was adopted as well. That must be a best practice. It's not just that. It's all the things that the website providers want to come up with to get you, the dealers, to say, hey, let's jump in on that Again. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but it also doesn't mean that it's a best practice, unless it's proven by enough relevance meaning a lot of data to say that it does this one thing. It's just a new thing, so it might be cool. It's a new thing that everyone. It's a new trend but it's not necessarily a best practice. And the point they were making is, when you go and say I like this, this and this and this, then you're going to go have your new web dev, your new web development team, build you something that just looks like what everyone else is doing, and that's been automotive for many, many years. There hasn't been tons and tons of innovation around thoughtfulness that looks outside of our industry. It stays inside of it because the dealers themselves are the ones who are saying I want it to look like this other provider when you make decisions too. It's like different is good. Differentiation is your friend as a dealer around what you're thinking about with websites.
Speaker 1:And the last thing I'll say is this book also. I started reading it for the first time when I was going all across the country into OEM programs to do a little like. I think I got a seven or an 11 minute kind of a pitch, and I'm just trying not to name the, because there's a very specific OEM that I was visiting in Florida, in that region, and all the dealers are in the room, and because I literally was reading that book on the plane, I totally changed up my entire delivery and was just about why does your website exist? Why does it exist? And I started and asked that question to all the dealers in the room first, and of course you get a handful of different answers and I wasn't trying to set them up to clobber them, but I did a little bit and then hugged them at the end of this, which was, you know it's meant to for so we can sell cars, it's so people can find us, it's like the digital phone book.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, no, well, no, I mean yeah, but no, no. Really, what's the job of your website? And ultimately I led them to, it's to convert people that come and visit into an opportunity for you to maybe sell them a new or used vehicle or service a vehicle or any other of the things that you offer from your dealership. Its job is to make that conversion happen, to turn it into an opportunity. If it doesn't do that, better than what was your example?
Speaker 1:a quarter of a percent, a quarter of a percent or let's just say the industry average of 1.8% to 2% for 30 years. If it doesn't do that very well, then you probably might want to shop, and so at the end of my little seven or 11 minutes, whatever it was I repeated the question that I started with why does your website exist To convert? I'm like I can't hear you and I had the whole room convert as I'm walking out, for my competitors to now walk into the room, because I knew exactly what my competitors were going to say and it set them up not to look very great, but whatever, it was fun back in those days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the end of that entire story is that the dealers now have a better understanding. The only and sole purpose of that website any website is to convert. I could put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig, right? I need that website to convert. I don't care what's on it, I don't care what color it is, it's got to convert. If you came back tomorrow and said if I put purple unicorns and dandelions and balloons on it and it converts higher than ours, I would say go for it, right, because it's only job is convert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. I want to pick your brain on this topic. I mean, we could have a multi-part series on this, actually, but when it comes to real time inventory, like must have features relative to search around inventory because, let's just be honest, that's really the only reason why people are coming to the dealership website is do you have what I want and how much does it cost? And so it's always about inventory right, selection and price. Oh, go figure, that's the way it's been for for us ever. But in, in, uh, you know 2025, are there some of those features that are really kind of must-haves or things like what would you say are the things for dealers like, definitely that. Are you, you want these?
Speaker 2:yeah, listen, the internet didn't exist when, uh, henry ford built his, his first vehicle for regular production and retail, um, and it only. It didn't have problems then because it was the same vehicle and it only came in black. Here it is it comes with it's not multiple trims, with multiple options and multiple colors. It's like, if you want it, here it is, it's black, so I didn't need all those features, right? Fast forward to 2025, there's a ton of features and trim levels on vehicles that are out there today and those vehicles are now uh, pricey compared to any standard and, uh, for many, you know, those payments are creeping up over. You know, nine hundred dollars. I think I saw an nada number. You know, nine hundred dollars, uh, average car payment price, right, you know, I know people that have car payment prices of well more than that, right, at the end of the day. So it's a very expensive proposition. If I want to go get myself a new vehicle, I don't care if you lease it to your finance or you pay cash. It's money, money, money, right. So there's some absolute ways that you can help yourself at the dealership to win that battle right. One is we'll talk about it from the ad side, right, and then we'll talk about the website side. From the ad side, you know, right, have as many ads as Google will allow you to be written on every single unit that you have on the ground, for new and used and for CPO as well as in transit, right. If it's inbound, write 17 different ads on that car. If it's on the ground, new, write 17 different ads on the car If it's used, 17. Pre-owned CPO 17 different ads. And then use the technology that's out there, like AI tools and machine learning that then Use the technology that's out there, like AI tools and machine learning, that then watch and listen to what the consumer typed on the keyboard, to what made them click, Then what landed on your website, and then use that technology to rewrite those ads every single day to get better and better and better so that Google can serve up the very best, best ad for what the consumer is typing from their keyboard. Right, those things make a difference because it'll give you a higher quality score and reduce your cost per click, because you're now matching up the search criteria for what I'm typing to what your ad now says. So that's one way that you can help yourself out. But remember, write it on every single vehicle new, used, cpo and in transit every single day and have the tools learn to get better every single day.
Speaker 2:The next piece would be when you get to the website, make sure we display that right when I click on that vehicle, as we talked about before. Land me on the ad that I saw onto the VDP vehicle detail page or the SRP search result page of that particular model or that particular VD of that vehicle. Right, I want to get as deep linked as possible. Don't land me on the home page, which I know nobody does anymore, but clearly there's some people out there that are instructing some dealers that to go to a special page that make consumers get more friction so they get credit for it landing on the special page. Let's stop with the who gets the credit. The only thing that matters and and it doesn't matter if you're a vendor, you don't like it, it's a dealer the only thing that matters and it doesn't matter if you're a vendor and you don't like it, it's a dealer the only thing that matters is we help them sell and service more cars and make more money. That is my only mission. It should be all of our missions if we're here as a partner to help that dealer along right and make sure that all that inventory that is inbound is getting those ads and is also displayed on the website.
Speaker 2:I go to websites today and there's no inbound right, there's no in transit, I'm like. But I know you got 15 of these coming in, why aren't we trying to sell it? And the other thing is, which I know a lot of places do, is if you don't have it inbound and you don't have it on the ground, let's not write an ad for it, let's not spend any money for it. But it's a court vehicle, john, once again, do you have any on the ground? Nope. Do you have any inbound? Nope. Is the dealer going to let you swap in and out, even for a check for a car, car for car Nope.
Speaker 2:So why would we spend money on a vehicle ad for a vehicle we don't have and no chance of getting as a dealer swap or for the manufacturer, just because two weeks ago or a month ago or two months ago you had 15 of them? Right? Have these technology pieces work to your benefit? If you don't have any inbound, none in transit, don't write the ad. But you shouldn't have to go home and think about that to tell your agency or your marketing firm, your ad tech firm. It should just happen. Because if you ran a dealership like I have and I know you have, sean then I wouldn't be spending any money on any advertising for any cars I couldn't sell. I just wouldn't be spending any money on any advertising for any cars I couldn't sell. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't do it. We have to transfer that logic on the showroom into our marketing practices.
Speaker 1:I love it. And just to make sure that the record is straight, I didn't run any dealerships. I sold cars, but for somebody like you, that counts, man, that counts. I would have. Yeah, so, and I only did it because I got tired of people like you saying have you ever sold a car in your life? That's what I would get back in the early internet days when I was a whippersnapper have you ever sold a car in your life? I didn't know. I'm like no. Have you built a website in your life? Like, uh, have you built a website in your life? Like what are you gonna say?
Speaker 2:I couldn't I wouldn't have ever said that.
Speaker 1:But it was like, uh, this guy clearly doesn't want to talk about this internet thing. Bang fangled internet. Yeah, that's where the hot wheels whole story came from, man, you know that probably. But that's, um, that was my way of you know saying okay, fine, I'll take my medicine and I'll go actually sell cars. And um, yeah, I'm glad I did that, you know, because I very quickly got to being in those same roles. And somebody like, have you ever sold a car in your life? And I asked yes, and I've also been a service writer and clearly I can talk about these other internet related things with you too. So, yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there's a lot of things that people talk about when they're talking about kind of coming up with blueprint ideas like what's the ultimate kind of plan for your good website, you know, and it's going to work the best it can in 2025. And there's always been lots of talk about lead generation tools, some that are built natively by the website provider in-house, and then, of course, gosh you and I have talked about this probably on the podcast all the way back to Steve Krim is the first person I remember doing it Old screen crafters little bubble that would float around your website looked awful. Another website provider kind of started doing the same thing, copied that. That became a lot of how people would be like, hey, we're going to guarantee this big boost of your leads on your website, because those monetary offers to the consumer oftentimes psychologically drive conversion, more so than maybe the terribly built website. So I wanted to get your thoughts kind of on lead gen tools, whether it's simple like just making click-to-call faster.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of AI chatbots. There's just still regular kind of chat stuff out there. But yeah, there's so many things finance apps, digital retailing, all kinds of stuff. Is there a must-have? Is there a sweet spot here. What would be your guidance for dealers?
Speaker 2:I would say no matter what it is, you always inspect what you expect out of it, regardless of what anybody tells you. Some of my favorites are ones that are dynamically intelligent, which means things like and I didn't use the word AI, but I'll, you know, maybe it's a phrase I created dynamically intelligent, you know who knows? For example, you know, with technology today, we know your online shopping habits. Everybody does. I mean listen, it's out there, you know. Unless you're going to strip your whole computer out, live behind a VPN and live in a mushroom cave somewhere, people are tracking you, right? Let's just be honest with it. So, if it knows that Sean Raines was on other automotive properties online looking at X, y or Z vehicle right, maybe a type of vehicle. Maybe you didn't know if you want an SUV or a pickup truck, right, but you're actively at some other properties, doing what we all do, which is research. Do I want this vehicle or that vehicle? Do I need an SUV or can I just get away with a pickup truck? Do I need a double cab, super cab, single cab, crew cab? I'm doing some research. Do I need a long bed, short truck? Do I need a double cab, super cab, single cab crew cab. Like I'm doing some research. Do I need a long bed? Short bed, do I need third row seating? Do I? You know, like there's a lot of information that goes into people for vehicles they want to buy and they always look online. Nobody's running out to the drugstore and buying the consumer reports that you know we used to have to do in 1990, they're doing it all online and it leaves a digital footprint. It's fair to say. Everybody leaves a little crumb, no matter where they go.
Speaker 2:And what if you used dynamically intelligent tools that kind of measured and scored where you've been, sean? Like what have you done? Like you know, Sean went to 14 different properties. He went to an OEM website, he went to three different dealer websites and now he's on my website. What if I scored you based on all that and said now you're on my website.
Speaker 2:And then what if it didn't do anything? What if it just waited for the website to do its job? Which is what now? Convert, convert, right. What if the website after like three minutes or whatever not a time thing, but activity? What if you didn't take an action? What if you stopped looking at VDPs? What if you didn't click a click to call button? What if you didn't click live chat? What if you did nothing?
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden it sees you starting to slow down your searching and your investment in my website. Based on your score, it served you up an offer a monetary offer or some other offer to get you to mobilize or be moving towards you submitting a lead or calling my store or at least taking that offering and walking through the door of my store. That, to me, is dynamically intelligent. Right, I'm not going to cannibalize my first party leads, which are your CTAs and your website. I'm not saying pop this thing up as soon as I get to the website and keep popping up in front of me and making me close it out, because your website's job is to convert, not these other tools. The website's job is to convert. And what if, at the very last possible chance of it realizing like hey, you're getting ready to bail? It then serves you up that offer and, based on the score of where you've been, factors in instantaneously. So, sean, you've been to 15 other properties. You've been to third-party sites, oem sites, other dealer sites, and now you're on my site. You went to a couple of BDPs, but your searchability has slowed down.
Speaker 2:I'm going to serve you up an offer now because my scoring system internally says he's a hot to truck. I need to get him in my store. What if John McAdams is 17 years old, 16 years old, 15 years old, and decides he wants to go look at a Corvette and he lands on your website? Should we offer John an offer to come to the store at age 15? Well, maybe or maybe not. But if he has no dynamic intelligence behind it, meaning that there's no history, immediate history of him shopping for a vehicle, why would we even Listen? Have fun on my website. That's cool. Enjoy yourself while you're here. When you turn 18, come by, we'll sell you one.
Speaker 2:But I need to focus my efforts on Sean, because Sean has a in my mind. He's a low funnel, ready to buy shopper who's been doing his homework. Has narrowed down the brand, has narrowed down the vehicle. He's on my website, yet he just didn't take action. Maybe the dog started to brand has narrowed down the vehicle. He's on my website, yet he just didn't take action. Maybe, maybe, uh, maybe the dog started to bark and he had to get up and go. Answer to the. Ups guy came back. We all in a hurry, we forgot about it. But all of a sudden, if I got served up an offer, I'd be like oh, you know what. I'm really deep in the funnel here. I've decided on your brand, your store. I just kind of got distracted. Thank you for the offer. I'll now come to your store or submit a lead.
Speaker 2:Those are the features that I like the most, the ones that are smart and intelligent about why and how and when we should be serving up some of these things that are out there, not just because I land on the website, boom live chat. Can I at least get in the door and have a drink of water before you? Kind of tell me all about the place At your house? Listen, think of your website as your house. Don't pepper me with all kinds of hey, do you want to buy another dog? You want another dog? You want another cat? You want to buy? No, just kind of sit down and relax, enjoy the company. Eventually I'm going to tell you about the dog. You're going to take a dog home, but not at hello, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it. I like it, and I've just realized I have so many more talking points to go through with you that I've decided you know what I'm going to tell the audience right now. We're going to roll this into our next episode as well, just in the interest of time, because I think that, um one I don't want to rush through things like this I think being able to have conversations that reference the past, that that that really draw from the experience of people that have been in this for a long time, I think they're relevant, I think they're helpful and, um, I know that some people because I get this feedback, I know you get some of it too but not everybody watches the video versions of these. There are a lot of people that actually listen. It's on listening, and so that's good, and so I just want to let the audience know we still have a few things to get through.
Speaker 1:I still want to talk to John about trade-in. The trade-in. There's obviously been a big part there. Uh, sell us your vehicle. Should that be in in part of your blueprint of having a great website? Um, how critical is crm and dms integration? Like, at what level? Like, how does that work out. There are a bunch of things so I want to talk to, to john more on some of the marketing automation that a lot of dealers have capabilities of but don't really use it, how that ties into their website. Some platforms make this easy, don't? Some can't accommodate it at all. Just a few other things for you to think about.
Speaker 1:And coming back on the next episode and listening is also I want John to share a little bit about from a perspective of SEO dealer. Alchemist has really, really strong SEO. I think that they don't get enough recognition for that and they've got a gal over there that Rachel. It's just smart as a whip when it comes to SEO, so kind of the unsung heroes, I like to say in the industry, and I get the pleasure from my perspective as a marketer and a corporate marketing and B2B, of getting to know a lot of these people and I want to talk to John about that, because that's very relative to having an awesome website, one that really works, and there's a few other things that I want to get to. So we're going to push that off to our next episode. We're going to land this plane, park this car right where we're at, because it just seems like the greatest spot for it. And so dealers, automotive friends and, on behalf of John, thank you guys so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1:You guys know this John's interest in helping dealers is literally he wears it on his sleeve. It's what he does and why he does it. It's you, it's your success, and the reason why he's been so successful is because he's really really good at it. So if you're not connected with him, I highly recommend doing that, first and foremost on LinkedIn. Super easy to find him there. You can also drop him an email. It's johnmcadams, there's no tricky spelling John traditionally and mcadams traditionally at dealeralchemistcom. If you want to interface with him directly through email, you can also learn about Dealer Alchemist by just simply going to dealeralchemistcom. And so we say at this point thanks for spending the time with us. Depending on where you might be watching or listening. If it's one of those places where you could subscribe or share this with someone that you think might actually enjoy it, well, please do that. You know all the stuff and we will be back soon, before you know it, right here, with another episode of Automotive Alchemy.