3 Things Dealerships Should Know About Online Shoppers
The Internet has drastically changed the way businesses market to their customers. This shift has especially affected the automobile industry. According to a 2011 whitepaper by J.D. Power and Associates, 92% of new vehicle buyers have access to the Internet and 77% use the web to help during their vehicle shopping process. When it comes to dealerships and online shoppers, there are three things your auto dealership must understand about online shoppers if you want to be successful with your efforts to gain more business from them:
Focus On Their Needs, Not Your Perception
You might think that sleek, new, two-door sports car you just put on the lot is one of the coolest rides in town, but the odds are pretty good that the 40-something mother of three looking for a new vehicle for her family couldn’t care less about it. Understanding your customer’s needs is integral in the car business, and online marketing is no different. Today’s shoppers have access to more information than ever before, meaning they are more likely to understand what kind of information they need from you: give them the details that they want, not the ones that you want to give them.
Keep Your Website Simple And Easy To Navigate
With so many websites available for online shoppers to browse for information about vehicles, they will leave your page in the blink of an eye if your site is hard to navigate or difficult to understand. In a recent Mashable article about lowering your site’s bounce rate (the percentage of users that leave after visiting only one page) Elisha Hartwig suggests that you be careful when using widgets that could clutter the page and extend your load time. Hartwig also advises that you make your content simple and easy to read and use the right fonts and colors.
Be Sensitive To Mobile Technology
Functional technology is critical for both dealerships and online shoppers. To increase the functionality of your marketing, it is important that prospective customers be able to load your page on any device that they want to use. In a presentation from March 2013 by Speed Shift Media VP Ian Cruickshank, it was reported that 75% of consumers say mobile technology improves their shopping experience. Your dealer website must load on any tablet, smartphone, or laptop that your prospects want to view it on.
How Dynamic Display Advertising Meets Your Online Marketing Needs
Dynamic display advertising will help dealerships and online shoppers in 2014 in many ways. Most importantly, this type of advertising gives consumers the information they need and lets dealers focus their marketing more effectively. The benefits of dynamic display advertising include:• Dynamic advertising makes display decisions based on the online content that people visiting your site have been viewing. Prospective customers get their specific car buying needs met: no more guessing what kind of car your web visitors want to see.• Dynamic advertisements can be customized to fit the layout of your website, which means you don’t have to worry about them bothering or not being easily accessible to your site’s visitors.• Dynamic advertising supports mobile platforms: in some cases, mobile data such as GPS location can even be used to improve the effectiveness of these dynamic ads.
The way dealerships and online shoppers interact will have a big impact on sales in the automotive industry. To make sure that your dealership stays current with modern marketing tactics, your web presence should be easy to navigate and understand, accessible on any device, and targeted based on the needs of your prospects. Schedule a demo with Speed Shift Media to see how our dynamic advertising solutions can help your dealership in all three of these important areas.
