Tuning Up A Car Dealer Website

The typical car buyer no longer spends hours scouring the local dealerships when they want to see what new makes and models are available. Instead, the first instinct is to get on the Web in the comforts of their own home and gather as much information as possible before moving off the couch. This puts pressure on car dealerships, and even the auto manufacturers themselves, because if a potential buyer doesn’t find what they’re looking for they’re only one click away from being lost to the dealership forever. Significant time and money is spend on finding and luring-in potential car buyers online well before they reach a dealer’s official URL. New methods of advertising and promotion are being employed to make sure the shoppers find a dealer’s site before they find their competitors. Search engine optimization and marketing are two such methods that fairly recently were simply buzzwords, but are now mainstream marketing tactics that dealers must employ to reach their increasingly Web-centric customers. With nearly 80% of all searches on the Internet being done in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, most car dealers now know that being found in these search engines is a crucial component of a successful website. But what happens after a potential car buyers finds and visits a site? That’s when the design, layout, and usability of the site all have to be honed to ensure those visits are not wasted. Optimal usability of a dealer website requires it to be simple and well organized. A website such as Ford Orange County offers visitors to their site a clean, uncluttered look, with navigation that is straightforward and easy to decipher. Whether someone is looking for new vehicle or parts information, the information is organized and labeled in an intuitive way. And when in doubt, simplicity is always a good strategy, as with Ford Salem Ohio, that isn’t over-designed or cluttered. In addition to solid navigation and usability, the site simply should look good. Although usability issues may be easy to overlook, the importance of design is imperative because a dealer has to stand out from the competition! Whether it’s the color of the site, the graphics, or photography, the site has to be both inviting and memorable. Many dealerships are also getting better commuting with people and getting them excited to make an offline visit. Websites such as Honda Jackson Mississippi and Houston Chevy Dealership have Flash content right on their home page, giving the site added character with moving imagery that is more captivating to users compared with more commonly used static sites. Some dealerships use Flash in innovative ways that help build lasting impressions with potential customers. For example, San Diego Corvette uses Flash for video testimonials on their home page, letting actual car buyers explain their experience at the dealership. Such design techniques are becoming widely used, especially with the popularity of video content sites like YouTube, where dealers get expand the exposure of their online videos. Having a feature laden site is also helpful for keeping visitors of the site longer, and providing additional content for the user to interact with. Nebraska Nissan Dealers, for example, gives visitors many features to explore right from its home page. Sacramento Toyota is another website that helps to bring many features immediately to the users’s fingertips, such as trade-in value information, a searchable inventory database, and even a form for a quick quote on a vehicle. With traditional marketing methods becoming more expensive and delivering increasingly less impressive results, car dealerships are rethinking their marketing efforts to boost online exposure, often at the expensive of traditional media dollars. In the end, the potential car buyer is becoming more knowledgeable about the dealer, its inventory, and its staff, and the dealership is getting higher ROI for quality leads.