Dealerships should ask for more from their website providers. Waiting months for upgrades to responsive sites and 9 week ticket times for changes are unacceptable. Dealership websites should be dynamic and relevant. To do this the dealership needs to be able to make changes on the fly. Imagine your customers seeing a congratulations to a high school marching band one day and photos from the dealership-sponsered parade the next. Shouldn’t the new incentives be online the first day they are announced? The font line today is online.
To most consumers, your dealership is what your website says it is. More customers will visit your site in a week than will visit your store in a month. Are you putting your best foot forward? The shopping process has completely moved online. Today’s customers only visit 1.4 dealerships before making a purchase. This is because they do all their research and shopping online, only going to the dealership to buy a car. If your website is not up to speed or even ahead of the game, how can you compete online? Are you able to make changes to your website quickly and easily to keep up?
Just like eyes are the windows to the soul, your website is the window to your showroom. Very few customers will ever see your showroom before they have seen your website. So are you confident that your customers are seeing what you would like them to see online? Inventory changes, programs change, your dealership changes. So should your website. Unfortunately, many dealerships are stuck with cookie cutter websites with terribly long ticket times that make it impossible to keep the website up to speed with changes at the dealership. Most dealerships and their people are active in their communities. This should be something you are able to highlight on your website. Have you ever gone to read your mail on Yahoo and seen the same news stories for weeks straight? Why should your site be any different? Keep it fresh so that your customers stay engaged.
Consumers are mobile. They are using mobile devises where they work, play and most importantly, where they shop. They are visiting your website with their cell phones. Does your site make this a good experience or a frustrating disappointment? Trust me, they won’t scroll side to side on a nonresponsive site. They will just find a dealer that wants their business enough to have a site that responds to the devise they choose to use with a user-friendly experience. If your site is not responsive., you are losing business.
Technology now allows for dealers to make changes to their websites quickly and easily. Drag and drop technology is here. The days of updating the site every few months are over. Now dealers can highlight a weekend sale and congratulate a local high school sports team every week. Just like you rearrange the front line several times a week, so should your website change. If you keep it fresh and relevant your customers will stay engaged and coming back.