Have you looked at your Google Analytics data lately?

Have you noticed the rise of visitors to your dealers website that are using mobile devices?  When you look, you will see that 10-20% of website traffic is coming from consumers using mobile devices. It should come as no surprise that a majority of those users have Apple devices.

 



What are your MOBILE WEBSITE numbers? - Click here after reading this article to join the discussion.

 

Most dealers have been coached to engage consumers using social media. Dealers have active blogs, Facebook, and Twitter accounts but has anyone told them that they are disappointing the same consumers they seek to engage?

How are consumers being disappointed? Dealers share a link to a page on their website via Facebook, Twitter, Digg, or LinkedIn and mobile device users can’t always get to the page. The page is viewable from a desktop device but not a mobile device.

Technology Gaps Complicate Seamless Internet Shopping

This phenomena is caused by a current technology gap in most automotive website platforms. Most website vendors have created separate desktop websites and mobile websites for dealers. So, when a mobile user clicks on a link shared on Twitter or Facebook, it often will just dump the mobile user to the home page of the mobile site because the mobile site does not have page referenced in social media posts.

When you think about it, aside from the home page URL, how many pages that your social media team shares via social media can be viewed on a mobile device?   You may be surprised at that answer. Take a minute to test the experience by clicking on your Twitter and Facebook links from a smart phone.


Testing A Pre-Owned Specials Page

I went to Andy Mohr Nissan’s website and clicked on their Pre-Owned Specials Page.   As you can see above, the page displays perfectly on my MacBook Air.

If the social media strategist wanted to share this page on Twitter or Facebook or include this page as a hyperlink in a blog post, they would just copy the page link and post.

Unfortunately, for mobile users, there is no mapping of this page to an equivalent mobile page.  When I clicked on the same link from my iPhone, I was dumped on the home page of their mobile site, shown on the right.



Is this problem unique with this website provider? No. In fact this is what is happening on most automotive social media posts read by mobile consumers.  The reality is that mobile consumers get a poor conversion experience on primary automotive websites.

Of course if you are using a WordPress blog and tweeting/sharing those pages, your blog may have a plug-in to convert content to a mobile format. But step back and ask yourself how well is the article formatted?

Since mobile traffic will be increasing, what can dealers do?

First, they need to test that their current website platform has this problem. Most will have a problem.

Second, they need to contact their vendor to see if they have a AWT solution in the pipeline.

Adaptive Website Technology

The future of automotive website platforms will be the implementation of Adaptive Website Technology (AWT) also known as Responsive Website Design.   You can read up on this topic my starting with this book with the same name by Ethan Marcotte.

With Adaptive Website Technology (AWT), dealers would have one website that automatically configures the layout of pages to fit the screen size of the visitor.   If the visitor has a mobile device with a smaller screen, the technology decides which elements to display to create an elegant and engaging design.

This will simplify content development and management and larger auto groups can easily identify why Adaptive Website Technology will be a time saver for keeping multiple mobile sites updated.

Of course you can imagine that it will take some time for vendors to offer this as part of their standard solution but companies have started to come to market and others have shared with me that their programmers are busy implementing similar technology.



Dominion First To Market?

One of the first to market with Adaptive Website Technology (AWT) is Dominion Dealer Solutions with their latest upgrade to their Dealerskins platform.  You may have noticed the Dominion display ads on DealerRefresh touting their “Chameleon Like” websites. I decided to reach out to Brice Englert at Dominion and ask him some questions.

Their new Dealerskins product offering will indeed support AWT and dealers will start to see the first live examples of their technology upgrade in August.  Brice indicated that the Dealerskins websites will create a seamless web surfing experience regardless of the device used by local car shoppers.

I have to give the team at Dominion kudos for not only turning around the Dominion/Dealerskins technology platform last year but now to be the first to market with Adaptive Website Technology.

Is AWT a Big Thing?

Yes it is. If you are running Google Adwords campaigns you should realize that mobile campaigns can convert three times better than normal PPC campaigns.  If mobile paid search is so hot, then dealers better have a better landing page experience.  Dealers must have the FULL website content available to web shoppers and not a scaled down inventory search tool.

Adaptive Website Technology will allow dealers to maximize their content, video, and photography investments and maximize engagement regardless of which device a consumer chooses to use to shop for a car.  This is long overdue and a welcome change.

Of course, the top website platforms will be announced this fall in Las Vegas at the 2012 Automotive Website Awards on September 5th.  All of the best website providers have been showcasing their technology to the AWA review team and I have to say that there will be many new offerings for dealers to consider this year.

If you are planning on attending AutoCon 2012 you should make sure you arrive on the 5th to be part of the awards ceremony which kicks off the opening night.

Until then, I will keep readers updated with live tests of the new Dealerskins platform and other vendors that come to market with AWT platforms.

Click here for more discussion around Dominions Adaptive Website Technology.

[highlight color="#fde1c3" font="black"]This is a guest post from Bill Playford. If you don't already know Bill by his name, you may recognize him from the videos he and Joe Webb are featured in. Bill is Vice President and Chief Rocket Surgeon over at DealerKnows. We were on the phone earlier this week discussing some of the false claims in the industry. Our conversation fueled this article..[/highlight]

For those of you who have entered a supermarket in the last twenty years, at some point in time, I’m sure your eyes have fallen upon a tabloid. Is the Pope an alien? Is Lindsay Lohan dead? Is Pat Buchanan a transexual? Unless you just woke up from a coma, you probably just snicker to yourself, and buy your spirulina and flax seeds.

Sometimes, though, throwing out random “facts” can be dangerous. A few weeks ago, I was sitting through a sales pitch that was thinly disguised as a presentation. The audience was subjected to a barrage of “statistics” without any listed sources or sample sizes. In fact, this likable gentleman guaranteed a 20%-23% closing ratio (on third-party leads, no less) if you followed his five-step plan. He GUARANTEED it!

Now I’m guessing most of you are probably scratching your heads, thinking aren’t there a lot a variables to be making those assertions? Inventory? Pricing? Market? Value proposition? Salesperson hygiene? After seeing the results from 30,000 leads/month (give or take) for about 9 months, I would tend to agree with you. Imagine, however, you’ve never read an article or attended a conference regarding automotive Internet sales. You’re a Green Pea. You don’t really have any reason other than to take these proclamations as the rule because you have nothing to compare them to. Therein lies the problem.

I am a big supporter of continuing education and I encourage dealer personnel, no matter what department, to learn as much as they can about their craft. BUT, don’t take everything at face value. The old “don’t believe everything you read” adage still holds true. If a speaker starts offering up benchmark numbers, put on your referee jersey. Here are a few things you should be considering when you’re presented data (dare I say, call someone out on it):

They don’t include source data on their slide
Only a handful of companies commission large scale studies (e.g., Cap Gemini, comScore, JD Powers, Cobalt, etc). If the presenter is trying to position themselves as an authority, they should be confident enough to let you check on the data yourself. Also, since many of these studies are conducted annually or semiannually, the data frequently changes from year to year.

They present the biggest dealer/manufacturer as the rule

Unless you are the biggest said dealer, how can you possibly compare? What if you only have six new Hyundais on the lot and no allocation? What if you live in Juneau, Alaska? What if your dealer insists on retaining dial-up? What often works for the top ten, rarely works for the bottom 1,500.

They use a tiny sample in their study
We work in an industry where 10 million sales is a disastrous year. Think about it. One thousand sales in a national study borders on irrelevant. Would you make bets on 1/10,000 odds? Look for context, qualifiers, and/or statistics based on bite-sized chunks (e.g. 10,000 Jetta buyers, 36,000 non-GMS Buick owners, 100 regional Ram dealers, etc). This is what makes it relevant for your dealership or market.

They use one city in their study

I love slides that start with “we sampled 20 Metro Detroit Ford Dealers,” or “8 Orange County Lexus dealers, or “10 Toledo Jeep dealers.” Those markets are hardly the representative of the whole based on their regional demographics, or proximity to manufacturers and tier one suppliers. If best practices are truly the best, they’ll work everywhere, and not just one area.

Now imagine you are closing your new-vehicle third-party leads at 4%, and the national average is 4%-6%*, and some “expert” tells you that you should be closing at 20%-23%. What do you do? Believe that Elvis does indeed work at Burger King? Take it with a grain of salt. If a dealership just started from zero and it flips 50% of its leads to bad, then it’s plausible. There are always exceptions to the rule, however I personally feel that presenting the “only case” scenario is just plain irresponsible. Start doing your homework, ask questions, and analyze your own results. Don’t be the kind of person who believes that an octogenarian gave birth to a 48 pound baby.

What about you...how do you react when you see or hear false claims or numbers with little to no supporting evidence?
*Data culled from Trilogy’s SmartLeads program

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke one of the more historical quotes: “"Mr. Watson, you to need to come over here, I want to see you. We have the silver 1876 Honda Accord in stock and I’d love to show you in person. When can you stop by?”

Wait, that’s not right! So maybe Mr. Bell didn’t try to sell Watson a car over the phone in 1876, maybe he simply invented one of the most important technological devices in human history: the telephone. The evolution of the phone is fascinating and something we can all relate to. Likewise, outbound call tracking technology has evolved over time too.

That’s right, I said outbound call tracking. It’s no secret that tracking inbound calls is a key piece to advertising and operations efforts, but for some, outbound really is the ticket to success. It started years ago with an idea to blindly call prospects and see if they were still in market, set appointments, and confirm appointments. Then the “black box” moved in which added a little clarity by allowing managers to see how many calls sales reps were making and when.

The next step is here: Outbound calling that tracks, records, categorizes, and integrates to CRM adding a layer of transparency in your sales efforts never known before.

The Hawthorne Effect….Revisited

First, let’s not forget about the Hawthorne Effect which says that “What gets measured, gets improved.” Listening to your team’s phone calls and coaching their efforts will improve phone performance. It’s simple: Measuring and monitoring improves performance. It’s the guy at the gym who pushes himself a little harder when a beautiful blonde walks by (Not me I swear…) or the basketball player who stops goofing around at practice when coach walks in the gym.

This has long been understood and utilized on the inbound side but it’s equally important and valuable on outbound calls. Listening to the calls your sales team makes will improve their performance. Why? Because what gets measured, gets improved. Are they asking for an appointment? Discussing models other than what’s been requested? Offering directions? Simply being courteous and friendly? Track outbound calls, listen to them, and find valuable coaching opportunities on both good and bad efforts. Don’t be afraid to push a little harder to impress the beautiful blonde!

Changing the Metric

Let’s say Salesman Sam is required to make 20 outbound calls per day before he can check out and go home. The problem? What do those 20 calls even mean? Did he reach a prospect? Was there actually a live conversation?

This mystery was solved by our outbound call review and categorization feature, Humantic. The data is pretty depressing. In fact, when we started, less than 15% of outbound calls actually reached the intended person for conversation. Salesman Sam’s 20 phone calls a day doesn’t seem so hot knowing he only talked with 2 or 3 people.

A dealership in North Carolina took note and the GM declared “That’s not good enough!” He changed the metric needed for Sam to check out. The GM used the Humanatic outbound call categorization feature to identify all outbound calls as either Live Conversation, Left a Message, or No Conversation. Now Salesman Sam could make as few or as many calls as needed, but he must have 8 live conversations per day. The results were pretty incredible: his success rate more than doubled over a month. Sam realized logging calls wasn’t good enough. He got smart about paying attention when to call and how to reach the right person. The GM didn’t hire another body, expect long hours, or demand hundreds more phone calls. Instead, he got his entire team to double their live conversations by simply paying more attention to when they called. All he did was change the metric! Beautiful!

You already know outbound calling is important to your dealership’s sales and accountability efforts but is a blindfold slowing you down? Outbound call tracking provides clarity, improves your business operations, and ultimately, you may just get the beautiful blonde!

Are you tracking your outbound calls?

If so, are you using it to track the performance of your sales and or BDC personnel?

Most professional copywriters know that in a sales letter, the most important item after the headline is the postscript (P.S.) at the bottom.

Research shows that when people open a letter, they often scan to the bottom and read the P.S. before they actually read the letter itself. A good writer will take advantage of this opportunity to maximize their message with a strong P.S.

Do your salespeople know that including a P.S. in their emails is also incredibly effective?

It is such an easy way to increase the impact of your emails. That simple sentence at the bottom of a two or three paragraph email can help you increase urgency, reinforce your main message and add value.

Here are a couple of ideas on what you might include in your P.S.:
1. Main Theme with a Twist
Restate your main benefit from a different perspective. Whether or not they read the whole email, this gives you another chance to deliver your most important information.

2. The Time is Now
Use the P.S. to add urgency. Are the incentives expiring in a few days? Do you only have two left of the particular model in the color they are looking for? Let them know.

3. Add Social Proof
This can be a great place to add a customer review, especially if the review reinforces your particular offer or deals with a common objection or concern people have.

4. Sweeten the Deal
Is there a bonus offer you can add? Here’s the place to do it. For instance, “P.S. – Since it’s raining today and the showroom is a little quiet, my sales manager is including floor mats with the next vehicle sold.”

The P.S. should appear right below your signature line and should only be a sentence or two. Make sure it includes a call to action at the end as well.

Are you using P.S. in your're emails and if so, what are you using in your postscript? 

P.S.
If you want to see exactly how adding a P.S. to your email makes a difference, include a unique tracking URL in the P.S. so you can measure the clicks.