- May 1, 2006
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- Alex
This is @Alex Snyder favorite subject.
I hate things that aid the predatory perception our industry has worked so hard to earn. Lead conversion is just the latest tool of the vulture.
Trade-in lead form on your Schedule Service page?
- Thread starter Jeff Kershner
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I hate things that aid the predatory perception our industry has worked so hard to earn. Lead conversion is just the latest tool of the vulture.
- Apr 7, 2009
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Hi ya Bill!
Nothing sells cars (or service better) than a successful website visit. I humbly submit no one in our space can define what a successful website visit looks like. Everything we do on our sites should be all about this not-so-simple mission.
In software-ville "tracking the effectiveness of the strategy" is done via a KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Over the years, we've watched KPIs in our industry evolve. Before 2010, our KPI was lead counts. As we evolved, we moved to VDPs as the KPI.
IMO, the KPI of the future won't be a single measurement point. It'll need to be a model (a basket of assorted stats). For example, a KPI for a service page visit could be an just an appointment made. Or, what if the next visitor made an svc. appointment AND went to look at your cars for sale! That visitor should have a higher value to your score than the 1st visitor. THEN, what if that same shopper filled out a tradein form? Would not this increase that visitor score to you AND increase the value of that tradein form?
Am I going down the right road? I hope so! If now, I'm leading a small army of data scientists over the cliff!
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We played with this quite a bit to try and promote inventory after a service appointment booking. I won't say it was a resounding success, but at a used car lot we went from 5% inventory views after service appointment to about 30% viewing at least one vehicle. Didn't often result in more leads, but when we pushed really hard it did - sadly those leads had a lower quality generally.
1. Service appointment confirmation page links to browse inventory (we also tried a custom one that would try and find vehicles similar to the model entered into the service booking form - ie: Showing newer versions of their current model for sale).
2. All lead forms on inventory pages retained the contact information from the service form so the "barrier to entry" was exceptionally low
Again it goes back to the discussion we had weeks ago - just getting more leads isn't helpful if the leads aren't very qualified.
I still consider these customers to have a higher company loyalty and a slightly higher chance at looking at trading in, but I can't say that we conclusively yielded more sales.
We tried to build a ranking system for leads that would rank them when they come in based on how qualified we believed they were.
- how many vehicles did they view?
- what source / medium did they arrive from? (up for debate whether organic visitors show more intent when selecting your site specifically vs paid ads getting the click)
- have they visited in the past and viewed vehicles?
- is this their first lead?
etc etc
- Apr 7, 2009
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Craig,
WOW, you boosted service appointment to shoppers by ~250% WOW. WOW. Arrggg.. but because you've used leads as your KPI, it's considered a fail.
If you change your KPI to engagement, not leads, BAM!! This is a big win!
HTH
Joe
p.s. >80% of all of your stores sales were sold to silent shoppers (THEY HATE LEADS!
I didn't use leads as a KPI, I used multiple VDP views as my KPI. I wanted to see actual intent to engage with inventory.
Leads can come and go for all I care - too many factors involved with leads (ie: colorful buttons - I can't be convinced that a colorful button makes the difference between a shopper and a non-shopper, it just entices them to submit contact information before coming in - IMHO of course). This really boiled down to a service page that said Thank You turning into a landing page that pushed inventory - going from 5% to 30% wasn't surprising at all because we heavily promoted that action. Even if customers were done on the website they may browse the inventory just to see if there's a vehicle similar to theirs in pricing or maybe there's a mustang and they just want to see the photos. So much to factor in.
- Apr 7, 2009
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IMO, you found success, If you and I were working that idea, I'd be exploring it more!
This is a common user story:
"My car is busted, miles are high, I hate having to put more cash into this pig. Maybe I'll take the cash to fix and use it to trade it"
Is this every user's story? No. But, it's a high value user!
The test:
"Will adding inventory onto the page create a productive visit for this user's story?"
DISC? (Does It Sell Cars?)
--Separate and bucketize shoppers that click on cars from service page.
--Compare T.O.S. vs regular shoppers and vs service only shoppers
--Compare repeat visit behavior [very important]
--Lastly, Compare contact info from service appointments vs sales.
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I have all this data, so it wouldn't be that hard to break it all down.
Maybe I'll circle around and try it again to see if I can get more firm conclusions.
We have all manner of great information, if anyone can find me a dealership that is clever enough to use this data properly I would love to talk.
