Avalanche of Lender-Specific "Digital Retailing" Website Buttons Coming in 2022?

[Ryan Everson]

Dealers - what are we going to do when every other lender sees Capital One's "success" of getting their lead navigator "digital retailing" button installed on thousands of dealer websites?

Are dealers going to end up having 5 different website buttons for each lender?

Now not only do we have every OEM trying to own the customer experience, but we are also going to have every lender try to own the experience too.

That's a recipe for customer experience disaster and will only further fuel the Carvana's of the world.

Capital One has opened a dangerous can of worms, and I think we're going to see an avalanche of lender-specific website buttons next year. Lenders would be dumb not to try to replicate Capital One's success.

It will be up to dealers to say no and retain as much control of the customer experience on their own website as they can.

 

[Anthony G.]

Nothing new or helpful to add.

Sad to say that there are already dealers with 3 or 4 different "Digital Retailing" tools on their website.

As a whole, I don't think this forum will have this problem.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Nothing new or helpful to add.

Sad to say that there are already dealers with 3 or 4 different "Digital Retailing" tools on their website.

As a whole, I don't think this forum will have this problem.

Yeah, still something to keep on our radar... 2021 was the year of OEM digital retailing mandates, 2022 might be the year of lender-specific DR buttons.

If we thought 2-3 digital retailing buttons were bad, just wait until dealers have 7+.

 

[Ryan Everson]

And it's difficult to explain why this is a bad idea to the average F&I or sales manager. All they see is the upside with no downside.

It's too difficult to explain UI/UX and the negative impact of adding yet another button to them. They just want us to do our job and install the “free” tool that their lender rep is pushing and incentivizing.

There’s a lot of decisions made based on emotion and gut feelings in the automotive space that contradicts data and reality.

Oh, and having an attractive lender rep doesn't help the decision-making process any.

 

[Anthony G.]

You are so right it's spooky. I had to fight tooth and nail to keep auto navigator off my websites.

I also had a tough time articulating why it's a bad idea.

I can see a world where OEM CX on websites with the dealer's products as well as the OEM products flow seamlessly into the store and pick up where it left off.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Wow - I was just thinking about this topic a few days ago. Great mock up @Ryan Everson. This could turn into a real mess.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Oh, and having an attractive lender rep doesn't help the decision-making process any.

So very true.

 

[Ryan Montville]

And it's difficult to explain why this is a bad idea to the average F&I or sales manager. All they see is the upside with no downside.

It's too difficult to explain UI/UX and the negative impact of adding yet another button to them. They just want us to do our job and install the “free” tool that their lender rep is pushing and incentivizing.

There’s a lot of decisions made based on emotion and gut feelings in the automotive space that contradicts data and reality.

Oh, and having an attractive lender rep doesn't help the decision-making process any.

We took ours down after a few months of ok performance. The say it out loud test worked for me to get them down without much of a fight...

"I have three different credit applications on my website."

 

[afrev]

How are dealers going to be able to report conversions back to paid media solutions when most still implement in iframes? There are ways to get around it but generally require an intermediately experienced developer which most dealerships don't have. This is a conversion tracking nightmare that creates even more friction for a user. Hoping there's a better back end solution instead of this kind of userflow.

 

[Ryan Everson]

How are dealers going to be able to report conversions back to paid media solutions when most still implement in iframes? There are ways to get around it but generally require an intermediately experienced developer which most dealerships don't have. This is a conversion tracking nightmare that creates even more friction for a user. Hoping there's a better back end solution instead of this kind of userflow.

Luckily (tongue in cheek), when you have this many buttons it reduces your website conversion rate so you don't have very many conversions to even worry about. Problem solved!