Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

[joe.pistell]

Sharing another point of measurement for website vendor decision making.


Link: GTmetrix Performance Report

 

[joe.pistell]

[sidebar] chat.open.ai is lighting up the twitter-verse.
It's not a Subject Matter Expert... yet.

jdpa needs to be all over this

 

[Alex Snyder]

Why o why does our 'compare vehicles' suck?

Two questions:

1. Do we know how many customers use it?
2. If the answer to the first question is low, is it because it sucks?

 

[craigh]

We built out an extensive comparison tool (as a vendor) and it was honestly a pain in the ass with little payoff.
The issue always came down to data providers and being able to accurately assess what is a base feature, a nice to have, premium, etc.

For example, our data provider would like "automatic windows" in the same category as "rain detecting wiper blades" or "lane keep assist".
Further to that, every manufacturer has their own name for things and the provider gives us that name, without a more generic translation.

If there was a great data provider that categorized things already it would be immensely helpful, otherwise it really relies on some form of manual categorization to determine what is a valuable feature and what is not. I find this especially important when looking at all the self-driving-adjacent features in cars now. I need to know if the car will stay between the lines, adapt cruise control speed, etc. Most of the time I see this information, it's a bullet point in an endless list of features that every car has.

If I was a new car dealer, I would fix this in-house for my own manufacturer details and offer a kickass compare tool because I do feel it has immense value when done correctly.

 

[joe.pistell]

1. Do we know how many customers use it?
2. If the answer to the first question is low, is it because it sucks?

And..

Answer to #1) Do we know how many internet shoppers want to compare cars in their consideration set? Answer: ALL​

Answer to #2) Of those that use compare tool how many find it of little value and never use it again? Answer: ALL.​

​

We built out an extensive comparison tool (as a vendor) and it was honestly a pain in the ass with little payoff.

Dude, You've described the world of Digital Retailing to a T.

All of this maps back to car shopper's in ZONE 2 (see my chart). IMO, Illumiquote (and a few of it's competitors) nail the payment/trade exploration side of the shppers considerations, but, NO ONE has brought machine readable structure to the ocean of automotive product attributes (i.e. AWD, Bluetooth, collision mitigation systems, adaptive cruise, and one and on and on).

Hell, ask a Hyundai sales rep with 2 used F150's for sale which Trim is higher than the other. #FAIL.

 

[joe.pistell]

Question: Do you track classified referral traffic in GA? If so, how so?
(AutoTrader vs Cars vs Cargurus vs Edmunds vs CarFax)

Knowing that most sales do not come from from leads, I highly prize referral traffic from classified sites. IMO, it's the best dealer site traffic money can buy*.

Thoughts?

*Performance Context: Used car shoppers on classified listing sites that are deep in the funnel AND on the dealer's VDP will want to visit the dealers website to verify the unit's availability and see what other similar units the dealer has to consider (for a side by side)

 

[joe.pistell]

Question: Is there any data vendor that sells marketplace car shopper data? I am fishing for what car shoppers are looking for (YMM, price, miles, etc).

I sat thru a ProfitTime deck pitch yesterday. I saw an overwhelming dependence on historical data (e.g. market days supply, like market days supply and sales history). We just went thru f'ing covid, our marketplace is changing before our eyes. Noah John's AutoScores.com will give me insights into my website traffic, but, my marketplace data for this week would be far more valuable.


I'm leaning toward autoscores, thoughts?

 

[joe.pistell]

Topic: Referral Traffic from Marketplaces

Edmunds is killing it. Anyone Edmunds subscribers here?

I know why cars.com does well (SEO dealers name). Anyone know why/how Edmunds is killing it?

 

[craigh]

I know why cars.com does well (SEO dealers name). Anyone know why/how Edmunds is killing it?

Can you see if they are coming from vehicle pages or from something like the Edmunds Dealer Finder?
Are they all landing on your homepage?

 

[joe.pistell]

I believe Referral Traffic from Marketplaces (Used cars) is damn near the best 'car shopper' traffic money can buy. I added a 'time on site greater than 5 mins' and Edmunds is still knocking it over the fence. Cargurus shoppers are damn near invisible.

Comparing this marketplace ranking chart above to marketplace lead gen and the list flips (Gurus' is #1 for lead gen volume)