Amazon SELLS purchases — not just eyeballs
Yess sir.
It's the core of my mission.
Merchandizing - Someone is Launching a new Service | Joe Pistell
Everyone I talk to recoils when I say "I want to build stuff that causes less leads". It's a delightful confirmation that I'm headed in the right direction.
Internet Car Shopping Sucks.
It's why DR failed. How do you improve it?
Shopping is a task, shoppers have a job to do.
Deeply know what your shoppers need to accomplish and look at everything you do through this lens.
It's simple. Industry wide, our websites suck.
Amazon SELLS purchases — not just eyeballs
# of Leads as a KPI is dead:
Carvana sells 50,000 cars per month, up +40% YoY. Website traffic is unchanged.
From Carvana's Quarterly conference all to investors:
Q4 2023:
- Average calls per sale down ~40% YoY <--wait for it!
- Average sales per customer advocate doubled YoY <--F*ck leads
- Each support rep handled 2x the sales with fewer customer calls <--F*ck leads
- Call duration down ~20% YoY <--F*ck leads
Q4 2024:
- Average calls per sale down ~20% YoY <--F*ck leads
- AI-powered chats with ZERO human assistance has nearly tripled over the past two years <--F*ck leads
Q2 2025:
- 18% more customers complete transactions without any human support vs prior year
- Customers who do call spend 25% less time on calls <--F*ck leads
- Sales per customer advocate up 23% YoY <--F*ck leads
-
Sticky
Amazon SELLS purchases — not just eyeballs
Amazon sells purchases — not just eyeballs, phone calls, and form fills.
If Amazon can show that their model delivers sales-ready customers, that’s a far superior ROI for dealers.
For years sup par dealer websites and 3rd-party marketplaces have sold us impressions, VDP views, and lead forms.
Carvana flipped the script by proving something bigger:
Consumers will pay MORE for a frictionless, transparent experience so they do not have to walk into a car dealership.
Everyone in the car business thought Carvana wouldn’t make it.
They were wrong.
Now comes Amazon — not to dabble, but to scale what Carvana started:
• Upfront, transparent pricing
• Online financing
• No back-and-forth games
• 3-day return policy
• Buy online, pick up at the dealership
• Used and CPO inventory — starting in LA, coming to your town in the near future.
It’s what many customers have wanted for years.
The difference?
Amazon has the TRUST, the TRAFFIC, the TECH, and the TIMING to pull it off at scale.
Most dealers still make car buying way harder than it has to be.
Amazon won’t.
Every ounce of FRICTION in your process is a point of VULNERABILITY now more than ever.
The disruptors are HERE again —
Dealers: This isn’t the time to panic.
It’s the time to audit your processes, tighten up your reconditioning and merchandising game, and rethink your entire digital-to-physical HANDOFF.
Want to stay relevant?
Start delivering a Carvana/Amazon-like experience — before they eat your lunch.
*imported from fb
If Amazon can show that their model delivers sales-ready customers, that’s a far superior ROI for dealers.
For years sup par dealer websites and 3rd-party marketplaces have sold us impressions, VDP views, and lead forms.
Carvana flipped the script by proving something bigger:
Everyone in the car business thought Carvana wouldn’t make it.
They were wrong.
Now comes Amazon — not to dabble, but to scale what Carvana started:
• Upfront, transparent pricing
• Online financing
• No back-and-forth games
• 3-day return policy
• Buy online, pick up at the dealership
• Used and CPO inventory — starting in LA, coming to your town in the near future.
It’s what many customers have wanted for years.
The difference?
Amazon has the TRUST, the TRAFFIC, the TECH, and the TIMING to pull it off at scale.
Most dealers still make car buying way harder than it has to be.
Amazon won’t.
Every ounce of FRICTION in your process is a point of VULNERABILITY now more than ever.
The disruptors are HERE again —
Dealers: This isn’t the time to panic.
It’s the time to audit your processes, tighten up your reconditioning and merchandising game, and rethink your entire digital-to-physical HANDOFF.
Want to stay relevant?
Start delivering a Carvana/Amazon-like experience — before they eat your lunch.
*imported from fb
BDC Percentages
- By joe.pistell
This LI post I created is red hot and it connects to this thread:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7357861679205949440/
Carvana sales: 48,000 sales every month
Change is coming... fast.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7357861679205949440/
Carvana sales: 48,000 sales every month
What's Driving This Growth in Sales Volume? Carvana's Website Traffic is UNCHANGED
Garcia's Obsession: Get MORE Sales with LESS Friction & FEWER Leads
The Evolution of Efficiency:
Q4 2023:
- Average calls per sale down ~40% YoY
- Average sales per customer advocate doubled YoY
- Each support rep handled 2x the sales with fewer customer calls
- Call duration down ~20% YoY
- Average calls per sale down ~20% YoY
- AI-powered chats with ZERO human assistance has nearly tripled over the past two years
- 18% more customers complete transactions without any human support vs prior year
- Customers who do call spend 25% less time on calls
- Sales per customer advocate up 23% YoY
Change is coming... fast.
Struggling to Optimize My Ad Spend – Need Help with Campaign Strategy
Here is an example of a landing page we use on Google's Vehicle Ads. We created a separate set of VDPs that are optimized for Vehicle Ads. They generate more leads and visitors are more engaged.
It was a whole process to A/B test and come up with these landing pages. We initially noticed the normal VDPs had a high bounce rate when coming from Google's Vehicle Ads. When we looked into the analytics, we saw that a high percentage of users that stayed scrolled down and clicked on a similar vehicle. So initially, we expanded that section from showing 3 vehicles to 6 vehicles.
Somewhere down the line, we added a link to the SRP. More people stayed and shopped.
We went crazy and expanded that section again to 12 and a little more people stayed.
We then decided to redesign the VDP and create a separate VDP just for VLA. Through several more iterations, that screenshot is where we're at now.
We did a case study with another dealer group and they saw an overall increase of 59% more leads, 122% increase in engagement and a 36% decrease in bounce rate.
This is all due to changing the landing page. Same spend and more leads.
You can carry this same process to all campaigns, even monthly offer campaigns.
It was a whole process to A/B test and come up with these landing pages. We initially noticed the normal VDPs had a high bounce rate when coming from Google's Vehicle Ads. When we looked into the analytics, we saw that a high percentage of users that stayed scrolled down and clicked on a similar vehicle. So initially, we expanded that section from showing 3 vehicles to 6 vehicles.
Somewhere down the line, we added a link to the SRP. More people stayed and shopped.
We went crazy and expanded that section again to 12 and a little more people stayed.
We then decided to redesign the VDP and create a separate VDP just for VLA. Through several more iterations, that screenshot is where we're at now.
We did a case study with another dealer group and they saw an overall increase of 59% more leads, 122% increase in engagement and a 36% decrease in bounce rate.
This is all due to changing the landing page. Same spend and more leads.
You can carry this same process to all campaigns, even monthly offer campaigns.
Filter
