I'll throw a little kerosene on the fire. Take a look at these two campaigns - Cars.com referral traffic landing on the home page and SEO traffic landing on a model specific page. Compare the conversion, bounce and engagement statistics and let's discuss which VDP views are more valuable? (inventory % equates to % of visitors who made it to at least one VDP page; and in this case conversion rate includes form submissions and visits to maps and directions pages)
Of course, this graphic is only comparing and contrasting two streams of visitor experiences
on a dealer website, so I am cheating the question a little bit. But, for this dealer it appears that the third party traffic has a higher quality, even if it doesn't have a higher quantity. Yet the dealer would not dare alter or take away from their efforts to maximize the SEO to Frontier landing page combination.
Now take a look at this Audi dealer's two campaigns...
Which VDPs are more valuable - the OEM site referral views, or the conquest campaign views? Here, because we have the context that the conversion rates are higher and bounce rates are lower, it appears that the audiusa.com traffic is bringing more value. But, if we looked strictly at VDP views in quantity, these two consumer paths would get equal billing, or at least a similar ranking.
What's the point? When we try to measure VDP views we are looking at a metric out of context. Unless you know the who, what, where, when and why of a shopper's VDP visit experience you cannot measure their value. Without context, I may see spike in VDPs on my own site or through a third party vendor report and think, "Hey, I'm doing great!" only later to realize that someone priced a vehicle $7K below fair market value and 3000 clicks to that one vehicle skewed the analysis.
Also, unless I know how effective my own site is at converting shoppers, I don't have a fair comparison of what I can actually accomplish without a presence on a third party site. What does it cost me to acquire that shopper on my own. How many unique users (car shoppers) does the third party site claim to influence in my market? What percentage of my top "cross-shopped" competitors are extremely competitive on those sites. Is the inventory in my used car mix in hot demand? If not, I may be better off moving those vehicles on my own through more targeted dealer driven marketing, such as an email campaign with special financing for sub prime customers. Has the market been heating up for my new vehicles? Do I need to get a special offer message out to in market shoppers quickly, or do I have only enough inventory to see me through this week, this month, without dropping gross?
Our industry has a thirst for metrics. We have a thirst to improve every month, every week, everyday. But, the answer to defining success is not always as simple as a quantitative comparison. Add context and listen to what the consumer paths are telling you, then layer in what you can actually accomplish this month.
Here are two great blog posts that explore third party referral metrics and VDPs more intensely.
http://blog.stringautomotive.com/cr...and-other-vendor-traffic-in-google-analytics-
http://blog.stringautomotive.com/how-to-calculate-value-per-page
Love this debate. And, the answer is attainable for each dealer, it just takes a bit of digging into the layers of your data to find it.