Online Shopping to Online Buying

[joe.pistell]

Most ecommerce hipsters won't get this old video I made.



It's a story about car shopper workflow and it describes part of what is needed to increase ecommerce's yield.

 

[ed.brooks]

It would easy enough to run a legitimate test to . Not a bullshit 'test', but a real test. The author had 20 dealers and 6 months. Randomize and cookie the shoppers, present half the shoppers with a widget that has a "Buy Online" button, the half another CTA. At the end of 6 months you'll have a good size data set.

• Did the shoppers that were served the "Buy Online" button buy more cars?
• Did they spend more money?
• Were they any more satisfied?

 

[joe.pistell]

...The 3-4x higher close rate comes from leads that are submitted through the platform when a "Buy Online" button is clicked vs. a "Get e-Price" or "Contact Us" button.

We typically see a conversion rate of 10% from click > checkout and of those people who complete the checkout, we see above 80% lead close rates(vehicle purchased and picked up or delivered).

@Michia Rohrssen

Using the numbers you've published:



I'd love to have you fill in the "completed checkout" gap. I have asked:

...talk about your form completion rate (i.e. bought the car online).

This will help us all understand how many shoppers WANT a Digital Retailing experience.


The Next opportunity is "abandoned cart marketing" (i.e. lead gen). I also asked:

Secondarily, for abandoned carts, talk about your lead gen rate.

We're all here to find ways to sell more cars. Sharing your data can help our community move away from conjecture.

​

 

[joe.pistell]

p.s @Michia Rohrssen

Your data is based off a launch on 20 car dealers websites. To understand your published numbers, we'd like to see your product and it's workflow. Plz include links to them.

 

[Alexander Lau]

p.s @Michia Rohrssen

Your data is based off a launch on 20 car dealers websites. To understand your published numbers, we'd like to see your product and it's workflow. Plz include links to them.

Too small of a sample size, IMO.

 

[joe.pistell]

eCommerce (i.e. Digital Retailing) presents 2 actionable opportunities.

1. A Completed Sale
2. An Abandoned Cart

Opportunity #1). A Completed Sale
Looking at @Michia Rohrssen's numbers,



Let's plug in some assumptions...

1. Shoppers that went all the way to "Completed Checkout" = 30%
2. We're looking at the business performance per 1,000 VDP views.

Using a 30% Ck out completion rate...

​

We get 1.5 deals per 1,000 VDPs
(THE MATH: Of the 1,000 VDP'ers, 60 Clicked "Buy Online". Of the 60, 6 shoppers made it to checkout. Of the 6 we estimate that 30% completed, that = 1.8 shoppers. The dealerships closed 80% of the 1.8 = 1.5 deals)

Is that good or bad? IMO, We don't know (yet), too many open questions. It's easy to see the "Checkout Completion Rate" will be important. My gut's telling me that 30% is an optimistic estimate.


Opportunity #2). An Abandoned Cart
Looking at @Michia Rohrssen's numbers,


So, we have 90% shoppers who don't make it to the checkout screen. I find this a very believable number when we're talking our crazy love/hate industry. This is not much higher than ecommerce overall (60-80%) [link].


Michia's data driven post would be improved if it included the closing rate from abandoned carts.

​

Cart abandonment is a marketing channel all itself. IMO, it'll be a rich resource of leads and should be a killer location for chat assistance.


HTH
-Uncle Joe


p.s. Michia didn't include his CTR measurement criteria, so I assumed that he'd base this off of VDP activity only.

 

[Bill_Playford]

When an established vendor guarantees sales, can we please go through this level of mathematical scrutiny?

 

[Michia Rohrssen]

@JoePistell - here's the actual number breakdown of what the funnel looks like. Obviously these numbers will vary dealer to dealer, but these are rough averages of what we're seeing.

As you highlighted, there is a huge opportunity in the abandoned carts. We're actually working with a few all in one vendors(website/SEM/display) to notify them when a cart is abandoned so they can target those visitors with their advertising campaigns and help the dealers win even more sales.

Admittedly, those talks just opened a week ago so we'll see where it all goes, but the possibility excites me!



We have a demo video here, just click the giant play button.

 

[ed.brooks]

When an established vendor guarantees sales, can we please go through this level of mathematical scrutiny?

I've worked for a small handful companies over a fairly long career as a 'vendor'. All of them were considered best-in-class and were, or grew to be, well established. I guaranteed that I would do what I said I'd do and that the company would do their job -- BUT 'guaranteeing' sales isn't anything most reputable vendors do, for many valid reasons.

 

[ed.brooks]

@JoePistell - here's the actual number breakdown of what the funnel looks like. Obviously these numbers will vary dealer to dealer, but these are rough averages of what we're seeing.

As you highlighted, there is a huge opportunity in the abandoned carts. We're actually working with a few all in one vendors(website/SEM/display) to notify them when a cart is abandoned so they can target those visitors with their advertising campaigns and help the dealers win even more sales.

Admittedly, those talks just opened a week ago so we'll see where it all goes, but the possibility excites me!



We have a demo video here, just click the giant play button.

So this very similar to GM's Shop, Click, Drive, or Cox's MakeMyDeal, or Dealer Success' VirtualDeal - What differentiates your product @Michia Rohrssen?