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Are traditional website form submissions dead?

nickaskew

Green Pea
May 13, 2022
6
11
First Name
Nick
I started selling cars in 2012, and a lot has changed since then from a consumer behavior standpoint... but one thing hasn't. The dealer's obsession with more leads. Sure... more opportunities to do business are great, but processing and answering them with a rigorous follow-up schedule is expensive and can be fruitless.

A while back, many vendors came out with products designed to engage customers and capture their information... oftentimes with techniques like dangling the golden "trade value" or "soft pull preapproval" carrot in front of the customer to get the lead. Heaven forbid we run into one of the "do you want $500 more dollars off your trade" exit intent popups on the website, but dealers still use them.

Customers are savvier now and are filling out these forms at a rate much lower than in previous years... because they are getting the data they want, and they are smart enough to understand their information is the currency... but it doesn't make them anymore / less likely to buy a car.

The data says:

- Most low intent leads don't answer the phone or respond
- To continue to pressure customers with high-touch follow-up strategies on low intent forms is internally inefficient (and costly)
- Thank you pages and dead ends in the digital process slow down deals - you have to reengage the customer if your human response takes longer than 10 minutes

So... what's the point? Should we focus on quality transactional interactions instead?

Are low intent forms even worth it... Or should CTA's lead the customer somewhere more meaningful?

Is there still a place in the dealers' digital strategy for old-fashioned short-form lead gen as part of a higher-funnel marketing strategy?

Would love to know your thoughts!
 
Kevin Frye turned a lot of the CTAs into chat starters within the Wyler Auto Group site. He was speaking very highly about how well this worked for them at Digital Dealer this year.

One major issue occurring today is the dealership staff have become used to playing the "take it or leave it" approach due to such low supply. It isn't translating well to customers.
 
Kevin Frye turned a lot of the CTAs into chat starters within the Wyler Auto Group site. He was speaking very highly about how well this worked for them at Digital Dealer this year.

One major issue occurring today is the dealership staff have become used to playing the "take it or leave it" approach due to such low supply. It isn't translating well to customers.
The other thing you run into with dealers that have switched to CTA buttons that open "chat" is you often just end up with a lead form within the chat window. This isn't any better than a standard lead form folks, in fact it's probably worse...
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You're right, Alex! The take it or leave it to approach is not sustainable in future markets. We should be making customer service and helpful UI a focus... just because there is a low supply / strong demand market doesn't mean we should stop being good business people! :)

Markets transform, but customers won't forget how you made them feel.
 
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The other thing you run into with dealers that have switched to CTA buttons that open "chat" is you often just end up with a lead form within the chat window. This isn't any better than a standard lead form folks, in fact it's probably worse...
View attachment 7425
It's totally a worse experience... you're using chat because you want instant gratification and great customer service.

You get a glimmer of hope, and then BAM. Lead form.

I could see this working well if you had a badass chat partner or your team had the ability / training to answer internally. A lot of tools (even outside of automotive) just focus on what they can get from the customer rather than what they can GIVE the customer
 
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It's totally a worse experience... you're using chat because you want instant gratification and great customer service.

You get a glimmer of hope, and then BAM. Lead form.

I could see this working well if you had a badass chat partner or your team had the ability / training to answer internally. A lot of tools (even outside of automotive) just focus on what they can get from the customer rather than what they can GIVE the customer
Yeah, if you were to mystery shop a good majority of dealers that claim to have "switched" to messaging-based CTA's, you'd find that few actually go to a live agent; most simply open a chat window with a traditional lead form embedded within the chat window or a bot-based question-by-question form.

Not sure how this is any better of a customer experience or how it increases the lead conversion rate %. At least with a traditional lead form, mobile users can auto-fill the form info and submit it in a few seconds vs a frustrating, drawn-out experience in "chat".
 
I'd love to make a chat system that could really help shoppers down the funnel. Hi-level Building Blocks:
  • Site awareness(Page/path/visit count, etc).
    • Example, Carvana's chat is page aware (i.e. Trade-in page chat content is different than VDP).
  • Car Smart.Vehicle segment, trims, packages, options are all semi-structured data*.
    • Example: "What features/options do I get going from XL to XLT trim?"
    • Example: "I used to own a "Honda/model/trim". What Hyundai/model/trim is most like what I had?"
    • Example: "I love a car thats loaded with features, for my price range, show me used cars that have the most features"
  • Payment Personalization. Shoppers simply want the most car for the least payment. If you don't nail this, you'll miss the target.
    • Example: See FrikenTech, Few do it as well.
    • Example: Subprime, see Streamline (made by Matt Lasher& John Shultz of West Herr)
  • Trade-in Personalization. Create ability to allow shopper to easily establish a tradein range and payoff. Accutrade is quite amazing in this area.

Bringing structure to unstructured vehicle data has so many Has any vendor brought order and heirarcy to the vehicle trim/package/options configs?

*This data needs to be munged, normalized (2 OEMs with same option that have different names), create a Trim hierarchy map, add a numerical weighting system to each feature/option that reflects shopper demand (i.e. Backup cameras are awesome, but, before 2018, back up cameras were optional... so Backup cameras, 2018 and earlier are of higher value!)
 
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