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What Should the Perfect Dealership Home Page Look Like?

Homepage == 3 buttons.....that's it.

"Shop New", "Shop Used", "Service Appointment"

MAYBE 4 if you have a solid buying program, so - add "Sell Your Vehicle"

Dealers that load their homepage with hero images, large luxury type cool photos, and other things a customer really doesn't care about.... just insane. Get the customer, as fast as possible, to the info/section they are looking for.

A stat thrown around a lot is that less than 15% of vehicle shoppers even see your "homepage" - as most traffic is direct to SRP or VDP.
 
Homepage == 3 buttons.....that's it.

"Shop New", "Shop Used", "Service Appointment"

MAYBE 4 if you have a solid buying program, so - add "Sell Your Vehicle"

Dealers that load their homepage with hero images, large luxury type cool photos, and other things a customer really doesn't care about.... just insane. Get the customer, as fast as possible, to the info/section they are looking for.

A stat thrown around a lot is that less than 15% of vehicle shoppers even see your "homepage" - as most traffic is direct to SRP or VDP.

Why not skip the traditional homepage entirely?

Users want inventory first.


You're removing friction. When someone visits yoursite.com, they’re not saying “wow, nice hero image!” They’re thinking:

"Do they have the car I want?"

By showing the SRP right away, you're answering that immediately.

Your removing a click and turning the traditional homepage into the SRP page. That speeds up the buyer journey and aligns with user intent.

Your homepage becomes the indexable inventory. Google gets real-time updates on vehicle listings right from the start, helping with organic rankings.

Mobile users don’t want to hunt through a homepage for the link to the inventory and that design gets them instantly to filters, photos, and price.
 
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Why not skip the traditional homepage entirely?

Users want inventory first.


You're removing friction. When someone visits yoursite.com, they’re not saying “wow, nice hero image!” They’re thinking:

"Do they have the car I want?"

By showing the SRP right away, you're answering that immediately.

Your removing a click and turning the traditional homepage into the SRP page. That speeds up the buyer journey and aligns with user intent.

Your homepage becomes the indexable inventory. Google gets real-time updates on vehicle listings right from the start, helping with organic rankings.

Mobile users don’t want to hunt through a homepage for the link to the inventory and that design gets them instantly to filters, photos, and price.


Agree -- but most dealers have fixed/service departments.
 
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You can still have clear, visible links or buttons for “Service,” “Schedule Appointment,” “Parts,” or “Collision Center” in:
  • the main navigation
  • a top bar
  • ...
Wouldn't that be more of a design problem, that could be overcome?
~80% of dealership traffic is mobile, so the top navigation bar isn't even visible.
 
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~80% of dealership traffic is mobile, so the top navigation bar isn't even visible.

Wouldn't there be ways to overcome this as well?

You could do a Grid of Feature Boxes at the top of the page above the listings with Services, Parts, ...

or

A Collapsible Header Section with:
+ Need Service or Parts? Tap here →

If someone comes from Google searching for something with the word service in it you could auto-expand the service section or even redirect them to the service landing page.
 
I'd argue most mobile sites aren't even usable on mobile. I don't even bother on my phone - I just go direct to Cars.com or CarGurus.

But 80%? That seems high? Last I checked it was closer to 60%?
This is data right from our groupwide roll-up GA4 property for last month:

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1753297647580.png

*The mobile vs desktop split can vary somewhat depending on your ad mix - for example, we're heavy on Facebook ads, which does tend to skew more towards mobile traffic.
 
I'd argue most mobile sites aren't even usable on mobile. I don't even bother on my phone - I just go direct to Cars.com or CarGurus.

But 80%? That seems high? Last I checked it was closer to 60%?

I read an article that said something like Google had reported that over 60% of automotive searches come from mobile and that was a couple years ago and in the same article it said Millennials and Gen Z, were closer to 85-90% of their searches were on mobile.