What Should the Perfect Dealership Home Page Look Like?

[DrewAment]

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.

 

[DjSec]

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.

 

[DrewAment]

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.

 

[DjSec]

Agree -- but most dealers have fixed/service departments.

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?

 

[Ryan Everson]

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.

 

[DjSec]

~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.

 

[Chris Cachor]

~80% of dealership traffic is mobile, so the top navigation bar isn't even visible.

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%?

 

[Ryan Everson]

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:




*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.

 

[DjSec]

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.

 

[Chris Cachor]

This is data right from our groupwide roll-up GA4 property for last month:

Wow, no kidding. Thanks for sharing that. Facebook would skew towards mobile but still. Great info!