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There's a Uncle Joe rule # for this, not sure which, but centered around - no two dealers are alike.


I'm not sure about your local market Clint, maybe 3rd party websites aren't as influential? Maybe there is another way people are finding you online or offline that's more prominent there?


Our market here is pretty competitive to say the least. All dealerships in our group have good size inventories of new and used vehicles, and we receive a good amount of traffic from 3rd party websites. I watch the website visitors, like you do, and see similar patterns as well for both new & used. But when I watch interested shoppers I see different patterns, especially with larger volume it becomes more evident. They go directly to a vehicle or type, look at bunch of photos, maybe submit a form lead, make contact, or not, and browse similarly priced vehicles. They're simply weighing their options, gathering information, deciding to either make contact, visit, or not based on what they see. This is where focusing on what matters online makes a big difference for dealers.


I agree with "nothing logical with shopper behavior" too. The shoppers situations, online journeys, option preferences, external influences, selection choices, are way too complex to make any sense from on a broad scale. One reason why I think focusing on what matters in sales first, is the best course of action for success. We can all easily get lost in the minutia of online metrics, it can sometimes lead you down a wrong path.