I believe there are two key components to buying and selling cars online:
- Business model innovation
- Right technology
Business model
In general, customers need the following to consider buying a car online, without first talking to someone at the dealer:
- High definition photos
- Inspection / blemish report
- Right policies
High definition photos are required for the customer to take the concept of buying online seriously. Just look at how prominent Beepi and Carvana have their photos. Or how much of a focus it is for ebay dealers like texas auto direct.
Everyone wants to know what’s wrong with the car before they buy it. And every used car has something wrong with it. That doesn’t mean a dealer needs to fix it. But they at least should call attention to it. Even if it’s literally a link to a google drive PDF inspection scan it’s better than nothing.
Customers need to feel comfortable they can return the car if there is a problem, that they have some level of warranty, etc. Do you have a haggle-free price policy? Few people will buy a car with a click if they think they can get a better price by contacting the dealer. Do you have a way to handle trade appraisals on-site? Are your cars priced to market?
Technology
You need the right technology to enable the above. Does your inspection process integrate with your website? Does your website provider support HD images? Can your sales people do remote trade appraisals effectively?
- Design
- Data accuracy and availability
- The “Checkout” page
Design. Is your site designed to encourage a customer to do business with you online? Does your site look more like AirBnB or do you have a million lead forms and no real digital services? People need to feel comfortable on your site and design is step 1 to making this happen.
Is your data accurate? I mean really accurate. Or are you purely doing a VIN explosion? “See dealer for details” doesn’t work here. If you say it has the 3.34 drive ratio, it better have the 3.34 drive ratio. Do you have warranty data? (including accurate in-service date?
The “Checkout” page (CP). This is the 3rd step in the SRP VDP game. It should walk customers through their trade, offer financing options, up-sell warranty, etc. Everything they would cover in person.
There is a lot more too it.. but suffice to say it’s a lot more than a single plug-in. I don’t really think the technology fully exists yet. We are working on a solution ourselves but we are far from prime-time ready. I think one of the biggest hurdles is going to be dealers adopting the new processes required to make this work even once the technology gets there.
there was a system, where a customer's trade literally creates the inventory record, and since the inventory system is also the website system, 100% of that data is instantly available, as appropriate, on the website. Same with the inspection process. But how many dealers can honestly say they would be willing to toss Renyolds/Homenet/WebsiteVenderX/ etc. for one integrated system?