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Consider this... Are your VDPs creating a V.D.P. ?

ryan.leslie

One of the good guys
Apr 20, 2009
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In my new role at CarStory I've spent a ton of time on dealer's VDPs the last few weeks. I wonder if the average consumer would be surprised to hear what "VDP" means. Based on their shopping experience, would they have a different set of words for the acronym?

Are we delivering engaging Vehicle Details Pages or creating Very Disappointed People with Virtually Disconnected Purchase-Experiences (I cheated on the last one)?

How much time is spent propping hoods, hanging balloons, sweeping lots, inflating the purple gorilla and positioning the wavy arms guy every day? Those things are important, but are we investing a similar amount of time walking the virtual lot? I know I'm preaching to the choir here on Refresh, but every study I've seen for the last 10 years has pointed to the fact that online interaction and engagement leads to offline sales. It sure seems to me that merchandising the virtual lot should logically take precedence over merchandising the physical lot in an order of priorities.

Why the rant? Consider this...

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Really though, who needs peace of mind to plunk down $32k on a 4 year old car with 73k on the odometer? ;)

The peace of mind story line almost writes itself in this instance if someone takes the time to copy and paste it into the VDP, it is a CPO car! If we suggest that there should be additional information required to put the mind at ease, we'd better supply that information.

Rant over, this was intended to be an encouragement to look critically at the merchandising of your vehicles on your VDP. Every car on your virtual lot needs to be digitally frontline ready. If you haven't walked your virtual lot today take a stroll and see what your prospects see. Are there opportunities to better tell each car's story?
 
  1. Great photos - don't sacrifice quality here. Photos tell a story and untouched photos can build trust in a vehicle. My #1 issue with CarPics 2.0 (a photo capture service) is that they photoshop the background out of all their photos - as a consumer that makes me think the photos are being retouched.
  2. Great descriptions - the description tells the rest of the story. CarStory has some great badges that help with this as well, but things like One Owners, Maintained Here, upgrades over stock, Clean Interior, etc - these things matter to consumers.
  3. Transparent Pricing - up here in Ontario we don't get a choice, but I love when a dealer breaks down the price with everything that goes into it, showing the final price - this leads the consumer to believe that this is the price they will be paying AND that the competitor might be hiding some of these fees since they're not listed on the other site
  4. Lead Forms - Although I still see them and use them on client sites, Lead Buttons are losing their conversion rate in most of my tests. A simple form that has the option of Test Drive, More Info, Make an Offer, etc seems to be converting better than 4 buttons that open modals with forms. The colour of the form and the submit button also has a significant impact.
The biggest thing that we noticed was that we get more consumer engagement when the photos are large (none of those tiny <insert vendor here> polaroids), untouched and up top we get huge engagement on all 30+ photos. Beside the photos we always put a transparent price and the pertinent details. Right below the photos is the description. VIN Explosion and the other space wasting stuff gets put at the bottom for those that want to know if the car has air bags and power locks.

Just my opinion - we've been playing with VDPs for a long time and there's a huge potential there if you can get it right.
Even my small clients are getting 5000+ VDP views in a month - that's something you can't ignore.
 
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