POLL Digital Retailing - do you?

[Alex Snyder]

Do you have a digital retailing solution in your website or process? Something like Roadster, Dealer Science, Cox's Accelerate (or whatever they call it), Dealer Inspire's Online Shopper, etc. I know I'm missing at least 8 others. We have an ongoing list right here.

 

[john.quinn]

Probably another topic/string... but what exactly is Digital Retailing? Definitions/offerings I've seen are like snowflakes: no two are alike.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Probably another topic/string... but what exactly is Digital Retailing? Definitions/offerings I've seen are like snowflakes: no two are alike.

Cliff Banks, Brian Pasch, Jeff Kershner and I explored that topic on RefreshFriday a few weeks ago.



A few takeaways from that episode were:

• Digital Retailing, on the most part, is just a "super lead" generator
• Brian has found 11 companies offering services like that while Cliff predicts there will be more than 30 in the next few years
• It is a significantly young genre that potentially could be more important than the CRM

 

[john.quinn]

Very interesting. Maybe I'll study it a bit, prove or disprove the hypothesis that you need to serve/solve problems for people who write you checks -- seems like a lot of vendors tried to solve problems for consumers at the dealer's expense.

 

[Alex Snyder]

seems like a lot of vendors tried to solve problems for consumers at the dealer's expense.

No doubt about that! Sure seems like a few technologists didn't like their car buying experience and decided they'd "fix that."

Idiocy aside, once the genre matures I can see where it actually answers the questions of "does it sell cars" affirmatively, and even being a way for dealers to cut some personnel costs. That is a far-cry more valuable than CRM has been. And that's the basis for the argument as to how the LATER digital retailing solutions will be a better investment than a CRM.

You and I had our opinions of digital retailing tarnished by some early ideas at Dealer.com. Once you look outside of the Cox umbrella you see a number of solutions doing a better job.

 

[Carluminati]

Do you have a digital retailing solution in your website or process? Something like Roadster, Dealer Science, Cox's Accelerate (or whatever they call it), Dealer Inspire's Online Shopper, etc. I know I'm missing at least 8 others. Feel free to list those out.

We looked at most of these, were seduced into a CDK Connected Store contract - but no leads, and the site has been idled, it's so bad. So we reverted back to our Nabthat site where we see 100-200 dealership leads every month, which is 40% of all our lead sources, and the best for sure. I think Digital Retailing is a farce, it's not a lead magnet as advertised, I would obviously know having used the service, only to have to stop it, before my business died. I would say Google Posts (a free service) provided me more leads than the most effective digital retailing site I was promised. The secret to selling cars online is keeping it simple. Good images, post good prices, follow up call with every lead, invite for the test drive, win them over and sell. Digital Retailing totally misses the point and advantage the dealership experience has over this fake experience, and why it still matters.

 

[bb822]

Just getting started with Roadster at one of the stores in our group. Impressive product, but the stranglehold that CDK, DealerTrack, et. al make me wonder how successful the integration will be. That said, Longo Toyota, the #1 volume Toyota dealer in the country uses them with success, so that tells me there's something there...

 

[shoagey]

Just getting started with Roadster at one of the stores in our group. Impressive product, but the stranglehold that CDK, DealerTrack, et. al make me wonder how successful the integration will be. That said, Longo Toyota, the #1 volume Toyota dealer in the country uses them with success, so that tells me there's something there...

Any update on this? I have a dealer using it with CDK (eLead) and they are having major duplicate lead issues. Any info is appreciated!

 

[ed.brooks]

Here's a great conversation between Jared Hamilton of DrivingSales and @joe.chura of Dealer Inspire discussing Digital Retailing

 

[bb822]

Any update on this? I have a dealer using it with CDK (eLead) and they are having major duplicate lead issues. Any info is appreciated!

We're actually moving away from it, but the issue isn't necessarily with Roadster. The in-store implementation strategy wasn't great on our end, so we're hoping that we can regroup and try the integration at one of our other stores. We started the rollout with the store's internet department which performs very well. That was probably a mistake--they have a grooved process and trying to insert Roadster in that didn't work well. I know we had some issues with duplicates in our CRM (DealerSocket), but not sure if it was ultimately resolved or how much that contributed to our moving away from it.

On the technology side, one issue that's pretty pervasive is the need to re-do a lot of steps in the deal. You can pencil the deal in Roadster, but when it gets to F&I you need to re-enter all of the info in whatever desking suite you use. Not a huge issue, but Roadster could be great if it could be more seamlessly integrated into the process.