Don't fall for this junk!

[scm]

Hi Everyone,

This might be a diffucult question to answer but what should a well established dealership thats advertisers a lot in a certain area (print,radio) , should have for unique hits to there internet site ?

Thanks

 

[Eric Miltsch (blog)]

SCM - waaaay to vague.

what's the site?

 

[Joe Pistell]

I'll add to Eric's comment.

SCM, it's also the message in the ads.
--Is the web URL the cornerstone of the TV/Print message?
--Is the URL EASY to remember (and easy to spell).
--Are you number1 or number 2 in total spending for your market?
--The number of units on the ground and number of hits are closely correlated, how large is your inventory (relative to your competitors)

IMO, This size of inventory issue "makes or breaks" all your marketing discussions.

Joe
a proud member of IGURL (I've got a URL)

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Ralph - you know the person who made this don't you?

 

[Lightnup (blog)]

Ralph: "Wow... Such a heated thread, and going off in so many tangents... Gotta love the action, and the interaction. It is rare to see so much emotion in the words posted to a thread like this...."

And, from my perspective, quite refreshing that it's not about the usual target.

 

[scm]

Hi,

I'm just a "small corner" used car dealer. Thats all, nothing huge. 25-30 used cars in inventory. No print, no tv, all "net".

"SCM, it's also the message in the ads.
--Is the web URL the cornerstone of the TV/Print message?

No print, radio etc.. advertising. I'm all "net"

--Is the URL EASY to remember (and easy to spell).

I think so.

--Are you number1 or number 2 in total spending for your market?

Nope. No way !
I'm a small fry.

--The number of units on the ground and number of hits are closely correlated, how large is your inventory (relative to your competitors)"

Like I said earlier, I have about 25-30 used cars and my uniques far outweigh my used car inventory ( see below )

According to Google Analytics I have

April 14 - May 12
5,458 Visits
4,689 Absolute Unique Visitors
15,177 Pageviews
2.78 Average Pageviews
00:01:41 Time on Site
54.36% Bounce Rate

 

[Joe]

SCM,
Dealerships and markets are like snowflakes, no two are alike!

Ok SCM, you're putting out the effort for sure, all great info.
We all take on roles, some of us are small, some are large. EACH of us has unique challenges. EXAMPLE: Due to your size, You can "out effort" a bigger store and make your presentations far more personal. If you put more effort into your presentations, you could expect your # of pages viewed and time on site to increase.

Branding is a problem that needs addressing. Nearly every visitor to your site has no clue who you are. If I land on your site from a search engine & if your site dosent visually convey a high end reputation and a positive shopping experience (in about 10 seconds), then off I go. What ever is your stores "theme" you need to get it out ASAP. Testimonials help here.

Without seeing your content, I'd make sure that your photos are magical (as close to perfect as you can get).

Bounce rate tells me that most of your traffic comes from Search engines. Yes? No?

Also, ck keyword phrases that folks are using to find your site. If you have a lot of "Toyota Prius Replacement Headlamp" hits then, the bounce rate isn't as much of an issue.

There's lots more stuff to consider, but... until you disavow your allegiance to INGTGMURL and jump ship to the "good team" IGURL, I must end it all here

Hope this helps,
Joe
p.s. Jeff K's has been overheard discussing plans on a "pimp my site" thread sometime in the future. I got 1st dibs!!

 

[Chip Grueter]

Hey scm,
Without knowing much more about the type of traffic and the sources, that bounce rate might not be as bad as it looks on paper. But one thing we struggled with back in 03/04 was a latency issue when some one requested our homepage (talking about 4 seconds here before anything appeared on the user's end), which caused our bounce rate to be astronomically high (~70%). When we fixed just that issue, our homepage bounce rate dropped to 22%.

Nowadays, if your site doesn't, at the very least, APPEAR to be loading right away, the user is going to be clicking back faster than you can imagine. Yahoo has a great Firefox extension called ySlow which will give you a very detailed report on what affects your website load time and ways to fix it. Having a $10/month hosting solution (and I'm not knocking it), also means your battling whoever else is on that server for resources.

Because web browsers are limited to 2 connections to a url at one time, one of the easiest ways to speed up page load time is to put all your images and photos on a seperate domain name (images.somedealer.com). This way, all your HTML can load in right away, giving the appearance that things are happening as soon as a user clicks to your site, and then all your images/photos filter in 2 at a time. Very affective, free and easy to do. You can take it even further and create urls for your javascript and CSS (js.somedealer.com, css.somedealer.com).

If we take a look at mileone.com using ySlow, it shows that on the homepage there are 21 external javascript files, 4 external style sheets and 38 images. However, most of these components are hosted on different domains/sub-domains, and so when you go to mileone.com, you get that appearance of an instantly loading website, even though in reality, there's an abundance of http connections going on!

Chip-

 

[Mike (blog)]

I ran the Internet Department of a dealer that signed up with BZ. $5300 per month, 5 years and they never delivered on any of the promises they made. Never gave us our kiosks that were a part of the package and anytime we had a problem, the answer was "we have a system." On one conference call, involving the owner and general manager of my dealership and one BZ "raving Fan Manager" whom I had numerous e-mails to and from, told me and my bosses that she had no idea who I was when called out on leaving us high and dry.

During the courtship of our dealerships owner, I was sent to a local dealer who was using BZ to pick the Internet Directors Brain, I was given no substantial evidence of how things worked. I must say in retrospect, the other dealers director was in kahootz with BZ to get local dealers to sign up.

The end all is that BZ can use whatever tactics they want, because there are dealers out there that I could present with a revolutionary system I call 10 key and a sharpie, and with a good enough sales pitch I would rake in the dough, some dealers are not interested enough in counting on themselves, and the people they employ and think there are some magic beans that will change everything for them.

BZ is the master of selling Magic Beans, against all of my wishes to stay away my boss still signed up.

All BZ sells is things that anyone on this site already knows, make your web address the focal point of your advertising, mine your own database for customers and continue to grow it by adding more customer e-mails.

With that last paragraph, I think I just helped some dealer save $5300 per month or more.

p.s. if anyone knows of a dealer interested in the revolutionary system 10 key and a sharpie I am available!

 

[smallfry]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the responses. Please forgive my "piecemeal" response.

"Ok SCM, you're putting out the effort for sure, all great info.
We all take on roles, some of us are small, some are large. EACH of us has unique challenges. EXAMPLE: Due to your size, You can "out effort" a bigger store and make your presentations far more personal. If you put more effort into your presentations, you could expect your # of pages viewed and time on site to increase."

Hi Joe,

What do you mean by presentations ? In regards to roles, I'm the owner.

"Bounce rate tells me that most of your traffic comes from Search engines. Yes? No?"

Half search engines, other half local sites (autotrader, cars.com etc....)