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Inverse Relationship Between CarGurus and Cars.com SRP/VDP Conversions?

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#21
Tallcool1 said:
I know your operation, and know you guys run a tight ship. I am in Columbus, NE and grew up between Columbus and Grand Island.

This is what I see with Car Gurus. When my inventory gets twisted up and ages, we drop prices. As we drop prices, our SRP>VDP>Leads go way up. The down side of this is of course that Gross Profit goes way down as Car Gurus leads go up. I don't have the ability to systematically analyze this. I simply have to look at each lead individually. Generally speaking, my fresh inventory leads (units with Gross in them) on Car Gurus are more commonly non responsive leads.

So, yes I do get inventory views and leads from Car Gurus. Unfortunately they aren't typically leads that convert to much Gross Profit. But hey, they are better than a loss at the auction!

Cars on the other hand hasn't proven to be a good Lead source. There is certainly more to it than Lead count alone. My SRP to VDP percentage runs about 1.25% on Cars. Car Gurus runs about 4%.

I do not see the reverse correlation between the two like you do. You hate to write it off as coincidence because you have such a large pool of data supporting something otherwise. Interesting to me.
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Aging = Price Drop = Leads = low gross LOL Thanks @Tallcool1 I was just shocked when I saw @flosho chart and wondered if more were seeing the same trend. We have luck with both CG and Cars. One is heavier in leads and one is heavier in referral traffic that converts on the sites. They are a little ying and yang from what we see at our locations.
 
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#22
Dan Sayer said:
Aging = Price Drop = Leads = low gross LOL Thanks @Tallcool1 I was just shocked when I saw @flosho chart and wondered if more were seeing the same trend. We have luck with both CG and Cars. One is heavier in leads and one is heavier in referral traffic that converts on the sites. They are a little ying and yang from what we see at our locations.
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I really never gave the end summation of my Car Gurus experience. Of course we all know that lead traffic on specific units increases as we drop price. What I didn't say is this: For the most part, I really don't get much attributable sales via Car Gurus unless the vehicle is priced uncharacteristically low for what it is. I am not saying this as a bad thing, because I am the one continuing to pay them every month. They bring value to my store, it just isn't the value one would typically associate with a lead provider!
 
#23
Dan Sayer said:
I've been tracking data from our 3rd Party Classifieds for a very long time and one of the (many) items I monitor is the SRP/VDP conversion. I feel this is one of the indicators of how well we are merchandising, pricing, etc our inventory.
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Dan,
Can you do a refresh on your SRP/VDP ratios? Your chart below is Feb 2020, literally the month prior to COVID.
1708383253593.png
 
#25
joe.pistell said:
Dan,
Can you do a refresh on your SRP/VDP ratios? Your chart below is Feb 2020, literally the month prior to COVID.
View attachment 8585
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Holy cow. Dusting off this one are we? lol I shifted my focus in the stores during Covid and had since cancelled CarGurus. I could go back and see what data I collected but I'm sure there are other Refreshers that would have current Cars.com and CarGurus data to see if the inverse anomaly I was tracking is true today. Or were you looking for something else @joe.pistell? I'm leaving for 20Group this week so it may have to wait.
 
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#27
Dan Sayer said:
Straight out of Cars.com and CarGurus dashboards at the time. They both had 13 months of SRP/VDP % on their dashboards ongoing.
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@Dan Sayer I'm trying to get an idea of what the ranges are for various dealers. Gurus dropped the ratio, you have to calc it manually. Cars still has it
1708384233719.png

If ANYONE here has your SPR/VDP click thru % for AutoTrader, CARS, or CarGurus, plz post it here.
Heres one of mine:
1708384343463.png
 
#28
Usually run about 3.3% on Cars, 1.8% on AT, and 7.6% on CG. I think it's important to note that I'm a one price store, so unsurprising that I might run higher on CG than others. I'm not convinced my number on AT is accurate though. I have to figure out how they define "search impressions." I don't think that has the same meaning as the number of SRP views. But if I use search impressions and divide VDP views by that the number is much higher. Either way, I'm not seeing an inverse relationship.
 

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