Is The VDP a Good Landing Page?

[Gayle Rogers]

Well said @Tallcool1 my thoughts exactly and it reminded me that I found this the other day and have been meaning to share it.

This is awesome! I've always subscribed to the notion that consumers need the following to convert...An identifiable brand, a price they can afford, social proof and an easy way to make a transaction. This example is really close to ticking all those boxes.

 

[Tallcool1]

Does that mean that your VDP should include more "Why Me" info or that it's just a bad landing page?

Great question!

I used to think that it meant that my VDP should include more information about my store, with scrolling reviews and actually mixing in some of our core values as slides in the vehicle photos. Show a couple pictures, then a slid of our core values...show a few more pictures, and then another "why buy here" slide. What I found through our heat mapping is that customers didn't look at this content on the VDP.

I guess that means that my VDP, in its current form, is a bad landing page.

 

[Gayle Rogers]

I think everyone currently on this discussion is following this one as well where @Nick Spolec reported that his experiment to run specific ads directly to VDP's increased visits, but not leads.

So far, not looking so good for the current incarnation of the VDP as a landing page...

 

[jeffwallen]

Here's an idea. Dynamically build out Landing pages for all new and used vehicles in inventory. You would only need one or two pages. <Example> Your a Nissan dealer and you have a couple used Honda civic's in stock. We can build the SEM ad dynamically based on an inventory feed( mileage, color, starting price, etc...). Customer clicks the ad and instead of the click leading to a SRP or VDP, take them to a dynamic landing page. As the page renders, it pings edmunds api and pulls pic's, reviews, options, market data and other items pertaining to that specific Year, make and model or Make, model in general. Load a video talking about the Used Car inspection process at the dealership, dynamically Load a Payment caculator widget powered by the website provider and load an inventory widget for those specific used Honda civic's. Populate a tradein widget like KBB or Blackbook. Customer can click on a vehicle in the inventory widget and go straight to the VDP for that specific vehicle.</Example>

You can ping the API and return back almost any data for any type of vehicle in your inventory. The customer experience goes through the roof because now they have all the research data and Instock inventory to make a decision on and they didn't have to search an entire website just find the info they were looking for and you as the dealer provided the customer a little more data about the vehicle that they are interested about even though your not a Honda dealer.


Thoughts????

This is gold, love your thought. You can also get into the funnel at a higher point by attacking ideas with your landing pages you described, attacking the starting points for used car buyers - "highest safety rating for mini-vans", "truck towing capacity comparison", etc... I've seen great results putting SEM behind a kick butt auto loan calculator page that is dynamic with inventory after numbers are put in.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Just sitting here thinking. A big issue that we have in general is getting people to scroll and read below the fold. With a dynamic page like I spoke about earlier, you could easily load a floating icon or bar pointing down near the fold and make the text on the icon relevant to the specific vehicle of interest. Like "Latest Ratings and Reviews on the XYZ make model" or "Calculate Payments on XYZ make model" or "Our Inspection Process on the XYZ make model". The customer scrolls to one section and the text on the icon or bar changes to highlight the next section below it.

 

[Chris Leslie]

Just sitting here thinking. A big issue that we have in general is getting people to scroll and read below the fold. With a dynamic page like I spoke about earlier, you could easily load a floating icon or bar pointing down near the fold and make the text on the icon relevant to the specific vehicle of interest. Like "Latest Ratings and Reviews on the XYZ make model" or "Calculate Payments on XYZ make model" or "Our Inspection Process on the XYZ make model". The customer scrolls to one section and the text on the icon or bar changes to highlight the next section below it.

I wonder if the reason might be that all the good stuff is above the scroll.

Crazy thought here but what if Images were displayed in a vertical layout vs gallery?

you could insert widgets between pics with things like "Calc payments" Ratings / reviews" and get people to scroll at the same time.

 

[umer.autojini]

The answer to this really depends on what triggered the click. As long as it answers the users query above the fold and in 5-10 seconds it is a good landing page.

 

[ed.brooks]

Is that Dick Nixon tattooed on his elbow?!?

Nixon? Really?!!!!

 

[Gayle Rogers]

Nixon? Really?!!!!

HAHAHAHA. It still looks a little like Nixon...

 

[Gayle Rogers]

OK, what got me thinking about this was a client requested research on a vendor that specializes in VDP traffic. The results were terrible. I couldn't believe how bad the metrics were.

So, instead of jumping straight to conclusions, I wanted to see if anyone else had a POV that would make me think about it differently.

My thoughts...It's a dead end page. The last place I want to drop an offsite click. @Tallcool1 said something similar to my initial reaction...It's like putting someone in a car for a test drive before you ask them a single question.

@Rick Buffkin & @Chris Leslie both made some really good points about reorganizing the page. I do think VDP's are organized poorly and lack the ability to lead the customer. We have tried dynamically driven pages in the past, with mixed results. That said, there were some things you mentioned that we didn't include.

All said, It seems like there is some solidarity. There are instances where it could be a good landing page, but more than the basic vehicle information is needed to help turn a casual shopper into an interested shopper. Ultimately there are better landing pages.

I'm going to turn this into a bigger research project and see what pages are better and why...I'll report the results. If anyone is interested in collaborating holler at me.