Metric chasing absurdity

[Alex Snyder]

The VDP is a great metric. How many products will anyone sell if nobody sees them

Of course. I think we're on the same page, but my point was against someone changing photos just to drive more VDP views. Common Internet practice is to show the exterior image of something in any Results Page so that someone has an idea of what they're clicking on from the thumbnail. By going outside the way people usually use the Internet some may find it annoying...I would.

Just because someone is shopping for a car doesn't mean they expect their Internet experience to be completely different than when they buy any other product.

This also applies to conversion points. Yup, we're all adults and understand what a single call to action can do. A lot of us use it on Amazon quite frequently

 

[Chris Leslie]

@Alex Snyder

Yes!

 

[Tallcool1]

@Alex Snyder

Yes!

Great quote, even though I am not particularly a fan of ducks.

Ducks today seem to show varying levels of interest depending upon what kind of bread we have, where the bread came from, how many people have handled the bread, our ability to document the handling of the bread, and the trade off to get the bread.

Ducks can be nasty little things.

 

[higherturnover]

I'll use the fishing analogy I tend to overuse but which illustrates my point. Some dealers see all these add-ons and widgets from 3rd parties as additional lead generating mechanisms because that's how they're sold by the vendors. Think more fishing lines in the water...you'll catch more fish, right? Now think of how the fish might react to so many lines in one concentrated space...swim the other direction. I'm not the typical user, but if I were shopping for a car and every primary photo was the steering wheel, I might look at one or two before moving on to another dealer on principle.

This conversation is sort of an extension of something I wrote about years ago (original post here), at least on a "big picture" level. In my opinion this is the result of so many companies out there pushing their own very specific products, combined with the fact that most dealers/managers aren't internet marketing experts. They're not all bad, but anything in excess starts to reach that point. If I have to click on ten different things to close the talking woman who offers me no value, the live chat which I may not use, the coupon popup on every VDP, the video that's set to autoplay on page load, etc. I would say I'm of the general population's opinion that enough is enough.

It all comes down to what Alex originally suggested and what the dealer's goal is: better VDP metrics or a better user experience? They're obviously not necessarily directly correlated

 

[Mark A Hoffman]

As far as the photo of the steering wheel...the dealer says that they had a 90% increase in leads and conversions increased from 2.7% to 4.9%. Since I have no idea how they arrived at those numbers, or if they are even valid, I'll just take them at face value.

So if they conducted an experiment and found that showing the steering wheel first generated more leads and increased conversions then it's hard to argue with that. There are many things that might seem counterintuitive at face value, but analyzing the data often shows another picture. Now, I would suggest that they validate their experiment with several tests, etc and make sure that there isn't some other factor contributing to that increase before they pop the champagne.

 

[ErikJonker]

Ummmm, I am super Confused...

If this was the best idea, how come the Weins Auto Group isn't even using the Cockpit/Steering wheel shot as their first VDP picture?

I went to http://www.weinscanada.com/dealerships

I could not find one car new or used with this technique being used. By no means an exhaustive search of all available inventory, but I didn't see this as the #1 picture even once on at least 20 pages I checked. I checked 4 of the 9 stores they have and the combined used car section with 546 used cars available and NADA ????

 

[ryan.gerardi]

We are drunk on metrics, but that's because there are so many and we would be fools to disregard them.

The tactics aren't the problem, it's the implementation of them.

If a dealer's end goal is to move metal units, then every touch point the dealer provides is designed to achieve that end goal, and thus you get the "predator" appearing website.

If a dealer's purpose is a customer for life, then every touch point the dealer implements would be designed to achieve its purpose. Imagine the customer experience when this is the objective!

 

[JessicaRuth]

So, if we're drunk on metric measuring absurdity what is our rehab? Where do we go from here?

Does this recent article about comparing conversion rates help?

 

[jon.berna]

So, if we're drunk on metric measuring absurdity what is our rehab? Where do we go from here?

Does this recent article about comparing conversion rates help?

This topic is relevant to something we are struggling with right now. Every dealer we talk to wants anonymized benchmark data for all the metrics we track, which will take some extra work. I personally see limited value - perhaps a distraction as dealership cultures are so very different. When you add in market, brand, sales managers etc. it starts getting pretty hazy. As a means to create attention on a struggling metric it can be useful though...

I just see the negatives with the conclusion jumping that will naturally happen. My feeling is just measure your data to your historicals, record the significant changes you made to the process and monitor the results. If you setup feedback loops for each major metric and annotate the gains/losses you should be set.

It's just so hard to compare

 

[joe.pistell]

This topic is relevant to something we are struggling with right now. Every dealer we talk to wants anonymized benchmark data for all the metrics we track, which will take some extra work. I personally see limited value -

Great work Jon, I'm 100% in your camp. It's a train wreck waiting to happen.

Dealers want anonymized benchmark data because it makes data relevant to them (i.e. "is a 30% bounce rate on my service page good or bad?"). Dealers also have a multi-generation tradition of spying on the enemy... er.... benchmarking

We've touched on this topic in our DR forums before. Here's an old link to dealer attributes that I believe can swing benchmark studies. http://bit.ly/1N7ISxt

High-level attributes:

• Franchise’s Influence
• Dealer’s Direct Responsibility
• Marketplace Influences
• Website Responsibility

Thnx for your insights Jon. Keep 'em coming