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Online Shopping to Online Buying

Car sales will never be 100% online, or 100% offline. It will be a mix that will be determined by the shopper.

I think most of us here agree with this. We have a couple of the online deal making products being used at a couple of our stores. Customers who choose to enter that process buy at a very high rate. I will have research how many people start the process but "abandon the cart" though. I don't view these tools as "lead providers", they are customer service assistance tools to help them make a decision. Although buying a car completely online is not mainstream YET, there are clearly people who want to do business that way. Just take a look at Carvana's @mentions on Twitter"
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=@carvana&src=typd Their customers love the service.
 
Not to knock Josh at all, because I think he's right, but I think it's just common sense :)
haha, It's definitely simple and common sense!

The complicated aspect of all this, is making it simple and easy for the customer - however they choose to shop and transact.

In the meantime @JoePistell, please get busy building and integrating this platform so we that can actually compete with @Cullen C and Carvana in that tiny market of online sales :). in addition to keeping all that in-store traffic...
 
haha, It's definitely simple and common sense!

The complicated aspect of all this, is making it simple and easy for the customer - however they choose to shop and transact.

In the meantime @JoePistell, please get busy building and integrating this platform so we that can actually compete with @Cullen C and Carvana in that tiny market of online sales :). in addition to keeping all that in-store traffic...
The really interesting thing is that you can have the best of BOTH worlds (as long as your willing to be a one-price store or a very limited negotiation / market-price store).
 
I keep viewing posts, blogs, webinars, seminars, speaking engagements, OEM bullitens, etc. that all seem to focus in on one strategy and suggests it will work for all dealerships everywhere. There's not a one size fits all strategy that will work in all markets for all types of stores. I'd love it if I can find a store or group to work at that could get away with the one-price method of selling everything at invoice like the earlier example (especially with an OEM like Hyundai that has a good amount of holdback). Wouldn't ya know it though, the competition in the Chicagoland area is too aggressive for that. If I started advertisning our Hyundais for invoice we might as well turn off the lights but I'm sure it can work in some markets like Ontario.

Now a couple people have brought up GM's SCD which I used for a few years at another group. In 2 years experience with it, I can count on one hand the amount of people that actually went through the whole SCD process the way it's designed (shop, click, drive). Most people that completed the online process still wanted to experience the vehicle before committing to it let alone accepting whatever price was listed. Recently I had an opportunity to use Dealertrack's Digital Retailing with similar results.

Regardless of my personal experience, if people wanted it and it worked, why isn't SCD heralded as a huge success for GM? In this November article, GM brags that since SCD "Rolled out nationally in November 2013, Shop-Click-Drive has resulted in about 29,000 new-vehicle sales and generated another 200,000 new- and used-vehicle sales leads, GM says." That's a 14.5% lead-to-sold conversion rate. Our website leads generated from a traditional call to action closed at nearly 20% last month. That same article claims there are 4300 dealerships using SCD. 29,000 sales/4300 dealerships = 6.7 cars per dealership in over 2 years time. If people want it and are ready for it, why aren't they using it?

Shopping carts are as old as the internet. If shoppers wanted an automotive shopping cart solution, we'd had them a loooong time ago.

Every now and then I'll talk to someone, a friend or new acquaintance, that will brag about buying their car recently "online" and how awesome the experience was. I'll smile and continue the conversation eventually learning that they didn't really buy it online. Rather, they contacted the dealership and the salesperson/BDC was smart enough to provide them all the information they needed (price, financing, availability, etc) to feel comfortable visiting the dealership where they negotiated and finalized the deal. So really what happened is they started their journey online and had received great communication with the dealership which lead to a sale.
 
Regardless of my personal experience, if people wanted it and it worked, why isn't SCD heralded as a huge success for GM?

Coming from a tech/UI background, I think GM's implementation of Shop. Click. Drive. is absolutely awful. They can't even integrate it into the site, which signals to me how disconnected the overall process is. Not to mention the flow of the application actually discourages people from buying. It's almost like there's in-fighting within GM about the future of car buying - and this is what we get. I encourage everyone reading this post to experiment with the process themselves and not get angry.
 
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Great article from SearchEngineLand that discusses some of the hurdles that stand in the way of an eCommerce-type solution for auto sales (as well as other high involvement purchases), featuring Carvana!

"How To Increase Conversions On Big Ticket Items"

an excerpt -
"...selling high-end products and services online requires an understanding that the customer journey for this type of transaction is altogether different from that for everyday e-commerce.

People think and behave differently when buying cheap vs. pricey items, and the customer journey for big-ticket or high-value items is actually more similar to B2B sales than B2C.

If you’re trying to sell high-end fashion, cars, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, retirement living or any other expensive item online, here are five conversion optimizing tips to help move more buyers through your conversion funnel."
Click here for the entire article
 
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I think most of us here agree with this. We have a couple of the online deal making products being used at a couple of our stores. Customers who choose to enter that process buy at a very high rate. I will have research how many people start the process but "abandon the cart" though. I don't view these tools as "lead providers", they are customer service assistance tools to help them make a decision. Although buying a car completely online is not mainstream YET, there are clearly people who want to do business that way. Just take a look at Carvana's @mentions on Twitter"
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=@carvana&src=typd Their customers love the service.
Indeed... I've been saying that, yet 100 posts ago and also in the other thread that was hijacked with this subject (leads oriented). :)
 
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