Question about a Decrease in Form Fills

[Bandre]

I'd like to throw a question out there about a decrease in form fill leads we are receiving from our website.

We notice that all key performance indicators are up: visits, visitors, time on site, phone leads... but our form fill leads are down. We have not made any drastic changes to our website. Does anyone have any insight or experience they can share to explain this change?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

This is a trend that isn't really much of a tend. Overall only a small percentage of consumers will ever fill out a form on a website. Especially a dealership website form. I've seen increased traffic over the years with many websites with the conversion staying about the same.

With that being said, have you made any changes to your website and forms? There are so many small tweeks that can me made to increase or decrease form conversion. All the way down to the placement and color of the form.

What are the call actions your are using to prompt people to fill out the form?
How much information are you asking for or making mandatory?

There have been books written on form conversion. Change up your forums and ask your provider to do some A/B split tests, if they are willing.

 

[joe.pistell]

I'd like to throw a question out there about a decrease in form fill leads we are receiving from our website.

We notice that all key performance indicators are up: visits, visitors, time on site, phone leads... but our form fill leads are down. We have not made any drastic changes to our website. Does anyone have any insight or experience they can share to explain this change?

Thanks in advance.

Bandre,

This connects to an old DR blog reply I made. It's an industry wide problem, it's a classic merchandising puzzle. Hang on..here we go.

Consider that the average car is owned 2,3,4 years before the owner replaces it. Lets say it's 3 years. Now, how long has the internet been an essential part of car shopping? Lets estimate that web shopping for a car hit critical mass in 2001. That's 9 years. So, the average car shopper has "web shopped" for approx. 3 cars.

Next: From the Shoppers Point of View.
Buying a car is all about shoppers gathering information to better position themselves in the buying process. Web shopping has to produce results for it to have shopping value. <--dwell on that comment for a bit. Part of your "why is our web forms volume down" answer is in these 2 simple observations.

Our web forms force the shopper to reveal their private info. From the shoppers point of view, Will the from produce rich enough info to REWARD the shopper so they willingly give up their private shopper status?

So... We have shoppers that at in their 3-4th buying cycle, they've already experienced the "submit a form get bombarded with calls". So they have "learned" to avoid using the forms. You need a better "hook" that will REWARD the shopper with an offer so strong that it outweighs risk of revealing their private info.


Summary:
Improve your forms and add new forms with a strong WIFM* message and your form use will rise.

HTH
Joe

*Whats In it For Me

 

[CAORYAN]

I'd like to throw a question out there about a decrease in form fill leads we are receiving from our website.

We notice that all key performance indicators are up: visits, visitors, time on site, phone leads... but our form fill leads are down. We have not made any drastic changes to our website. Does anyone have any insight or experience they can share to explain this change?

Thanks in advance.

This is a great subject. Jeff and Joe have great points. When I was with Carsdirect I know they spent tons of time and money doing a/b testing on their forms. As a matter of fact they give price before the form so it was twice as hard to get the form filled out.

The solution....an easy one is check out autotrader.com, carsdirect.com, and cars.com and see what they are doing. They have entire departments dedicated to conversion.

This is a primary reason chat has become so successful. People want info but don't want to have to go through a ton of trouble to get it.

 

[DrewAment]

they've already experienced the "submit a form get bombarded with calls".

If you look at studies done, recent and even back in the "day", dealers were historically BAD at contacting a customer that filled out a form. Heck, nationwide average, we are even bad at it now.

So, I want to throw another spin on this...taking Joe's point of being on their 2nd or 3rd internet auto buy...they think they will NOT get contacted if they do fill out the form. So, why would they bother if it didn't work the first 1 or 2 times?

Most dealers, not the dealers that are on these boards, STRUGGLE with response time and contacting the customer.

Joe's post made me think, I am just thinking the other way. Perhaps a "Don't sit on hold waiting for us, submit this form and we will call you back in 15 min" would be a nice A part of an A/B test.

__Drew

 

[CAORYAN]

Great point Drew! I believe this to be the case. With all of our statistics people know 2 things while filling out forms 1) they may never hear back and 2) when they do it won't be at a good time. It's not just the car business. With so much email junk going around you have to fish out what you want to read and sometimes we feel because it is email we can take our time with it.

Have you guys ever heard of a technology called form to phone? It is a code that basically calls your phone and offers the details of the form and asks if you want to call press "1". This connects you to the customers in under 1 minute from the lead no matter where you are. This works great but has some issues with multiple people in one department.

 

[Alex Snyder]

We used to advertise that we would respond to someone's Internet lead within 10 minutes. When we stopped advertising that message, we did not lose a single lead. Either we weren't advertising it right or it is simply a value-added proposition.

May is the first month in a long time where we are tracking a lower lead volume (year over year), but that might not be reality when everything washes out. I don't know why our market is sending more and more leads, but it is. We're actually pulling back on the number of leads we buy. We are definitely finding that we have a threshold closing ratio that is heavily influenced by the number of leads we receive. Call it manpower, call it whatever you want - we're still trying to figure it out.

Joe is right that Internet leads, as we know them today, really started in 2001. Before that they were truly "Internet Customers" with very eccentric demands. From 2001 to late 2008 it was a fairly straightforward mix of certain lead providers/sources, staffing, and process. After September of 2008 the straightforward trends were wiped away by the automotive depression. We're still feeling the effects right now. Typically good months are no longer as good, and some typically so-so months have become great. Lead sources are hit or miss on a monthly basis too. The game is definitely more complex right now.

As for leads from our own website. All I can say is that it is about landing pages and putting your forms in the right spot. Landing pages from SEO and SEM campaigns must be relevant to the ad message and only serve-up a form AFTER the sale has been pitched (the WIFM Joe mentioned). If you strategize in this manner, you will receive more quality leads. BUT - forget leads for a minute. Your phone will ring more often with relevant landing pages, and I'll take a phone call over any Internet lead.

P.S. I know I got off on a tangent, so don't hesitate to ask me to make sense of things if this post doesn't make sense to you.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Joe is the master when it comes to getting customers to fill out forms. Joe, you could write a book on this subject.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Yeah Joe - how about a post for DealerRefresh blog on optimizing your forms for lead conversion.

"After September of 2008 the straightforward trends were wiped away by the automotive depression". - You're so right about that. You never know what the month is going to bring. One trend that has never changed (from my tracking) is the relation to showroom traffic to unique visits to my dealer websites.