Just finished reading through everyone's comments. I remember reading your post Kyle when it first went up. I was curious to see what others had to say about it and so I kept it flagged in my inbox. Hard to believe that was 2 months ago.
Totally with you on the where you believe dealer sites can be taken. A lot of points are mentioned here by others. Joe P brings up not just a valid point but the right point. All the good AI in the world will get us nowhere if the UI doesn't better engage customers.
To answer your question, "What challenges do we need to overcome as an industry to make it happen?" I think the first one is to overcome the "cul-de-sac" experience where all you can do is leave or give up your contact info. People need something purposeful to do with a dealer on the web other than "get married".
This is where social media comes into play. With the use of sites such as Facebook and Google+ dealers can now interface with customers online in ways that are not possible on dealer websites.
As website providers adapt to existing and coming technologies designed to interface with dealers in multiple ways beyond contact info and a purchase transaction, the dealer-customer relationship can continue to expand. For right now, social media is filling that void, and that is ok.
Nice topic Kyle. Thank you.
ps - I wrote a post that references this one where I talk more about how social media fills the void websites don’t. Feel free to have a look - http://goo.gl/G9hUO
Totally with you on the where you believe dealer sites can be taken. A lot of points are mentioned here by others. Joe P brings up not just a valid point but the right point. All the good AI in the world will get us nowhere if the UI doesn't better engage customers.
To answer your question, "What challenges do we need to overcome as an industry to make it happen?" I think the first one is to overcome the "cul-de-sac" experience where all you can do is leave or give up your contact info. People need something purposeful to do with a dealer on the web other than "get married".
This is where social media comes into play. With the use of sites such as Facebook and Google+ dealers can now interface with customers online in ways that are not possible on dealer websites.
As website providers adapt to existing and coming technologies designed to interface with dealers in multiple ways beyond contact info and a purchase transaction, the dealer-customer relationship can continue to expand. For right now, social media is filling that void, and that is ok.
Nice topic Kyle. Thank you.
ps - I wrote a post that references this one where I talk more about how social media fills the void websites don’t. Feel free to have a look - http://goo.gl/G9hUO
