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The Myth of The Dealer Web Site Conversion Ratio

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#21
Joe,

Interesting. I like the Velcro analogy. I agree, that's why I hard coded my blog entries on my homepage with good 'ole HTML. I'm not pulling them from a database. Totally static content. That might seem backwards, but I'm testing something out.

HTML is an old Internet tech, but the perfect spider food for search engine algorithms. And I believe I can get bonus points with the search engines if my 'index' file (homepage file) changes size (bytes) very frequently. That's why I'm hard-coding in the content. It'll become more dynamic later.

I think the hybrid site (flash w/ text blog) will be a good model for awhile. At least that's what I'm going with this season.

I've resorted to putting a chili recipe up on our blog to go along with our Winter Chill Weekend Special. I must be getting desperate.... :)
 
#22
First of all, I love this site. Great content, great interaction and informative. As the Marketing Manager (and de facto Internet Manager) of a Honda dealer in Ohio, conversion ratio has now become a VERY important topic. Honda has started tracking dealer response times and conversion ratio of all prospects that come through their site or from approved 3rd party vendors. As Jay mentioned, universal measurement is needed, but don't forget the human factor. A critical element in the equation is making sure that all prospects are properly accounted for in the sales process. At our dealership, we are relying on 3 sales people to to handle internet leads and document the results. (Over 2500 last year alone from Honda) We have no stand alone Internet Dept, our DMS is Cobol based and ancient, we have Higher Gear but don't use it because it won't communicate with our DMS. This means that any analysis regarding sales conversion effectiveness is doomed because the data is incomplete or completely wrong. We're in the process of setting up a BDC, and looking at a new DMS. (Anyone have an opinion regarding Arkona?) By the way, according to Honda, our current conversion ratio is 9.7, slightly below the standard. In case you're wondering, we finished 2007 with just over 3000 new units sold, and just over 100 were credited to internet leads. One other thing to keep in mind. When we use metrics like conversion ratio, we focusing solely on whether we sold a car immediately to that lead. What about the value of having another customer in your database for future marketing efforts? They (or their family) will be buying again in the future. What about pitching them service, body shop, etc. All of these efforts would be FREE when using your CRM.
 
#23
Wayne: I really like the idea of the blog posts on the front.. I agree with your concept. Heck, maybe even a rss feed. I'm going to have to play with this some this week. I agree with your flash/text ideas as well.. I have about 10 different flash sites 75% built - that's about as far as I get before i start changing my mind on how I want it :) html sites I can whip up in a weekend of all-nighters!

Has anyone actually had SEO success from blogs yet (beyond the consistant updating of the homepage, like Wayne does)?

Is there a forum for this sort of conversation? I fell guilty using blog comments for off-topic things like this..
 
#24
Gary! my father is firends with Jeff and he was showing him your new facility - it took his breath away! He said he felt like our place was 'selling from a barn' :)

I noticed the new site was very much geared toward the "Eisenberg style" for converting... now I see why. I'd like to see how it works for you guys - I haven't had a lot of luck getting people to read much copy on our site - they start clicking the menu instantly. So I tried to condense any marketing messages to ADD friendly bullet type statements :)

As big as you guys are, I'd think you would doing much bigger numbers from the internet. You really have some serious untapped potential there.
 
#26
I was thinking of an inventory rss feed, but just for seo purposes really. My RSS comment was more along the lines of using an rss feed to provide spider food content on the site similar to how you were using the blog posts :) your method of setting the flash content to expand to the full page is a perfect way to cleanly push it all below the fold :) I love it when people say flash sites are not good for SEO - I always thought the opposite since it gives you so many 'legit' ways of providing altenrate content :)
 
#28
Jason -

RSS is a nice feature. I've had positive feedback on our inventory & blog feeds.

And yes, our blog drives additional traffic to our main site. The blog is a key element of our SEO strategy.

Conversions are the key - converting web traffic to leads & leads to sales.

If you're not driving traffic to pages with targeted content based on their searches & improving your lead conversions by tracking their behavior with web analytics, it will be increasingly difficult to add incremental sales to your Internet efforts.
 
#29
Jason writes:
>>>I was thinking of an inventory rss feed, but just for seo purposes really. My RSS comment was more along the lines of using an rss feed to provide spider food content on the site similar to how you were using the blog posts...
 

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