To Micro-site or not to Micro-site?

[Joe Pistell]

Oscar,
One more thing.

How do those pop-under and over coupons work for you? I havent tried it and I'll try anything as long as it sells cars.

Joe

 

[Oscar Vanderkooij]

Joe,

Funny that you mention CMS sites. I am actually in the process to create my own platform based on an open source CMS. The great potential here would be to create a platform that allows me to create content seperate from lead creation ( e.g. create content that you can combine with a form that makes sense for that content) Now we have to create a content page and then link it to a standard form page. This means you lose visitors with the extra click. I want to create a platform that allows a dealer to place different pieces of content on one page. Give me about 3 months and I will be done. Have the layout and basic design done, just need to put all the pieces together (new inventory feed, used inventory feed, flexible forms, etc)

These vendors get to set in telling dealers how it should be done eventhough they all used to work at a dealer themselves and most have no clue.

Regarding the pop up and pop under. Call dealeron (dot) com and tell them that you want to try this tool. It definately increased my conversion ratio ( I had dealeron place this tool for free on my dealerskins site which gave me an increase of 1-2% conversion, which equated to about 50-100 leads)

With dealerskins I converted about 5-6%, now with dealeron site I am converting 9-12% and with dealerskins it included service appointments and with dealeron it does not, so the difference is even bigger.

I will keep working on this open and flexible platform for dealers so you can change themes with the click of a button, add content with the click of a button, seo friendly, etc...

 

[Ryan Lucia]

Great news! Add chat to your micro site and watch it blow up. Yep, you have confusion, unwillingness to give info, personal uncertainty. All of those are the exact reason to add chat to your dealership websites. Try it, trust me you will love it. A lot of times the reason you don't see results are because people don't like giving info (filling out forms) to capture what they are looking for. I have seen great success on our micro sites from live chat. We are a new micro site company that has hit the scene and we see huge results. Toyota of Orlando get over 1100 leads a month from chat. They pay less than $200 a month. Talking about ROI. Add 20 micro sites and chat to all of them you can do some major damage. I have over 10 years in the automotive industry and micro sites and chat are the best advantages you can have. Leads from your site are the best or close to it. Response time is critical. Most people submit a lead to more than 2 places before visiting a store. Site back and imagine having someone land on your micro site and start chatting with you. How does it give you an advantage? How does it now? So does it take away from our standard leads from email and phone? NOPE! 1% change in both. Just increase your leads by 25% to 400%.

This will make you different, easy to work with, and you get that instant gratification you always want from your clients. At the end of the conversation you will know where you stand.

 

[Lead Dispatch]

Micro-Sites absolutely work, but not to belabor the great points already made, it's all about conversions. 1 micro-site or 20 micro-sites don't matter much if you can't correlate sales back to each one (or whatever your metric is).

With regard to the expense of building a micro-website Wordpress is a great platform. You can get hosting for $10 per month to test.

With regard to auto dealers having to pay through the nose for services, the auto industry has painted itself into a corner.

Here's my take: Back in 2000-2001 I worked for a pre-dot-com crash company pioneering VoIP and click talk technology. Our test bed were auto dealers across the country. We even participated in the nation-wide roll out for MBUSA.com

We tried to offer the service to dealers at just $25 per month to pilot test with us. Most dealers balked at the service as the price was too low. Once we came out of testing and the price went to $150 for the low end package dealers signed up left and right.

Most GM's won't give a company the time of day if a service appears to be cheap. On the other hand, with effectiveness of online advertising I don't understand why dealers will pay autotrader.com or some other company $6,000+ per month to market their inventory.

In a test I conducted with a local micro-site, we outperformed traffic from autotrader with just organic SEO alone.

Quote: Ryan Lucia

"Leads from your site are the best or close to it. Response time is critical. Most people submit a lead to more than 2 places before visiting a store."

Ryan is dead-on. As a company that generates leads for auto dealers nation-wide micro-sites have reduced lead costs for some of our test dealers by 25-30%. Response time to leads will be a critical factor in 2009. We have seen in some cases where the same individual hits 5 of our sites and submits the same lead within minutes. (no loyalty until you earn it)

 

[Manny Luna (blog)]

Alex this was posted in 2008, please tell me your thoughts about micro sites now that were in 2011. Do you still feel the same way about them?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'm sure Alex will respond to this at some point but what concerns me is that we had over 85 comments for this post that are not showing up. So thanks for digging into the archive. Maybe we need to have a "updated" post around micro sites.

Micro sites / pages still have their place and can be effective at the right moment. Micro sites miss out when they only geared towards the form conversion only.

Manufacturers have also tightened up since this article was first written. Most not allowing micro sites, nor anymore than 1 URL. Heck, I cant even have a dedicated Service Site for my Toyota dealership.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Manny - my opinion hasn't changed much.  I even gave microsites a solid try with a strategy that involved over 40 URL's and it was too much work for too little return.  I had much better results putting my time and energy into my own website.

As Jeff mentioned, now OEMs are dictating what you can and can't use inside domains which limit microsite strategies.