What do you think of this?

[ed.brooks]

It seems if we're conflating two completely issues; "Get your best price" and "Make an Offer". I've never been a fan of "Make an Offer" buttons on dealer websites.

I DO like the idea of giving the best price to every customer every time. That strategy drives traffic and volume.

 

[csabatka1]

Chad thats pretty cool, so the customer can make an offer with an instant acceptence? If you dont mind, is it live, if so do consumers send info more then once on a vehicle to try and find out the best accepted price?

It's not currently live, I'm in the process of designing and developing the functionality of it and waiting on final percentages. My goal was end of this week, but it appears it might be pushed back to early next week. We would like to find that acceptable accepted price point for our shoppers and for us. Once a customer's offer is accepted that information will be passed onto internet department and they'll work through the deal from there at that price.

 

[craigh]

I assume you're requesting contact information from the customer before they can get results?
If so, are you sending this back to the store regardless of the outcome?

On the development side, are you doing this as a Wordpress plugin or just doing it right in the theme? I'm just curious.

 

[csabatka1]

It seems if we're conflating two completely issues; "Get your best price" and "Make an Offer". I've never been a fan of "Make an Offer" buttons on dealer websites.

I DO like the idea of giving the best price to every customer every time. That strategy drives traffic and volume.

This is a very tricky because competing dealerships can and will leverage this pricing information against you. At one of our smaller dealership (town of around 50,000) we displayed best price online and on lot. We suspected another dealership was using our online best price to gain customers and we were right. They would instantly knock at least $500 off our online best price for same vehicle.

 

[csabatka1]

I assume you're requesting contact information from the customer before they can get results?
If so, are you sending this back to the store regardless of the outcome?

On the development side, are you doing this as a Wordpress plugin or just doing it right in the theme? I'm just curious.

This is something we are undecided on. There are three options we are going over. First, send information regardless of accepted or declined. Second, only sending information of accepted offers. Finally, sending information on accepted offers and declined offers, but very near that accepted offer threshold.

I'm coding this directly into our Wordpress inventory plugin's VDP using jquery, ajax, and php. A simple jquery function could easily get it done, but I don't want the public to see the source code and know that formula for accepted offers. I doubt it would happen, but it's better to hide the values.

 

[craigh]

This is something we are undecided on. There are three options we are going over. First, send information regardless of accepted or declined. Second, only sending information of accepted offers. Finally, sending information on accepted offers and declined offers, but very near that accepted offer threshold.

I think it makes sense to send the information either way.
I would log all the transactions / bartering and send it through. You never know what could happen.
That said, I would definitely exclude any submissions below the 75% mark.

I'm coding this directly into our Wordpress inventory plugin's VDP using jquery, ajax, and php. A simple jquery function could easily get it done, but I don't want the public to see the source code and know that formula for accepted offers. I doubt it would happen, but it's better to hide the values.

That makes sense. I would definitely be using PHP in that situation, especially if you wanted to record these things to the database. Sounds like a great idea though - I'm excited to see how it works out.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

In all the years, I have never seen "Make an offer" CTA work out too well. There have been several #failing attempts to have ebay'ish "online negotiating" components added to a dealership website - WideStorm - Online Negotiation System for Auto Dealers

More observations:

Of course this "get your instant price quote" is working for the dealer - it's their PRIMARY Call to Action and holds some great real-estate on the SRP and VDP. It's the first thing the customer sees (other than all the other floating sh!t on the website).

"Maybe I'm getting to "Customer Experiencey..." but seems like from a consumer end it could be fun once but would get kinda innoying not knowing the best price on each car."

-- flip the coin and it's possible the customer would engage more since they are getting something instant. If someone engages with this more than once, theres a good chance you have a HOT customer. Time to get on the phone!

Idea: once the customer converts for the first time is unlocks the rest of the pricing and either displays on the website or they still have to click to get the price but with no form fill. Keeping the customer engaged without being annoying.

??

 

[craigh]

Idea: once the customer converts for the first time is unlocks the rest of the pricing and either displays on the website or they still have to click to get the price but with no form fill. Keeping the customer engaged without being annoying.

I like this idea if you're going with the "Instant Price" option.
Could go with a "Unlock Internet Prices" angle - enter name and email / phone to unlock internet prices.

For bonus points, do the Amazon "Why do we hide prices?" and put a line about how you can't show the prices to search engines because they're too low

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Something else to consider when executing on a service like this... Classified websites like AutoTrader.com

What's the customer experience going to be like....

 

[MikeFitzpatrick]

One of the tricky parts about online negotiation is balancing human nature with customer experience. For the most part when negotiating you never want to accept the first offer, mainly because of the perception it creates.


Here is an example of what I mean.
If you are selling a car for 15K and I offer 13K and get an instant pop up that says; YOUR OFFER WAS EXCEPTED!!!. My first thought is sh!t, I left money on the table.


Obviously the objective with a tool like this is to get the customer information, but it also needs to lead into the next step of the process. Then the salesperson that is following up needs to be good (well trained) at moving the process along based on how the lead was originally generated.


I am thinking that varying "approval" messages would be worth testing. Something like:


"Congratulations! your offer has been tentatively* approved. While at the dealership, don't forget to ask your sales consultant about our special offers we have for Internet customers**."


*OAC disclaimer stuff. (this creates a seed of doubt so they follow through to the next step)
** Teaser to help move the process along.