What's the most annoying thing on your website?

[craigh]

Craig, does this incl' DMS status changes, or, just vAuto created changes?

It includes marking vehicles as sold - I'm not sure if that's done directly in vAuto or if vAuto gets that data from somewhere else.
We also have some rules in place where managers can set the price to $0 and have the vehicle hidden online if they want it removed, etc.
Obviously they also have an entire back-end tool of the website to make these changes, but managers expected to make pricing changes in multiple places tend to not do that in my limited experience.

Reynolds updates are really only polled once a day for us through Homenet and they refuse to give us more frequent access, so nothing I can do on that front.

 

[joe.pistell]

It should absolutely be. My busiest client updates their vAuto a minimum of twice a day - we then have to synchronize those changes to Showroom Logic, Homenet, Trader, Kijiji. Sometimes we end up with 3 different prices online at the same time.

Back in the day, because our site was 'live' we'd pitch that on all our on our Cars/Autotrader vehicle comments. "...See it on UsedCarKing.com for live updates on price and availability"

 

[joe.pistell]

...Reynolds updates are really only polled once a day for us through Homenet and they refuse to give us more frequent access, so nothing I can do on that front.

yea, we were reynolds and they shut hourly polling down.

 

[craigh]

yea, we were reynolds and they shut hourly polling down.

They play the data game really close to the chest and it's the bane of my existence.

 

[Alex Snyder]

This is my opinion, and not meant to be anything but that....

I hate things that are placed on dealership websites solely to promote lead conversion. The more I think about it, listen to shopper feedback, and dive into a significant top secret project Joe and I are on I believe more and more that lead conversion is counterproductive to the bottom line.

I'm not saying Internet leads are the devil. You still need to provide a place for someone to submit a credit application or get some peace of mind that you will trade a car ....yeah, it isn't common knowledge you do trade-ins and your trade form is the only place you say it online. What I am saying is building a site on lead conversion makes you look like a predatory car dealer. It turns off the majority of the people who visit your site; the person who doesn't submit a lead. The person who is planning to drive in to your store can get the impression you're not a business who has their best interest at heart when you display a predatory perception.

Put me back in the dealership and I'm going to strive for a lead conversion way less than 1% while catering to the shopper who "just walks in."

Again, this is just my opinion. But I'm pretty fucking right

 

[skutchhenks]

This is my opinion, and not meant to be anything but that....

I hate things that are placed on dealership websites solely to promote lead conversion. The more I think about it, listen to shopper feedback, and dive into a significant top secret project Joe and I are on I believe more and more that lead conversion is counterproductive to the bottom line.

I'm not saying Internet leads are the devil. You still need to provide a place for someone to submit a credit application or get some peace of mind that you will trade a car ....yeah, it isn't common knowledge you do trade-ins and your trade form is the only place you say it online. What I am saying is building a site on lead conversion makes you look like a predatory car dealer. It turns off the majority of the people who visit your site; the person who doesn't submit a lead. The person who is planning to drive in to your store can get the impression you're not a business who has their best interest at heart when you display a predatory perception.

Put me back in the dealership and I'm going to strive for a lead conversion way less than 1% while catering to the shopper who "just walks in."

Again, this is just my opinion. But I'm pretty fucking right

----
Thanks I just spit my coffee on my freakin phone. I love your thinking & yes you are right!

I've been asking my dealers who are fixated on online lead conversions this question for awhile... how many cars would you sell per month if we take down all contact forms from the website, and have only chat, text, phone options for customers to contact your dealership?

All of them initially say they would lose maybe 30% of their sales per month, which is ludicrous.

Then I explain to them that no matter what dealership I consult with anywhere in the country, 70% of the sales per month are ghosts, they never hit the CRM - they just show-up, walk-in to your dealership and you never knew they existed before that moment, but you're willing to make critical advertising & business decisions based on the 30% of sales that DID hit your CRM before they purchased (& converted), isn't that weird?

Then they have an aha moment, and I move into talking to them about their crappy inventory merchandising & pricing strategies, lack of continuous sales training that are really holding them back.

 

[joe.pistell]

...Put me back in the dealership and I'm going to strive for a lead conversion way less than 1% while catering to the shopper who "just walks in."

I'd give this a twist and add:

What would you rather have?

1. Lots of leads that close poorly
2. Less leads that are easier to close

(don't assume that #1 will produce more sales than #2).

 

[yagoparamo]

Following on previous entries,

Nowadays if your pooling is not working fairly often during the day is because of a poor set up. Most of bad set ups are because dealer's choices (I've been doing these type of data set ups since 2000).

Let me explain a little; Reynolds and ADP are DMS systems, they never poll fast enough for our needs in 2015. However HomeNet, Autobase.com, vAuto, etc can do polling on the hour. With the right website company they can post the data in semi-real time (API).

What happens is that most dealers want to make changes in the DMS and let the data flow from there so they only have to enter the data once. If they would enter the data (price update, delete vehicle, etc) in the inventory system the updates could be made fairly fast to the websites.

I understand the "double data entry" issue with the DMS, but those systems were not build for rapid data transfer so I'm going to assume they will lag behind these particular need for the near future.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'd give this a twist and add:

What would you rather have?

1. Lots of leads that close poorly
2. Less leads that are easier to close

(don't assume that #1 will produce more sales than #2).

Quality over Quantity. All day long.

Not only will I take Quality over Quantity but I'm willing to PAY MORE for the quality. This was something that we was striving for years ago by utilizing Polk lead scoring. I wanted ONLY the highest quality of leads but was willing to pay more per lead. We had a few lead providers onboard with us. Only a few because most were not willing to have their leads scored -- go figure!!

I was purchasing leads that scored 7-10 and paying a premium for those higher scored leads. Less leads but way more efficient, resulting in a increased lead to show and show to sold percentage.

If you've been following the DealerRefresh community over the last year or so, you'll realize that many of us have been trying to convey that online form leads, are no longer. Yet dealers have become so Lead Centric that the industry has come up with every possible trick to increase online form lead conversion.

The dealers want more leads, so what else can we add to increase conversion?

How many more call to actions can we ad?
How many more buttons can we ad?
How many more pop-up (and pop-under) forms can we add?
​

What else can we ad to our website will get us more leads? ..while pissing off most every visitor by making it so darn difficult to get the information they really want and need to make a decision?


"We need MORE internet leads" -every dealer in USA

 

[Jeff Kershner]

This is my opinion, and not meant to be anything but that....

I hate things that are placed on dealership websites solely to promote lead conversion. The more I think about it, listen to shopper feedback, and dive into a significant top secret project Joe and I are on I believe more and more that lead conversion is counterproductive to the bottom line.

I'm not saying Internet leads are the devil. You still need to provide a place for someone to submit a credit application or get some peace of mind that you will trade a car ....yeah, it isn't common knowledge you do trade-ins and your trade form is the only place you say it online. What I am saying is building a site on lead conversion makes you look like a predatory car dealer. It turns off the majority of the people who visit your site; the person who doesn't submit a lead. The person who is planning to drive in to your store can get the impression you're not a business who has their best interest at heart when you display a predatory perception.

Put me back in the dealership and I'm going to strive for a lead conversion way less than 1% while catering to the shopper who "just walks in."

Again, this is just my opinion. But I'm pretty fucking right

I would agree that you're "pretty fucking right"

Let's make it as hard as possible for the visitor to get the information they're looking for, while increasing conversion / lead form fills.