Jon Singo said:

I've been considering the BZ4X for the same reason. It's not a great EV but the employee lease deal is almost too good to pass up. Back and forth to work on the cheap!

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I went ahead and did it. The dealer did me a solid, making it impossible to turn the deal down. These guys have been selling 3 to 5 Ariyas per day since advertising this one-pay lease on Craigslist and in 1 local Marketplace group on Facebook. When he told me that, my jaw hit the floor. The day I contracted, two couples were back, each leasing a second one.

The styling isn't my favorite on a lot of these EVs. I'm not a fan of the wheels on the Ariya. I also cannot get on board with EVs as planet savers and will continue to laugh at the people who ignore all the issues of battery production and disposal and how energy pollution is created while they pompously virtue signal in blissful ignorance.

However, I can now buy in on the benefits of driving an EV. If this is the early days of development, I am very excited about the future of blended fuel sources (hybrids, for example). The idea of electric torque and combustion horsepower does make me a bit giddy for some giant tires on a massive pickup truck and getting 30+ MPG. Or running a 160 MPH sports car 600 miles on one tank of fuel with a 3-second 0-60 time.

The Ariya is our third car. It will just be an errand car and kid mover on the weekdays. Our other vehicles are gas guzzlers that are fun and good to look at. Those cars bring us joy! Although we have had three cars for years, this is the first time we have a purpose-owned one that is just for around town. This may be a formula we stick with. Once this Ariya lease is up in 18th months we'll probably consider another EV in that role... maybe another Ariya if the deal is still good.

KiwiDan said:

Hey Alex, is it dataone.org that you refer to? I’m looking for a vin data solution to feed into an app I’ve built. Vehicle spec data doesn’t seem to come up when I search their site. Can you point me to further info on their vehicle data?

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We use them at FRIKINtech. We started with Chrome, but found it to be antiquated for our newer technologies. DataOne is much easier to scale with. Enjoy!

pedrohfontoura said:

Hey guys, I've been working with a dealership over in Morrisville, PA for a little while now, and I decided to take a peak into their marketing strategy to find the reason why we were having such a low walk in traffic.

Their location is extremely hidden & it's very unusual to have someone come in from just seeing our lot.

I understand it's very difficult to handle finances, manage a team, bills, inventory & etc so the last thing they want to do is handle marketing

So the problem was clear, we didn't have a good location so how would we bring more clients in?

I decided to take matters into my own hands and basically optimized their online presence to bring more people and get more appointments. And shockingly it was a great success!

We started this project late in January and the dealership went from selling 12 cars/mo to 26 in February!!

Therefore, I see many dealerships trying to do their best to make sure they are being seen and honestly the logical answer is to just get your business in front of more people.

I can share how I've done this in a video or a different thread but I was curious to know if any of you guys have considered even looking into this?

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How did you do in March. MTD for April.

Good job doubling sales......during the biggest month of the year for used car dealers. I am interested in seeing if your client is sustaining that level of success.

Carsten said:

Congrats on helping your technology challenged dealership!

Not sure what to have considered into this.

Why don't you share and I'm sure people will give you feedback.

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His post is a little bit misleading. He is a vendor. Boost Your Sales By 30% | Evolve Groupe

joe.pistell said:

@Alex Snyder, you just spent MONTHS car shopping with your wife, nothing is more valuable than wearing that hat.

Thoughts?

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Nothing has been more enlightening in my career than becoming a customer. I look back at the stupid shit I did as a dealer in the name of making the process easier for my coworkers without regard to the customer experience and cringe. Every time I walk into a dealership, the signs of this approach blaze like fire. I see it everywhere. It is apparent on websites, too.

Let me be a little more constructive around online merchandising.

Photos are key. Period. End of story. Autotrader, Cars.com, and CarGurus work when you have good photos of NEW and used cars. No photo, no click. I will click on a VDP without a photo when I'm super low in the funnel. That means I have made a decision that I am going to visit your dealership in person and I'm trying to determine what OTHER vehicles you have for me to look at. You already hooked me with a car that had decent photos.

The part about decent photos is the thumbnail needs to be appealing in the sea of cars within a VLP. A 3/4 shot with the wheel turned is my preference. When it is a side profile or direct front view my scanning is disrupted and I find that annoying. I try not to reward that behavior by skipping past it. I don't like being annoyed, especially when I'm enjoying the hunt for my next car!

Interior photos! Take more interior shots. I just bought 2 cars and am still hunting for my unicorn "overlander." I'm always wanting to see the underside of the used car for any rust, what is the condition of all the seats (including a third row), what is the condition of the steering wheel, what buttons are on the car help me understand what package or options the car has.

What you should consider in vehicle photography:

• VIN explosions and data sources are different from one website to another. Autotrader may use Chrome as a vehicle decoder while another site will use DataOne. Those companies view data differently and how they give it back to the website tech needs to be interpreted. Interpretations can vary significantly between CarGurus and Cars.com or Dealer.com and DealerInspire. At the end of the day, those interpretations are made by humans with engineering jobs. They may have been on a deadline... who knows. The point is, you cannot rely on data to give a shopper any confidence. Photos sell your car for you.
• Your online shopper is an expert. Assume they have looked at dozens of cars online and know how to spot options and packages. By taking better photos of buttons you'll be helping these people in a big way. They will appreciate it! Yes, they will become dumb when they become a physical shopper.
• Take photos of the dash buttons on the left side of the steering wheel - these are missed way too often.
• Take photos of the buttons on the roof and if there are any in the second row (like around a DVD player screen)
• Take multiple photos of the center stack to include the radio, nav screen, climate control, seat climate control, center shifter, all the way to the center console.
• Always take a photo of the dash with the car on showing the miles

These bullets may sound like a lot, but I'm only talking about a few more interior images here. Try it, you'll find this ask isn't a big process change.

George Nenni said:

I've run GA4 reporting for @joe.pistell for a few years now, and when he made merchandising improvements, injecting interior photos early, adding text to explain options, his conversion rate quickly went to 2-3X our conversion rate benchmark (math=forms, calls, chats divided by sessions). Tough to argue against these results.

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TY George,
I have 6 stores in beta.

• 1 store broke a 10 year sales record (120 months of sales)
• 3 other stores set Best Month Ever.

In my circles, March was a strong used car month, but, I like what I am seeing... I may be onto something I need 5 more dealers to join in the beta and help me validate this. Anyone game?

Joe Pistell
Founder, AutoMagic Labs
[email protected]
JC AutoMagic Inc | Automotive Dealership Analytics

The internet shopping process for real estate shopping is very similar to used cars.
I like the strategy of KiwiDan's choreography.

KiwiDan said:

1. The hook
- 2 external (front and rear 3/4)
- 2 internal ( wide angle dash and front seats)
- 1-3 high value features

2. External
A sequence of all wide angle external photos with key close shots

3. Internal
A sequence of wide angle internal photos with key close ups

4. The rest
All other close up photos

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flosho said:

Our current setup is cumbersome in that we can receive text messages through our website and the tracking numbers we use on craigslist/facebook, but I have to manually log into our website's CRM tool and forward those texts to the CRM we actually use. It will send them in the proper format, but it doesn't do it automatically.

I'm looking for a company that does call tracking and will take any incoming phone call and forward to our main dealer line or route directly to our sales ring group and the text messages will be forwarded in ADF format to the CRM as a lead.

Does it exist? Is there a better option without switching CRM/website providers

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We use TotalCX/DriveCentric but most trackers like CallRevu and CarWars have this function as well with most major CRMs.

@Alex Snyder, you just spent MONTHS car shopping with your wife, nothing is more valuable than wearing that hat.

Thoughts?

BillKVMotorCo said:

1,000% accurate that photo engagement is near the top of the heap of most important engagement metrics. I think it's the second most important behind payment calculator events.

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I'll give your take a twist, from my POV, great photo engagement leads to great payment calc. engagement (not vice versa)

BillKVMotorCo said:

In spite of the fact that customers say they hate this? I agree that photos should be in a certain order, but I'm going to do what the customer says that they like. As I said, this is the way I used to do it, so it took me a lot of convincing to change it, but when the customer speaks, I listen. We do the exterior, pictures showing all of the seats, then the hot buttons, and then the rest. When I presented customers with several variations, this was emphatically their choice.

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Bill, I'm simply letting the data guide me. I've run GA4 reporting for @joe.pistell for a few years now, and when he made merchandising improvements, injecting interior photos early, adding text to explain options, his conversion rate quickly went to 2-3X our conversion rate benchmark (math=forms, calls, chats divided by sessions). Tough to argue against these results.

For your Facebook survey you did, what was the sample size? What were the questions and responses. Market research can be a tough thing without scale and discipline, for me the data tells a cleaner story, with tens of thousand of sessions monthly.

BillKVMotorCo said:

Do you have data showing this to be effective or do you just theoretically believe it to be effective? The reason I ask is that I also used to do this and truly believed in it. Then, I asked people on my Facebook what they thought. I had about 20 responses. Not one person liked it.

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BillKVMotorCo said:

Do you have data showing this to be effective or do you just theoretically believe it to be effective? The reason I ask is that I also used to do this and truly believed in it. Then, I asked people on my Facebook what they thought. I had about 20 responses. Not one person liked it.

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The biggest reason for the change is that websites (incl. 3rd parties) were showing thumbnails on the VDPs of just the first 4-9 photos, then the user had to page through to see more. (Now we see the first few thumbnails on SRPs as well.) Also, at the time, we were learning that a huge indicator of shopper intent was photo engagement and we were looking for ways to improve that metric. Ultimately, by providing the most relevant and differentiating pictures up front, we were hoping to deliver a better guest experience. The result is that we measured a significant photo engagement increase along with increased 3rd party lead volume immediately after the change. We've never gone back.

I agree with @pschnell and @ggarvin , capture 1-3 exterior photos, then get inside the car. I suspect when you see a 24-photo carousel, with 12 exterior, followed by 12 interior photos, you have a photographer that is trying to bang out a bunch of vehicles, and doesn't want to spend time getting in and out of the vehicle. Years ago I reviewed some Google Analytics events data, where they were tracking the percentage of shoppers that made it to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. photo, in a 24-photo carousel, and as expected it was a bell-shaped curve, with the top of the bell being photo #8-10. So knowing that most consumers will only make it to the first several photos, if the vehicle has rear-camera, navigation, heated steering wheel, optional 3rd row, I would want to make sure I put those pics in the first several. @joe.pistell is a pro at this, and goes beyond by adding descriptive text. Consumer on smart phones are swiping VDP photos like a Pinterest shopping experience. They are not reading the text, but they swipe through several photos to see how the vehicle is equipped. Great post Henry! @hnenni

By the way, my point in making this thread wasn't to highlight the Ariya. It was to show other dealers there may be some super creative lease deals on EVs. The key to this Nissan one is the Vermont power companies running their own incentives to put this over the top.

Agreed. I changed our process a few years ago to 1 exterior "hero" and then 3-5 high-value features. Might be tech, moonroof, wheel/tire pkg, etc. Then the remaining 3 corners of the car followed by the rest of the interior, engine bay (if the detailer is good), tire tread depth gauge (used only), then any other shots the photog got. Those first 4-9 - depending on platform - better show the best bits of the car.

About 10 years ago or so, I remember a dealer talking at Digital Dealer about how they were leading with an interior photo on the SRP. While it looks abnormal, it was generating more click throughs because it was abnormal. That seemed to make some logical sense... all the images of the exterior and then you see something different -- perhaps a consumer might click on it because it is indeed "different".

Otherwise, it makes sense to do exterior and then interior and then back again.

Sorry but that post was from 2017. I don't do retail anymore and focus on wholesale now. Thanks for the reply

BillKVMotorCo said:

If you like the vehicle and it fills a need, why not?

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It looks like the Toyota BX4X has a pretty decent lease deal too. Maybe there is something a local power company is doing that can make that one more attractive for you, Bill?

BillKVMotorCo said:

How do they pull inventory? I see mine on there.

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Possibly bought from marketcheck

Jeff Kershner said:

That is one hell of a tempting deal. BUT - living in Maryland, you have to pay taxes on the full selling price. BTW - Maryland sucks!

View attachment 8799

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Vermont is the same.

Ryan Everson said:

Automate it - sign up for FrikinTech

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but I'm slightly biased

Alex Snyder said:

We've allowed @NIOMARVIN83 to post this kind of stuff too long. He's been given a short period of time to give us a reason to allow him to stay on DealerRefresh.

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24 hours till @NIOMARVIN83 gets banned for …Nio - I have hit you in direct message and twice in the live forums. You've had since last Friday to respond. Today is your last chance.