When buyers want information about a new vehicle, they don’t immediately make an appointment at the local dealership. More often than not, they hit the Web and conduct a fair amount of online research before they ever set foot in an actual showroom. The Internet has become the primary channel for vehicle research, so for your dealership to compete for buyers’ attention, it’s imperative that you have an effective website of your own.
What’s involved in an effective website, though? A big part of it is user experience. Simply put, buyers need to find it easy and intuitive to use your website, and they need to come away from it feeling like they have gained something of real value. That’s what user experience is all about.
But if user experience is such a non-negotiable part of your dealership’s site, what are some practical things you can do to improve that user experience?
Understand the Purpose of User Experience
The first step is making sure you know what user experience is—and why it matters.
The best way to think of user experience is that it’s the user’s journey through the website—including all the actions they take along the way. A positive user experience is one in which the user can seamlessly navigate the page and retrieve all desirable information, without any roadblocks or hindrances.
For auto dealers, user experience has two primary goals. The first is to get buyers to fill in a form and leave information about taking a test drive or meeting with a sales rep. The second is to ensure that the visitor is sufficiently happy with the website experience that they want to visit the actual dealership.
How to Improve User Experience
In pursuit of those twin goals, there are a couple of practical adjustments your dealership can make.
The first of these adjustments is to ensure that your site grabs the attention of undecided users—encouraging them stick around on your website for more than a minute or two. Providing an easy-to-use site navigation is one important step in that direction.
Second, it’s important to convert interest into actual engagement. Meaningful information that educates and informs the visitor—not just selling, but helping—is mandatory. Blog posts and visual content can both go a long way here.
The website’s job is to provide a positive user experience that results in an appointment being set and a visit being made to the dealership floor—period.
To learn more about how digital marketing can help bring more foot traffic to your dealership, reach out to our team at Get My Auto.