The days when we associate auto dealers with salesmen who dress and talk like Herb Tarlek from the 70s sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati are long gone. Today, if your dealership website isn’t carrying out a considerable amount of the work that used to only happen in-house, then you’re already missing out on an enormous amount of business.
Equip Your Dealership Website with a Turbo Charger
If everyone around you is getting a performance boost and you’re not, then your business is standing still like an F1 racer in a permanent pit stop. Unless you’re staying informed about the latest web development designed specifically for dealerships, then you may not even realize how poorly your online presence is performing.
How Web Development Changed Dealership Sales Strategy
Web development has had an enormous impact on the automotive industry in recent years. Anyone who is paying attention has seen the strategy behind online dealership software change entirely at least twice. In the initial stages of dealerships going online, their websites didn’t offer much in the way of specialized services.
Progressive Change in Due to New Services
As new online applications became available they changed the way that consumers use dealership websites, while simultaneously allowing for new marketing and sales strategies from auto dealers. Given the enormous boost in global online sales in every consumer industry in recent years, it should come as no surprise that the ultimate goal all along has been to facilitate the entire completion of car sales online – but it took a long process before that became possible.
Due to the close connection between the development of dealership web services and online marketing and sales strategy, it is possible to identify three distinct stages of growth, regarding the intention of a dealership website:
- Advertising and Research
- Powerful Lead Generation
- Online Sales through
Due to the complex nature of automotive sales, it took years of development before dealers could even think about completing an entire end-to-end auto sale online. Each of these stages correspond exactly to the kinds of services available due to the progress in dealership web development available at the time.
How Specific Web Software Changed the Game
Initially, auto consumers went online to find out more information about availability, options, and pricing before physically travelling to a dealership to learn more from a sales team. As soon as more interactive services – like online chat help software from Gubagoo – became available, dealerships were able to start building online relationships with new customers that yielded more successful lead conversions.
The results of this change in strategy has yielded outstanding sales performance. In just one example, auto sales boosted by 134% and lead generation increased by 247%. As newer online applications were introduced, such as online auto financing and insurance forms, text messaging support, and the ability to publish specials in real time over these communicative platforms, the results have increased and culminated in yet another stage of growth.
Today, online dealership marketing developers are pushing the possibilities even further by integrating some of the most popular online platforms with these web services in order to bring end-to-end sales to fruition. However, in order to take advantage of the latest integrations, you need to prepare by upgrading your website with latest dealership software.
