No one likes detours. A wrong turn that requires re-navigation is both frustrating and time consuming. And detours in the online car shopping experience only distract your customers from finding what they want. That’s why it’s so important to facilitate an efficient online experience and help steer your customers down the right path, toward the right VDPs as quickly as possible.
Avoiding Buyer Roadblocks
VDP views are an important website engagement indicator, but many shoppers spend a significant amount of negative sweat equity researching multiple Vehicle Deal Pages (VDPs) in search of the right vehicle. They search from a group of listings, click on a VDP, check the vehicle out, and view some photos before backing out to the listings and repeating the process.
You might say this is just part of the automotive digital retailing experience, but in reality, every click back and forth is a detour—and a potential roadblock—that could force an abandoned search and lead to a bounce or interruption of the buyer journey.
With the core belief that a dealership’s digital storefront should always be evolving to improve efficiency for the customer, Dealer.com’s User Experience team has designed, built, and tested a brand-new Search Results Page experience (SRP) that reduces some of the back and forth, helping consumers find the right vehicle and growing your dealership’s automobile leads. Shoppers and Dealers alike benefit in the following ways:
- Effortless Mobile Shopping – This new, responsive search experience features mobile-minded menus and tabbed content areas that make vehicle selection fast and easy from any device.
- Convenient Search Tools – Faceted Search tools and a Free-form Search Bar (with auto-complete suggestions) offer multiple ways to shop and select.
- Customizable Design – Grid or List view provides flexibility for dealers and shoppers alike.
- Photo Carousel – Moving one of the more popular elements of the VDP higher up in the shopping funnel helps shoppers more quickly identify the vehicles they like and don’t like.
This, and other features like this, will reduce the back and forth that might jeopardize the user experience. Instead, the new SRP will help customers reach the right vehicle more efficiently than ever before.
Proven In UX Testing
During qualitative and quantitative testing, with the new photo carousel feature enabled, shoppers viewed 18% fewer VDPs on mobile and 9% fewer on desktop. Importantly, however, there was no change in lead volume. This suggests shoppers were able to filter more information from the SRP and find what they wanted earlier in the shopping process.
Pilot Feedback
The final design incorporated feedback from both dealers and consumers, and during the Pilot, dealers provided their thoughts on the redesigned experience.
“It is a better VLP overall. It has larger images and the search capabilities are much better.”
—Jeff Ramsey, Jones Junction
“The mobile experience is the best part of the new design. Loved the tabbed content widget, and the ability to scroll through photos. The look and feel on mobile is 1000 times better.”
—Town East Ford
Coming to Dealer.com Websites This Fall
We are constantly evaluating and tweaking our platform to make it friendlier for your customers and more effective for you. And we can’t wait to deliver this exciting, no-cost upgrade and give your customers a more efficient inventory search experience.
Dealer.com will soon begin migrating all car dealer websites to the new SRP experience. Our clients can expect advanced notification via email, ControlCenter, or their Performance Manager ahead of the changes. If you have any questions, reach out to your Performance Manager for more details.