What should my website have?

‘As long as I’ve got a website that’s all that matters, right?’  Wrong!

Your website is your online showroom.  It can help you build trust with potential customers – buying a car is a big expense for many people and they want to know that they can trust the person and dealership that they’re spending their money with.

92% of people research their next vehicle purchase online according to Think with Google.  If you don’t give potential customers a great online experience, they could dismiss your dealership and contact one of your competitors instead.

You can’t rely on customers contacting you or walking by your showroom – the majority of people are researching online first.  From there they might build a shortlist of dealers they want to visit, they might find the vehicle they want and want to reserve it there and then, or they could want to work out what their deal would look like.

Your website should be bringing in leads for you – and with the right tools be a place customers can sell you their existing vehicle and reserve their next one.

What makes a great website?

Technical SEO

You should have good technical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) built into your website.  This is things like page speed, the right heading tags, meta tags, mobile responsive, good URL structure and more.

Does your current website provider support you with this?  At Click Dealer, we have in-house developers who build in technical SEO elements as standard to our websites.  They’re continually researching industry trends and search engine ‘best practices’ to help our dealers with their online visibility.

Technical SEO can help you appear higher in search results as it’s ticking the boxes of what search engines require a ‘good website’ to have for a good visitor experience.

Easy to navigate structure

When a visitor comes onto your website, they don’t want to be confused about where to look for vehicles, wonder how to contact you, or have to try and locate finance information.  You should have a good navigation structure to make it easy for potential customers to find what they’re looking for.

When a customer has found a car that they like, it should be clear how they can reserve that vehicle or contact you for more information.  By having ClickEngage on your used car website, you can get easy call to actions next to each vehicle such as a ‘reserve now’ button.

Have you ever been searching for something online and given up on a particular company because you can’t find what you want or don’t know if they can meet your needs?  That’s the same for car buyers!

Take a step back from your website and look at it with fresh eyes.  You might know where everything is, because it’s your website – but would an outsider find it easy to use?

Easy search tool

In the same vein, how easy is it for customers to find the vehicle that they’re looking for?  This could be a specific make and model, EV compliant, number of doors, or price.

If a customer has specific requirements, helping them navigate to those particular vehicles will make it a smoother journey for them and a more positive experience.

‘Type and search’ tools can help a customer type in specific needs (such as a sun roof) to narrow down the search even further.

Also, make sure you’re making it clear what your available vehicles are.  It’s extremely frustrating to spend time researching a vehicle, working out how much the finance would be, building a deal up – only to find out that vehicle was sold two weeks ago!  Would that customer then return to you in the future?

By having an integrated website and DMS, you can make sure that when stock is sold or reserved – this is clearly marked on your website, and the vehicle removed when sold.  Your DMS can also update your advertising platforms, so there’s no confusion for customers.

Informative content

Do you have content that would help a potential customer?  Are you regularly updating your used car website with information to keep it fresh and engaging?

If not, you should!  Not only does fresh content help with your online visibility, but informative content helps give your customers trust in you.

If they can find out useful information they will spend more time on your website and could also build a more positive impression of your dealership – think about articles such as how to apply for finance and what the finance terms mean, things to check before a long journey, and how to increase MPG through driving techniques.

Personality

Bring some of you to your used car website!  What’s your dealership’s history?  Who is part of your team?

As the saying goes, ‘people buy from people’.  Even though a customer is browsing your online showroom rather than in person, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to see ‘who’ they are buying from.

Having good reviews on your website can also help build trust.  “Bob talked me through all the features of my new car and couldn’t do more to help.  Thanks, Bob!” – that sort of review can help people feel more confident that they’ll have a good experience when buying from you, and also gives a small insight into who you are and the people at your dealership.

Your website should also be an extension of your physical forecourt, not a separate entity.  So, pulling through that same feel, branding, and tone of voice is important.

I don’t think my website is working for me

Your dealership’s used car website should be pulling in customers and generating you leads.  If it’s not, and you’re not getting the performance you’d like from a website – it might be time to look at a new website or a refresh.

At Click Dealer, we work with used car dealerships to understand what you want to achieve from a website, what your branding is, and what your key services are (e.g. finance, part exchange, ‘sell your car’ function, reserve online etc.).

We have an in-house team who are here to support you along the way.  We don’t give you an ‘out of the box’ website and send you on your way.  We design and build websites to meet your needs.  Then our Training Team will run you through all the key features, including how to advertise stock, how to list a vehicle as sold, how to manage your online reservations etc.

Our Customer Care team are here to help with any queries you might have – we don’t make you send in a ticket for support, we have our teams on the phone or via email to ask any questions to.

What if I need to change something?

Having a team who can quickly make changes to your website is important.  If you’ve changed your phone number, you don’t want to be waiting three weeks for it to be updated on your website – potentially losing you leads!

Similarly, you don’t want your Christmas opening hours to still be showing on your website in April…

Click Dealer’s Web Change team are available to make updates to your website and we work on a quick turn around time.  Plus, you can get a website refresh from us for free  -so if you’ve had your website for a number of years and want to give it a facelift, we can do that no problem!

Can I talk to someone about a new website for my dealership?

Absolutely!  We’d love to hear from you.

Simply fill in your details and we’ll get in touch.