Is Your Dealership’s Outdated Auto Website Causing Problems?

Your auto website probably isn’t your number-one concern when it comes to selling cars, but it should be. A business’ website is its face on the internet, and nowadays, most people start with the internet. If your website is a hot mess or looks like it’s from the 90s, we can guarantee you are losing customers you didn’t even know you might have had.

An updated auto website can help you eliminate these problems.

Contact Information

If your contact information—telephone, email, social media, and physical address—is not readily available, you are losing sales. Readily available doesn’t mean just there, either; it needs to be prominent, it needs to be easy to find, and it needs to lead to legitimate ways that a potential customer can reach your staff in feasible timeframes.

Mobile-Friendly

Whether you’re a car dealership, a hospital, a government site, or just Amazon, if your website is not mobile friendly, you are doing a disservice to your visitors, which is costing you sales.

Most people will be looking at your site across a variety of platforms—smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. If the journey becomes impossible because your content is designed for only one device, they are going to leave and go find a competitor that’s conscious of 21^st-century purchasing practices.

User Experience

The best user experiences are invisible; if someone becomes aware of their journey on your website, odds are it’s due to a poor experience. If you’re putting a page, a picture, or even a sentence up on your website, you need to ask, “What benefit does this provide to a user?”

Put yourself in this person’s shoes—if you want to buy a car and have come to your website, would you keep going?

Streamline the process, limit what’s on your site to only the most essential information that customers actually want, and make sure every piece is easy and intuitive to find.

Avoid Industry Jargon

You use these terms every day, but a customer is likely to have no idea what any of them mean. If you absolutely have to use a jargon word, make sure to explain it. Better yet, find a colloquial way to express the term. Jargon is alienating, and when it comes to a big purchase like a vehicle, many people are already on edge. Don’t give them any extra reason to leave your site.

Testimonials

Sure, it hurts to put up a bad testimonial, and in theory it may cost you a sale; however, if you only have one negative review and 999 positive reviews, the average user is savvy enough to know that 0.1 percent response was someone having a bad day. Beyond that, people trust positive reviews about your dealership more than they trust you telling them you’re great.

Without a review system—an easy piece of tech almost all sites have these days—potential customers are likely to think you have something to hide and will start looking for a vehicle elsewhere. Consider watching a demo to start using Podium, a platform that can help you gain more reviews and take control of online customer interactions.

Your auto website is an increasingly important tool in your selling toolbox. Many people want to be able to purchase a vehicle without ever having seen a lot, let alone visited one. If your website is outdated, unusable, ugly, and just plain bad, you are definitely losing customers. It’s not hard to make a site that users want to use these days. Seek out the help to build a beautiful, functional auto website, and watch your revenue soar.