Digital Marketing Inbound Marketing Web maintenance Web Merchandising

How Web Merchandising Can Help You Sell More Cars

The web is changing the way dealerships do business. In the past, business was primarily won through traditional media outlets or the on-the-floor interaction of a sales person and a customer. Today, studies show the internet to be the most influential source behind a customer’s car buying experience.

According to a study conducted by AutoTrader.com, consumers spend 59% of their time during the car buying experience online. (With new car buyers spending 55% of their time online and used car buyers spending 60% of their time online.) With more automotive purchasing journeys taking place online, a website is a dealership’s most important asset.

Just Having a Website Isn’t Enough

A website is a dealership’s most important asset, but simply having a website is not enough. A site must be tailored to a target audience in order to achieve the optimal results.  Dealerships can receive top performance from their sites by offering specials that entice potential consumers, by using different forms of media including graphics and videos to make their site visually appealing, and by using optimized content across their site to win favor in search results across various search engine platforms.

Be aware of How Changes Affect Your Website

The web is constantly changing. Platform updates and site theme modifications can cause links to break or images to go offline. A change in target market or the introduction of a new sales event can cause a site’s optimized content to become out of date and fall out of favor with search engines. If a site becomes obsolete it will begin to affect dealership sales.

Prevent Your Site from Going Stale

Sites can become stale if there is not a productive effort being made to keep the site looking and performing the best that it can. The best way for a dealership to ensure that their site is performing at maximum capacity is through web maintenance. Web maintenance is the continued upkeep of a website, ensuring that a site is up-to-date and functioning properly.

More Than Just Maintenance

The Web Merchandising Team at Stream Companies are web maintenance experts, providing maintenance strategies to help keep dealerships’ websites as up-to-date as possible. The Web Merchandising team does more than just routine web maintenance; scanning website for issues, quickly resolve those issues, and add, edit, or remove any content from your site. Our team keeps your site updated with the most up-to-date specials, promotions, and messages, as well as removing any outdated information, in order to create cohesive promotional messaging across a dealership’s site.

Online presence is essential to dealership sales. Sites need to be maintained properly to ensure productivity. Web Merchandising can guarantee proper site maintenance while creating a cohesive promotional message for the dealership.

Having a platform that assists in the Web Merchandising process is important. Make sure you choose the right website platform that fits your need, click here for more information.

 

Stream’s Kick-Start Step

Websites need to be reviewed regularly in order to achieve optimal performance desired. Try conducting an in depth site audit. Click through your entire site, every link on every page. Make note of broken images or links and outdated content. Continued use of Web Merchandising strategies, like site audits, will keep your site from becoming stale and improve customer experience.

{{cta(‘a02f4e85-e01e-46af-83dd-c44a8d386df1’)}}

-Alyson Stephan is a Website Compliance Manager and Web Merchandiser at Stream Companies, a Philadelphia based integrated advertising agency