As the Coronavirus pandemic continues, the automotive industry has seen physical traffic come to a near standstill. Most dealers are now depending on their website as the primary or only source of continued vehicle sales. Now more than ever, the online showroom is essential to success and optimal digital performance is no longer optional. These five best practices will help you transform your digital showroom, ensuring it works as hard as possible to turn every shopper into a customer.
Communicate COVID-19 Precautions
Make your shoppers feel at ease knowing that you’re doing everything possible to keep your staff and customers safe. Whether you’re offering home delivery or on-premise signing and pick up, reassure shoppers and customers by consistently communicating your health and safety efforts to your customer mailing list, through social media and on your website, where interstitials can be a particularly effective tool. Proactive safety communications are also essential if you are offering repair, maintenance or other fixed ops services. Ensure that you are closely following safety procedures during vehicle pick-up, signing, and vehicle delivery, and make this overtly visible to customers.
Bring your vehicle walkarounds from the lot to your website
Right now, your VDPs are your most powerful selling tool and it’s imperative that you give shoppers an immersive online experience that replicates your physical showroom. Since shoppers are likely unable to physically visit your dealership, give them the same interactive experience on your vehicle detail pages with Impel’s 360º WalkArounds.
Make your VDPs compelling and engaging
Avoid digital walk-offs by delivering accurate and consistent information across all of your VDPs. Pricing should be highly visible and easy to find on every VDP, as well as contact information, hours of operation and COVID-related changes to your normal operations. Pay attention to your vehicle descriptions by telling a compelling story that makes shoppers really engage and dream about your vehicle. Avoid long lists, excess clutter, and too much technical jargon. The right mix of engaging language, concise storytelling and unique highlights will make you stand out from the competition. Don’t forget to use your “why buy from us” message at the end of your seller’s notes to drive home your unique value proposition.
Streamline the process
To increase sales effectiveness even further, you can bring the vast majority of your buying process online as well. Utilize lead tools that significantly simplify and digitize the buyer journey and make the most of your leads. Shoppers can easily complete steps in the process like trade valuation, credit verification, and insurance quotes right on your VDPs, and you’ll be better able to leverage all of that information in one lead report.
Tell the story of every vehicle
Use tools that demonstrate the full value of each vehicle. With COVID-19 keeping people at home, your salespeople can no longer share all the key features of a vehicle with a shopper during a test drive or a walkaround. Put your shoppers in the driver’s seat on your VDP with tools like Feature Tour, which highlights the uniquely valuable features of each vehicle using curated multi-media content tailored to the needs and interests of each individual shopper.
These are unprecedented times for our industry that we are all navigating together. Impel is here to offer solutions that help dealerships bring automotive showrooms to life online and transform VDPs into immersive shopping experiences. For tips and updates, visit our Impel Facebook page and Impel Instagram page. To learn more about the solutions we’re offering that are helping dealers through this crisis, take a nine-minute virtual demo.
