A recent automotive survey found that the continued adoption of digital retail tools and plug-ins, including trade-in calculators, service schedules, and chat tools, have made dealer websites slower and more complicated for consumers.
That is according to Shift Digital’s latest Shopper Survey. The company is based in Birmingham, Michigan and provides technology solutions, advanced analytics, and support services in the automotive, powersports, heavy equipment, and other sectors.
“Think of being in a grocery store checkout line behind two customers with full shopping carts,” said Matt VanDyke, President of Shift Digital, in a statement. “The line next to you has an individual with a handful of items and is laying them out on the conveyor. You immediately slide over to that line to get checked out faster.”
The company’s survey also found that there is an 11-per cent higher engagement from the consumer for every second a dealers’ mobile site functions faster. In a news release, Shift Digital said it had assessed organic traffic to more than 3,300 mobile U.S. dealer websites in October, supported by nine different website platform providers. It found that dealer websites that perform better attracted over 25 per cent more customers to engage and remain on their website.
Dan Reynolds, head of Shift Digital’s Advanced Analytics team, said dealers need to do regular self-assessments to find site improvements. He said this is the key to dealer website speed for consumers, and that dealers can also compress or remove large unoptimized images and videos to speed load time — and remove unused campaign tags and non-functioning vendor links.
“It’s about knowing where to look to make the improvements and those changes benefit the entire system — the customer gets a far better user experience, and the dealer is fixing what is an annual leaky budget bucket by being more efficient with their marketing dollars,” said Reynolds in a statement.
