How Does Your Web Site Compare to Industry Benchmarks?

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A Nicer Way to Sell a Car

December 16 , 2007
By Barry Baker

Last month we introduced the most important tool in the automotive dealership’s web strategy tool kit, web statistics. Specifically we discussed the concept of unique visitors, which is the best measure of the number of humans who have visited your web site within a given period of time (say, a month).

Your web provider measures all the activity on your web site, but will only count the computer network from which a specific visitor arrives once within a given month. As a result, even though a particular prospective customer may return to your web site three or four times within a month (we call these Internet be-backs), the actual visitor will only be counted once.

Once we know the number of unique visitors who visited a dealer web site within a given month, we should be able to predict the number of Internet leads that web site should generate by using industry benchmarks for conversion rates.

Wait a minute… what’s a conversion rate, and why should you care?

The conversion rate is the measure of how many of the visitors to your site actually send in a lead. To determine your conversion rate, divide the number of leads your web site generated over a given month by the number of unique visitors for the same month. The result, when expressed as per cent, is your conversion rate. If your web site is converting less than 1% of its unique visitors into leads, it is generating significantly fewer leads than most auto dealer web sites given the same volume of traffic.

Most auto dealer web sites have a conversation rate of between 1% and 7% (Ward’s Dealer Business), which means that between one and seven visitors out of every hundred who visit your web site will send in a lead. I’ve seen dealer web sites perform below 1% and above 7%, but most dealer web sites fall within that range.

Many different factors influence your web site’s conversion rate, so depending upon where it currently stands there are a variety of steps you can take to improve its performance. Unfortunately, rather than resolving the causes of a poor conversion rate, many dealerships spend a lot of time, effort, and money trying to fix the symptoms rather than addressing causes.

The primary symptom of a dysfunctional web site is that it doesn’t generate leads. In an effort to fix that, often dealers will try to drive more traffic to the site with online and offline marketing. In reality, this is just throwing good money after bad. A low conversion rate typically indicates that your visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for. Think about how long it takes you to change the channels on your TV when programming doesn’t interest you; it’s really just a matter of seconds. The same thing often happens on web sites with low conversion rates.

There’s no sense trying to send more people to a web site that’s not doing its job. Rather, dealerships should keep their powder dry until problems with the web site can be resolved.

Next month we’ll discuss some of the things dealerships can do to improve the performance of their web site. In the mean time, calculate your web site’s conversion rate. Is it trending up or trending down? If you don’t know how many leads or unique visitors your web site has been generating, it’s time to find out.

Internet Sales & Marketing Training

This article is the fourth of a continuing series that examine how the Internet is helping dealerships deliver better results:

Internet Sales Results Start at the Top
Technology vs. Results on the Internet
Counting the Prospects on your Web Site
How does your web site compare to industry benchmarks?

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Barry Baker is Director of Professional Services for ASL (Aged Stock Ltd), a company that empowers dealerships to achieve superior results through effective Internet sales process and effective Internet sales tools. For more information, go to www.ASLInternet.com/training.

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