Eighteen months ago before I left my current dealersips employment we had a nice simple website that answered two questions that I have when I go to a local retailers website, 1) Do you have what I want? 2) How much is it? The SFE customer research indicated that the customers loved our website, it was simple and to the point. At that time it was not unusual for us to see 4 to 5 leads a day off of our own site. The SFE Target for Action team somehow got it in their heads that the website needed to be revamped and upgraded. Which the dealership did after I left. I am back and we now have a website that is supplied by our DMS and has all the bells and whistles, we also spend another $1000 a month to an outside company to "optimize" it (not the metatags, just working with the search engines and placement on them). We did not used to do that either (I did use metatags). Last week we had exactly 3 leads from our website, and I think one of those was our district manager testing to see how long it took us to repond to one. So either our website is doing such a great job that the customer feels all their questions are answered or else something else is going on. At first our simple old website had a firm price (we might budge $100 or so) on every vehicle, and I guess that stemmed from my own dislike of haggling, I personally feel that those that love to haggle do not really want to use the internet anyway, those of us that don't like haggling want to feel like we are not getting screwed and want the best price first shot. Eventually our simple old website had invoice put on it and an "invitation" to make an offer. We still seemed to do well lead wise. Our website now has MSRP and that is it.
The only thing I am certain of at this point is what we are doing now certainly is not working as far as generating leads. If anyone here has any advice, links to good articles or whatever I am all ears. Our URL is listed on my profile if anyone decides to take a look.
Thank you,
Gerry