We compiled some simple strategies that you can use independently to boost website conversions. Nobody here wanted to hoard these easy wins to ourselves, but they will force you to ask questions about your current strategy — and think about smart changes.
The focus here is the user experience.
Are You Driving Traffic to the Right Pages?
People search for specific items to purchase. They want to land on a spot that delivers the content they seek. So, consider a few thoughts …
Your paid search should be super detailed.
- More keywords/queries mean more ads, which means being more specific
- Then make sure you have landing pages relevant to those keywords
- Then you save money via Quality Score and better user experience
Your landing pages should match the car shopper’s intent. When you do this, you’ll also drive up your organic ranking — as long as you follow on-page SEO best practices.
For additional insights on driving traffic, here is a blog about:
- Dominating SERPs
- Increasing your paid search CTR
- Leveraging your data.
Does Your Website Have Clean Navigation?
Your website should compel people to take actions: view inventory, schedule a test drive, schedule service, get a quote, get trade-in value information, and so on.
If links to your most important pages are buried, change the navigation.
If car shoppers can’t quickly get to your SRPs from your homepage, make it happen.
If pages don’t link to other relevant content, add text links.
The more you make car shoppers dig for the information they want, the more likely you’ll lose them.
Are You Tracking How People Interact with Your Purpose Pages?
Look at your purpose pages. Are shoppers bouncing or clicking — whether it’s to another page or to become a lead. You can use tools like heatmaps to see where they move their mouse, where they click, and how they behave on a page.
Now you’re equipped to make strategic decisions about buttons, widgets, page format, and other feature that could help ensure a better click-through rate.
Is It Easy for Car Shoppers to Click to the VDP?
For many dealerships, the answer is “No.” If your buttons aren’t above the fold or form lengthy or any other number of conversion opportunities aren’t designed or formatted well, you could be taking a loss.
Your places for conversion should not blend in well or have vague wording (tell car shoppers precisely what you want them to do).
When a Problem Comes Along, You Must Widget. Widget Good.
Okay. Bad joke. But this is a serious matter for dealerships.
A widget should help with conversion, whether that’s a tool for chat, trade, or finance. The key here is you want all widgets to be mobile-friendly and trackable in Google Analytics. Bear in mind that when considering a widget, most third-party widgets clutter up the website and aren’t trackable.
How Do Your SRPs Look?
First, don’t have too many buttons. You’re creating a decision-making overload, which complicates the options for car shoppers. Any buttons on your SRPs should have a specific and valuable purpose.
Do Your VDPs Also Have Too Many Buttons?
Your VDPs are near the end of the lead-making process. You don’t want to give car shoppers a buffet of options, so they should be limited to 2-3 actions. The key here is simplicity and time-on-site. You don’t want widgets that take consumers off the site or a high-converting page, like your SRPs and VDPs.
What 2-3 actions you choose depends on your goals. So you need to ask yourself, “What do I want them to do?”
Are You Too Secretive or Too Open with Your Information?
This is where you’ll walk a delicate balance. You want to give enough information to satisfy the shoppers’ search but should leave them wanting to discover more.
- If you give too little information about your brand’s models, you’ll lose shoppers.
- If you don’t give them any reason to come into the dealership, you’ll lose shoppers.
Either way, they’ll likely wind up on another website — perhaps a competitor — so make the process seamless. Think about how you can answer questions based on the strategic keywords you pull that would compel shoppers to dig deeper on your site and at your dealership.
Is Your Contact Information Easy to Find?
Car shoppers should be able to glance at your header and see the following:
- Address / Directions
- Phone Number
This Isn’t Even a Question — Always Have Click-to-Call on Mobile.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Is Your Option to Chat in the Way?
Chats need to pop up at the right time. That is if you even have chat. There are times when chats open on dealership sites and block seeing the page content, getting in the way of user experience.
Are You Using Data to Direct Your Strategy?
You can see …
And so much more. This list barely covers a portion of the insights you can get when you know where to look and how to use it.
This Also Isn’t a Question — You Need to Experiment Constantly
You need to understand how your shoppers in your market behave on your site. So you should test:
- Headlines
- Page text
- Ad language
- Ad visuals
- Ad audiences
- CTAs
- Buttons
- Much more
Again, you can test so much when you know where to find your data and how to use it.