Are you putting your customers' needs ahead of your dealership's internal preferences? Read how search habits are changing, by Lauren Cooke, Marketing Manager at Bluesky Interactive

This week saw the launch of the Hyundai Rockar dealership, which is aiming to change the face of car buying in the UK. With digitally-enabled, salesman-free “dealerships” located in shopping centres and the ability to “buy a car in 5 minutes”, it’s a shift-change in how the dealer market is starting to approach the car buyer. Of course, it’s early days, but off the back of the launch we thought it would be interesting to look at some changing customer habits in order to see if you are putting your customer’s needs ahead of the dealership’s internal preferences.

Let’s start with the obvious then – online payments and deposits.

This isn’t new technology, but it seems new to the automotive market. While Bluesky Interactive introduced deposits on dealers’ websites about 4 years ago, it’s always had a slow uptake, particularly with used cars. Many customers want to see a car in the flesh (warts and all) before they make any sort of commitment, even a refundable one, and this means that only dealers who provide lots of information, video and photos are seeing a strong level of visitors reserving cars. In the new car market, the ability to upsell customers to better models and more costly features has seen dealers preferring to handle the sales in-dealership.

So, if you aren’t offering the ability to take deposits, are you missing out? We know that 44% of car buyers in the US are willing to buy a vehicle online, and 94% of buyers use the internet in the research stages. It seems likely that this is the early stages of a blossoming trend, and the high publicity around innovations like Rockar may well spur the market on to change faster. Put simply, you’ll get away without it now, but it will probably be expected within the next few years. You’ll need to start thinking now about whether you’ll use PayPal or bank payments, and if your stock feeds are regular enough to avoid selling cars twice.

Away from reserve it now, what else is changing?

How people search in general has to be one of the key areas.
We know that Autotrader, with its drop down selection, is still keeping customers familiar with the drop down “select and search” method of looking for a car.
However, this simply doesn’t cover all visitors.

The dominance of Google, for instance, means that free text search is as much of a habit as drop downs – does your website let visitors find cars this flexibly? Alternatively, what about buyers who only really care about the body type – knowing that they want an MPV but not really caring about the make or model? Ask around your friends and you’ll soon realise that whilst a large percentage are more clued -up about the car spec they want than ever before, a big chunk of the remainder have gone in the other direction and are increasingly flexible. Finally, what if you’re considering two models? Should you have to waste precious time searching twice, or should dealer websites allow you to conveniently look for multiple makes and models at the same time, like we’ve recently introduced on the new Hilton Garage website? 

As one last point before we draw this article to a close, habits are also changing with regards to contacting dealers. We sound like a broken record, but live chats are regularly accounting for approximately 25% of dealer enquiries. Used well, as by a dealer like Alan Day VW, it’s a highly rated, successful enquiry type that has a strong conversion to sales. With customers having more questions and getting more antisocial, it’s a habit we should make the effort to cater for. If it doesn’t suit your dealership, now is the time to start questioning whether you need to change your strategy and process to make it fit. 

Can you put the needs of your customers first?

For more information please visit Bluesky Interactive today or by calling 0845 415 4853.

Lauren Cooke, Marketing Manager at Bluesky Interactive