Car dealers realize that they need websites and just a handful really understand web marketing.  Many vendors in the niche use education as a sales tool for their platform, but how much of that education is accurate and how much of it is smoke and mirrors to push a product that does not perform well in other aspects?

Having listened to presentations, heard the education offered and heard the excuses from car dealership website vendors given to my clients and myself, it is time to bring some of the myths to the forefront.  Some of the things they do for dealer go against acceptable web practices. They are probably to wow the dealer and close a deal rather than concentrating on conversion and getting consumers to click deeper into the site.

Here are 10 Car Dealer Website Myths:

1. SEO Takes Ages and is a Waste of Money – Search engine optimization is a very quick process if you have both a platform and a technology provider who understands it.  SEO is the most cost effective way to get visitors to your website and provides a better demographic customer than pay per click.  Just because you do not own the platform your website is on does not make it a bad investment of money or time.  Not doing search engine optimization on a contracted platform would be like not servicing a leased car.  SEO delivers better value than Pay Per Click for car dealers.
2. Indexable inventory is important for SEO – Having individual cars indexed in a dealers website may provide small amounts of traffic but eventually it will frustrate shoppers and the search engines.  You, online shoppers and the search engines would be better served by having inventory search result pages indexed that way if the “long tail” they come in on is sold they are presented with other options.
3. Auto Played Audio “Welcome Messages” help increase conversion – Auto played audio on a dealers website will actually increase bounce rate, make your visitors leave.   Plus it is bad manners.  Do you like it when someone starts delivering a message to you that you have no desire to hear?  Give surfers the option to engage with the audio if you fee it is a must have.  Web vendors need to be advising clients to not use this if it is asked about, not using it as part of their presentation.  Sure, most dealers think it’s great to hear their own voice, but if visitors wanted to hear you, they’d turn on the radio.
4. SEM Certification means they are qualified – Being Adwords certified is a 90 day process that  require some testing done online, open book.  The 90 day part is relative to a spend amount of $1000 per month on average for three months.  It ain’t rocket science.  It is a badge of honor that Google gives to people to help them push Adwords spends.  It does not mean they have vast knowledge of the Google algorithm.
5. Breaking the back button will increase leads – Delivering surveys and pop-unders when a website visitor uses the back button or navigates to another page will increase bounce and is annoying.  Many times if they figure out how to leave the site you will never see them again as they search for a less frustrating experience.
6. Vendor analytics – Website traffic stats need to come from an independent third party, not the ones taking credit for the traffic.  A branded analytics program is just that.  They control the stats and it is subject to manipulation by them.  I have heard about a larger, well-known dealer website vendor doing just this and refusing to deliver server stats when requested.
7. Site changes requires tech support – It may require tech support from the vendor delivering the third party plugin or training on the car dealers website platform but it should not require tech support from the car dealer website vendor thus incurring more charges.  Simple things such as adding a landing page, url or site navigation should be easy for dealership personnel or consultants to do.  Requiring tech support to add third party analytics or make simple changes to meta information means that the technology the dealer website vendor is using is archaic.  Mention object based programming to them and if you get the dear in the head lights look, run, do not walk.
8. All these cool navigation options – One of the larger players in the automotive website niche uses “Mystery Meat Navigation” (also abbreviated MMN), a term coined and popularized by author, web designer, and usability analyst Vincent Flanders to describe user interfaces (especially in websites) in which it is inordinately difficult for users to discern the destinations of navigational hyperlinks — or, in severe cases, even to determine where the hyperlinks are. The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them.”  You have seen this if you have looked at more than one dealer website.
9. Bigger is better – A huge organization with a huge marketing budget does not mean you are going to get better service it just means they can out-market the next guy with high powered presentations and claims.  What really matters more than anything is getting what you pay for.  Your website is not “set it and forget it” and you should not be either after the sale.
10. How conversions are defined – This does not just happen in the website vendor arena. It probably originated with classified vendors counting map views as “conversions”.  A conversion is how you define it, not how the website vendor does.  Using vendor supplied version metrics is part of their sales process and can actually be a shell game.  The only conversion that should be counted is a submitted lead, a direct phone call or a printed coupon brought into the dealership.  That is the only measure of effectiveness.  Map views, contact page views, inventory drill downs and specials page views are not actionable measurable conversions.  So when you hear high conversion ratio give them your definition of conversion and then determine how high it really is.

There are many website vendors in the car business today.  Some have been around for a long time and others are just getting started.  Most of the education provided in the industry by dealer website vendors is self serving to move their product.  One thing you have to ask though is what does this education really mean to you, the dealer or dealership employee.

Big web vendors should be able to provide you with endless case studies of how well their sites perform, not hand pick a few dealers who are doing well with their platform.  Where as a smaller vendor with just a handful of clients who have raving fans probably provides more value.  An automotive website provider with thousands of clients with only 5 or 6 success stories to share probably means they are not as successful as a vendor who has 20 clients with 18 happy campers.

Car Dealer Website Vendors

• Pure Dealer.com
• TK Carsites
• Dealer.com
• BZ Results
• ADP
• Cobalt
• AutoRevo
• Nexteppe

While this list is not all-inclusive of auto dealer website vendors and I did not intentionally alienate any vendor.  Please let us know of your platform if you are not listed in the comments below also please disagree with and add to the “Dealer Website Myth List”.

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