Top tips from Codeweavers to focus your website around your customers
This may seem obvious, but keeping this in mind when managing all aspects of your dealerships website can sometimes prove challenging: It’s good practice to complete a monthly review on your website to ensure your website is heading in the right direction of customer-centricity.
An example I see on a daily basis of this is when a business uses the wording ‘our’ and ‘we are’ and ‘we offer’ all over their website.
A little of this is okay in the right areas but too much can soon become a problem. To ensure your website is customer-centric instead of dealer-centric, when referring to your range of vehicles make sure you refer to them as the customers. Here is an example of a dealer-centric statement and the same as a customer-centric statement.
‘Search our superb range of vehicles and browse our latest offers now’
‘Search for your perfect vehicle and find an offer that suits you’
By keeping this in mind, this will help focus your website around your customers. But more still needs to be done. A key focus for any website selling vehicles is that fact that any kind of service or product should be to provide an exceptional online experience for those that visit your website, or who engage with you in other areas online.
Your website should be easy to navigate; a customer should be able to search your vehicles with ease and find the information they require without have to take too many clicks. A nice feature to have on a dealer website to provide a personalised journey to customers is to have a ‘vehicles you’ve viewed’ and a ‘vehicles and offers you may also like’. This goes in line with many well known clothing retailers such as ASOS.
A personalised journey keeps your customers engaged on your website.
After reviewing how customers interact with Codeweavers' latest dealer finance calculator we found that a typical user visiting a dealer's website would tailor a quote around 6 times and one fifth of dealers’ customers interacting with FlexiCalc then went on to a finance application or email the finance quote to themselves. This means that if you don't have this functionality on your website you are not providing your customers with the information they want and you are also missing out on strong leads.
However there is no point focusing on a personalised journey if your customers cannot view your website on the device they would like to view your website on. Having a mobile and tablet friendly website ensures that you are providing your customers with the ability to visit your website the way they would like to.
This goes in hand with providing your customers with all the information they require to buy their vehicle of choice. A dealer's website is the place where most consumers start their buying journey. This means if you are not providing your website visitors with all the information they need in order to buy a car from you, then they are likely to find this information elsewhere - maybe even from your competitor. From technical details about your vehicles to enabling your customers to search by their monthly budget rather than by model or cash price, your customers expect to find this information on your website.
Having an area of your website that provides detailed information about your dealership will help give your business a personality and also build trust around your dealership as you are allowing your customers to get to know you. This could also include a range of testimonials: customers listen to customers.
Hopefully the pointers I have given you give you food for thought.
