So, you market well to your website:  Use it across your advertising, put the URL on t-shirts, do fantastic SEO, and run PPC campaigns that would make Best Buy weep with joy.  Got your Social Media sending people there, too.  After all, we know that everybody (90%+) shops online now!  Success for your dealership is just a click away..

And then your online inventory is incomplete.  Mis-priced.  Photos are wrong, or they’re just stock.  Individual comments are missing.  The Specials Page—often the 2^nd-most visited page on your site!—is blank.  You have no calls to action on the site at all.  There’s no way to make an offer, either, if shoppers can find the car.  And nothing is said about your reputation or who you are as a dealer.  

Great.  You spent all those marketing dollars and effort just to send all your customers to the worst salesperson you've ever had!  Maybe the worst in history.  And “success is just a click away” becomes “your competitor is just a click away!” 

You  want customers who get in their car and come visit you to park and come in and not drive on—and so you won’t let trash accumulate on your physical lot, vehicles sit on it unpriced or unstocked, and you won’t have signs pointing the wrong way to service, etc.   And, hopefully, you don’t have stuff on the walls talking about your dealership’s personnel from 1972 (unless it’s some retro-art)!  So, why would you do it online?  A dealer’s website should convert to a customer call, form, email, or visit using compelling format and contents.  Or you’re just wasting your time and money on your marketing.  Unless you’re happy sending shoppers to your competitors with just a “click”.

Get your Digital Lot in shape!

by Keith Shetterly

Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved

www.keithshetterly.com