Do you see a better closing ratio on the myliveoffer leads than the other leads from your website? You do not have to tell me percentages if you do not feel comfortable posting that I understand. Just want to know whether closing ratio is higher, because that is what I see as the biggest benefit.

Thanks in advance.

I don’t typically post our business statistics, but I can tell you the most common thing I hear from the customers who use myLIVEoffer:

“It made me buy a car sooner than I was expecting to”

So, customers are playing on Checkered Flag.com, they find “Make My Deal” (myLIVEoffer) and play with it. Sometimes it gets them to pull the trigger sooner, but most of the time it keeps people coming back to us over and over again….and talking to their friends about it

I’ll have one of my dealers quote back stats of results and engagement that way it is not me (the vendor) doing it.

If I could make a suggestion… don’t think in terms of all or none (i.e. all consumers won’t buy online and more than none will also).

The shopping cart is an attraction (“We have shop online”) and engagement tool (Consumer has to give name, phone # + email in order to do more than look at cars).

That way you get the selling opportunity regardless… and where you will sell most of your extra cars by having this.

Buy online is just a natural extension of shop. A few will buy online, but that is not where you build your business case. Yes it is almost purely incremental to what you are getting today, but I’ll let my dealers speak to that.

I thought you may find this interesting too… Here is a link to a TV news show piece where they interviewed a consumer who used the service.

http://wbztv.com/consumer/Online.car.sales.2.762885.html

Not all. Not none. Just more.

Use it to attract and get yourself more good engaged consumers.

In order to take this off site, please send me an email to billy@mydealerbroadcast.com and I’ll let you go through a demo.

The number of steps for a consumer are from 5 – 10 depending on financing and accessories and can actually be done in approx 1 minute

I understand that you use myliveoffer on checkeredflag.com. I know this is not a complete negotiating tool and rather an abbreviated version, but how does this perform for you? Percentage of leads from myliveoffer vs the other leads of your website? Closing ratio of myliveoffer vs other leads from your website?

I have looked at both AIDealer’s solutions and mydealerbroadcast and I think these would take too much time to complete for a customer and then they still have to come in to make sure that their trade is worth as much as the shopping tool said and whether they are approved for the financing. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a great concept, but wonder whether the consumer is really ready for this. Although it gets us closer to completing the sale online, it really is an estimate on trade and financing and thus is not a true turn-key shopping cart. I do think it helps getting the customer further along the process at your dealership and thus they are more likely to purchase from you.

That brings me back to the questions I had for Alex and anybody that is using any of these tools. What is the percentage of your leads from your website that use this tool? And as important, is there a significant increase in the closing ratio of these leads?

Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Also, the emerging markets were added to the study in 2008 and are largely responsible for that massive jump from 20% in 2007 to 44% in 2008.

The study has some great data, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions based on these overall numbers.

The number to watch over the next two years will be the online review researching – I expect that to grow substantially.

If you want to completely wow a customer, complete the entire transaction over the phone, and deliver the vehicle (paperwork and all) to their house. Try it some time. You will be blown away by the results!

Great observations in your post but I do have to differ on your first paragraph. My own company offers a very user friendly ecommerce package that is having great success for our dealers.

I would have to say the most surprising number to me in the report was that just 43% of consumers saw inability to test drive vehicle as a barrier to purchasing online.

Only 43%!

That leaves a lot of consumers out there that don’t seem to have that need.

Max RPM – We’ve found a surprising number of consumers willing to buy online. If you’d asked me less than a year ago I’d have said 10%.

Our recent presidential election shows us the power of the internet as Jeff discussed in a recent post.