Best PracticesIndustry News & Trends

Is Your Dealership Color Blind?

Being color-blind may be costing us opportunities to find vehicles for our customers – faster. We’ve convinced ourselves that an easy way to help a customer select the right vehicle is to narrow down their expectations on price.

Once we know their budget, we can show them a large variety of vehicles in all shapes, sizes, and assorted colors that can meet their needs. Being color-blind may be costing us opportunities to find vehicles for our customers faster.

In Cobalt’s 2014 Inventory Shopping Experience Study, 63% of all dealers surveyed believe price to be the most important and widely-used search filter on their website. Essentially, they believe that when a customer reaches the dealership’s SRP or inventory search page, they narrow themselves down by the price feature.

It turns out, our customers care first and foremost about the color of their next vehicle. Who knew?

As a matter of fact, 100% of all customers surveyed for Cobalt’s study stated that color was the key vehicle feature that consumers used first to search and filter. They looked for a specific color of vehicle before filtering by price, transmission types, rebates, and more.

Here is a quick Action Item:
Go to your primary dealership website and into the Inventory search page/function. Has your website provider given your online visitors the ability to search by color?

If that happens to be the most common filter used on AutoTrader, it needs to be an available filter on your site. You don’t build your dealership website for yourself and your needs. You build it for the customers’ needs.

Simply put, don’t let your dealership website be color-blind. If the search feature for color doesn’t exist, please send a support ticket to your provider for that request. Ask for it to be placed in a high-priority status so your customers can more quickly find their next vehicle from your lot.

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Automotive trainer and consultant. I'm also a writer, speaker, movie buff, and Dad. --President of DealerKnows--