Industry News & Trends

What independent sites are your shoppers visiting?

Jeff Kershner
Posted onNov 1, 2005 at 11:55 AM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 23, 2008 at 12:13 PM

Here’s a statistical chart borrowed from the latest J.D. Power New Autoshopper.com Survey. I thought it was interesting to see KBB to have such a lead on the other sites. I thought for sure Edmunds would be closer behind.

Top10_sites

I’d be interested in seeing this broken down by demographic locations and what content is being viewed the most on KBB. Are shoppers visiting KBB more frequently for new vehicle information or for trade-in evaluations?

It’s interesting and educational to what sites our shoppers are visiting and where they are gathering their information. I recommend taking an hour or so and visit these sites to get a feel and understanding of what your customers are viewing. This can help overcome objections that your customer might gather from these websites. We all know these sites are sometimes full of opinions and not so accurate information.

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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Since this was a nationwide NEW car shopping study, it shows how influential kbb.com is for those types of buyers. The JD Power USED shopper study shows KBB to be even more dominant. For both new and used car buyers, kbb.com was the first visited and most visited for the 8th straight year. In fact, according to the studies, kbb.com gets more buyers than any other 2 sites combined.

Also, kbb.com attracts nearly 1 in 3 of all car buyers (both online and off) each year.

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I don't think that KBB is nearly as accurate as NADA, at least not here on the west coast. I am VERY surprised to see that.
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    Gerald
  • October 16, 2007
KBB's popularity should not be a surprise if you consider what they do- sell us leads. Most customers I encounter with KBB, know what their trade is worth and from Edmunds, KBB, Consumer Reports or some other website "know" what invoice is on a new vehicle.

This is easy to understand. For the new vehicle, customers will gravitate to the lowest "invoice price" on the Internet and conversely will gravitate to the highest trade value on KBB. The desire is to entice the shopper to submit a lead so I can pay $20 for the privilege of contacting the customer.

Interestingly enough, when a customer has held stubbornly to his researched trade value, and I have taken him through the appraisal process (this is critical since all customers rate their car as excellent-good), explained why his vehicle is really not worth as much as he thinks, I simply ask him if HE would pay that much for his vehicle from me, and the answer is generally "no". It is critical the education be done professionally, and "together" so you don't disparage the customer.

At first, I hated KBB, but with a little thinking and work, I have been able to turn it to my advantage.
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