Yes, you can pay for tools that take care of the job at hand with minimal effort, but sometimes you just don’t have the funds available to get these pricey tools. So, here’s a small list of 5 things that you can start doing today that will organically increase your website Conversions.
- Go with the flow
To better understand what I’m referring to, quickly go to Apple.com (no seriously, go right now to see what I mean). Their site is overly simplistic with just enough info on each Landing page to entice viewers to click and learn more. The key is to not clutter your homepage with unnecessary info because potential buyers will become overwhelmed and exit your landing page.
So how does one make their landing page even more simplistic, you may ask? Start off with having a single picture of each car (top selling car at the top/first) on the home page. Next to the picture of each vehicle, only place the name of the vehicle. Hopefully this will entice the potential buyer to click, see more pictures, and learn even more details like the starting price and model trims. From there, the only main CTA you need is something to get them to see your inventory, which brings me to my next point.
- Make the CTA (call-to-action) straightforward
I’ve seen many websites fail at having way too many CTAs on their web pages. Dealers may have over 10 CTA’s on one page such as “get a quote”, “sign up for our newsletter”, or even “meet the staff” all on one page. You’re giving your prospect too many options. Each landing page should have between one and five CTAs. Each page pop-up should have one main CTA. You should not have any landing pages on your website that don’t have a CTA. After all, a CTA is how you generate leads for your dealership.
- Test, Test, and More Testing
People read websites by their headlines and sub-headlines. Therefore, if you really want to grab their attention, you’ve got to have them curious and wanting to see read what’s under the hood (or headline in this case). The key to getting great at this is testing. Never assume that your headline is a “banger” and that people will love your humor or think it’s an interesting headline. Change it up and test it out to see if people are clicking. Some websites even offer heat maps to see where your viewers are reading and clicking. Optimize your landing pages by testing your headlines.
- “Fill this out form out for me please”
So how on earth will you know if your CTAs are working for your site? You’re going to need forms. These can be a little tricky at times to create, however. We’ve seen dealerships get desperate to find out all the info from a prospective buyer, which then turns the buyer off from your website. It can feel a bit overwhelming with a form that’s long. Shorten the form to 4 main components:
- FIRST NAME
- LAST NAME
- PHONE NUMBER
With these 4 components you can get everything else you need out of the prospect at a later time. A study done by Unbounce proved this point when they tested it with a company that had too many fields. The company previously used 11 fields, and tested out only using 4 fields, and they witnessed a 120% growth in conversions. We’ve tested the form situation out with two of our prospect’s landing pages (one with a form requirement to see inventory and the other without a form requirement to see the inventory). The website that utilized a form had a 72% website conversion rate compared to the 2.5% conversion rate from the website without the form to see inventory. This is possibly the easiest method to do that can you ensure you higher conversions.
- Add a face for familiarity
This is possibly the quirkiest method but I swear it works! When a blog post, web page, or even video has a real face in it, it creates a sense of relate ability. So for your dealership’s website, try and include pictures or videos of people of all races and genders. Show the entire buying process, if possible, to subconsciously encourage your prospects to purchase from your dealership. As an added bonus, include a picture of a pet in the car as well. According to an Autotrader article “sixty-six percent of dog owners think about their dog’s needs at least a little when shopping for a car.” And speaking of pets, maybe even mark your dealership as “pet-friendly” on the website.
Remember, nothing here is 1000% guaranteed to work, but from our experience helping dealerships, these changes will make a difference given the amount of work put into it. We’re interested in knowing if any these changes end up helping your dealership. So, comment down below 1 month after you make some changes and let us know if you’ve seen any difference in your conversion rates!
