Is your website earning its keep?

Plenty of dealers never made a deliberate choice about their current website. It may have come bundled with another service, been set up years ago or simply been the most convenient option at the time. As long as the stock appears and the contact details work, it is easy to assume that it is doing what it needs to do.

That is understandable. When you are buying stock, speaking to customers and running a forecourt, the website is unlikely to demand much attention unless something goes wrong. But a site can be working perfectly well in a technical sense while contributing very little to the business.

The more useful question is not whether your website is online or how many people visited it last month. It is whether those visits are turning into phone calls, enquiries and vehicle sales.

If you are paying for a website every month, you should have a reasonable idea of what you are getting back from it.

A website should do more than display your stock

By the time someone reaches a dealer website, they are often already well into the buying process. They may have narrowed down the make, model and budget, found a particular vehicle through search or an advert, and started comparing it with similar options elsewhere.

Your website has an important job at that point. It needs to help the buyer find the information they want, feel confident in the dealership and take the next step without unnecessary effort. That might mean making a call, sending an enquiry, asking about finance or arranging a part exchange.

A nice website can cover the basics of putting vehicles online, but that does not automatically mean it has been built around the way your customers shop. If the vehicle pages are difficult to use on a phone, the contact options are easy to miss or the dealership does not come across as credible, the website can lose interest that the business has already worked hard to generate.

That is why a dealer website should be treated as part of the sales process rather than simply another monthly marketing cost. Its value comes from helping the right buyers find your vehicles and making it easier for them to start a conversation.

Traffic only matters if it leads somewhere

Website traffic can be useful, but the number on its own tells you very little. A large audience that leaves without taking action may be worth less to the business than a smaller number of relevant buyers who view the stock and get in touch.

The same applies to design. A professional-looking website can strengthen trust, particularly when someone has not dealt with your business before, but appearance is only one part of the experience. The site also needs to be clear, useful and easy to navigate.

Start by looking at how people are reaching it. Someone searching for your business by name should be able to find you, but the bigger opportunity is often appearing in front of buyers searching for the type of vehicles you sell in your area. If the website is not visible at that point, even a strong design will have limited impact. This is where SEO for car dealers makes the difference.

Once people arrive, the journey needs to work just as well on mobile as it does on desktop, which comes down to how the site's features are built and laid out. Many customers will be browsing while comparing several vehicles and dealerships, so small frustrations can have a commercial effect. If one site makes it simple to check the details and enquire while another makes the customer work for the information, the easier option has an immediate advantage.

Look at the website as a customer would

You do not need to understand website development or SEO to get a useful sense of how your site is performing. Try using it in the same way a potential customer would, starting from a search rather than from the homepage.

Check your vehicle pages on a phone

Find one of your vehicles, open the page on your phone and look at what the customer sees:

• Is the important information easy to scan?
• Are the images clear?
• Can you find a phone number or enquiry option without searching for it?
• Does the page answer the questions someone is likely to have before getting in touch?

If you want a checklist to work from, we've covered the features that make the biggest difference on a dealer website in more detail.

Consider what the site says about the business

It is also worth considering what the site says about the business as a whole. A buyer who has never heard of the dealership will be looking for reasons to trust it, particularly when a vehicle represents a significant purchase. Current information, a professional presentation and a straightforward way to contact a real person all help to reduce uncertainty.

Look at what you can measure

Finally, look at what you can measure. You do not need an unnecessarily complicated dashboard, but you should be able to see whether the website is producing enquiries and which parts of it are helping people take action. Without that basic information, it is difficult to know whether the site is working or simply receiving visitors.

Underperformance is not always obvious

A website does not need to be broken to lose enquiries. More often, the problem is a collection of smaller issues:

• A contact option that is not prominent enough
• Vehicle information that is awkward to read
• A layout that makes browsing harder than it should be
• Pages that are not being found through search

None of these problems necessarily means that the whole website needs replacing. In some cases, improving the vehicle pages, simplifying the enquiry route or addressing weak search visibility may be enough to produce a better result.

That is why the starting point should be an honest assessment of the current site rather than an assumption that newer is automatically better. The aim is not to follow design trends or add features for the sake of it. It is to understand whether the website supports the way your dealership sells cars and the way your customers choose them.

One dealer's experience

Howard Lane of GDH Car Sales described the change after moving to Spidersnet:

"Recently moved to Spidersnet and noticed an immediate increase in enquiries to my website. Website looks way more professional than it did previously. Everything in the site functions perfectly, also uploading cars is a lot quicker than it was. Team were very helpful in setting up the site. They always answer the phone straight away and action any changes very quickly."

— Howard Lane, GDH Car Sales

You can see more examples of dealer websites we've built in our portfolio.

Changing provider should be properly planned

Even when a dealer knows the current website could be performing better, the concerns around changing provider can make it tempting to leave things as they are. The site is connected to the stock, advertising and day-to-day running of the dealership, so concerns about disruption are reasonable.

A good provider should be able to explain the process before asking you to make a decision. You should understand:

• What will happen to the existing stock feed
• Who will manage the setup
• How the new site will be launched
• What support will be available afterwards

The change should be organised around keeping the dealership running, rather than leaving you to manage the technical details yourself.

At Spidersnet, we handle the website setup and migration with the dealer and have a dedicated team of account managers who understand the motor trade. That means there is a real person to speak to during the move and once the site is live, rather than the relationship ending as soon as the website has been launched.

The inconvenience of changing should still be weighed against the cost of staying with an underperforming website. If the current site is losing potential enquiries every month, another year on the same setup may be the more expensive option.

Find out where your website stands

You may not need a completely new website. A review might show that the current site is doing a decent job but needs a few focused improvements, or that the main problem is a lack of visibility rather than the website itself. It may also confirm that buyers are reaching the site but leaving before they enquire.

The important thing is to understand what is working, where potential customers may be dropping away and what is worth addressing first.

Spidersnet offers a free website audit looking at your search visibility, mobile experience and the routes customers use to get in touch. We will explain what we find in plain English and give you an honest view of where the website could be doing more for the business.

Ask us for a free website review and find out whether your website is helping you sell more cars.