Digital News - 1^st Quarter 2010

Hottest Online Topics at NADA: PreOwned Video - Is it real or just a bunch of photos?

At the NADA Conference in Orlando last month, much of the online buzz centered on video for used vehicles. By now, everyone has a website with car inventory, so it seems the next question that everyone is discussing is, how do you distinguish yourself from the competition online? Could the answer be by adding used car videos to your website?

Let’s talk video. The fact is, less than 10% of online car listings have a video attached to it. Video services typically are pretty expensive, so one has to weigh the costs and benefits of adding it. So, let’s first look at the cost side. At the entry level, you are looking at essentially a video manufactured from still photographs with a digital voice over and some background music. This is where most of the industry has so far gravitated to. This kind of video is simply derived from 5 to 10 standstill pictures that the camera “zooms in” on to make it appear video-like. Then the makers of these videos simply use text to speech technology to add voice over. Add some background music and voila. Overall, these videos tend to be about a minute in length per car, and depending on who you use to build the video, can have mediocre to decent voiceovers. Given that it’s text to speech conversion, if you’ve never heard it, it can be abrupt and a little robotic if not done well. We like the videos with the more seamless voice-overs, actually, but it’s probably 50-50 that are done right. So make sure you shop around. Adding enhancements to this basic video can make a difference too. These include adding a stock video introduction of your dealership for 5-10 seconds, embedding wording like price and mileage, and broadcasting these videos to YouTube and other car listing services.

Don’t expect videos to be very big though. You can pay up for “widescreen format” and that is an improvement, but a costly one. Watch enough videos and you’ll quickly realize it feels like you can get as good or a better view of the car via a photo slideshow. But on the plus side, background music and a good voiceover job can be quite appealing. Music always elicits emotions, and that is a huge part of what you are selling with an automobile. And, the fact it’s very early in the video cycle, could mean its a way to separate you from the pack.

What else does video add? Well, perhaps the best feature of videos is that it improves your SEO, or search engine optimization. Google automatically lists video search results before images. You’ve probably noticed that often when you google a term, a YouTube video is at or near the top. This improves the number of hits you receive, and further since each video has its own URL, that also enhances the number of links to your site. In turn, your google rank if you will improves.

So, net net, to put it in perspective, Cars.com estimates that click-throughs increase by about 13% for cars with a video. At the end of the day it’s a cost-benefit analysis. Does this kind of click-through warrant the $300 to $600 a month your car dealership will spend on videos? We’ll let you decide. Yes there is improvement, but we don’t think it’s monumental. There is also the benefit of improving your search rankings, and that is important too, and perhaps less costly and more efficient than paying for google results directly (so called Search Engine Marketing, SEM). We also know that over time, video technology will get better and cheaper, so perhaps it’s not a 2010 necessity, but in a year or two, video will be essential, and more affordable. Start thinking about it very soon!

News & Trends: Acquiring Customers Through Social Media or Blogs

This chart sums it all up nicely - social networking works.

* From eMarketer - Feb. 25, 2010

What's the significance?

B2C companies did better on each of other sites, with best results coming from Facebook, where nearly seven in 10 had found a new customer.

Facebook has one other interesting feature. Its visitors spend a lot of time there. According to LostRemote, the fraction of time on Facebook continues to increase. See this graph.

Users spend quite a lot of time at Facebook, once they get there. According to these statistics, it accounts for 12% of the time online of users. This statistic seems so staggering it seems implausible. If it accurately reflects user orientation towards Facebook, then that site is sitting on a dominant Web hub of information.

Tech Tips: How to use stats to increase your leads, and why framed in Inventory Pages are bad, bad, bad...

One of the most commonly viewed features any statistical or analytic program offers for your website is to see how your site is trending. That is, the number of visitors month to month, time spent on site, etc. This is usually displayed at the top position in a stats program, and unfortunately it is all some people look at.

However, what is often overlooked and is also commonly placed on the first page of most common stats or analytics tools, is where people are going on your site. Across the dealers we represent, these pages are the most visited:

- Preowned Inventory
- New Inventory

- Specials
- About

So aside from paying attention to how your site is trending, quickly glance at where people are going on your site, and ask yourself, "Is my website offering visitors what they want based on where they are going?" You need to make sure these most commonly visited areas are well maintained, so ask yourself the following:

Inventory: Is my inventory easy to search and find? Are my photos current? Do all my vehicles have comments? Is my inventory framed in, or is it actually part of of my site?

Specials: Are my specials current, or blank? Are my specials simply scanned in newspaper articles?

About: Am I giving the consumer enough information about my dealership?

Sadly, a lot of times dealer websites are not doing even these core components effectively. So, now that you know where people are going on your site, and the questions to ask based on this, what are the solutions you need to implement to be responsive to your visitors, giving the visitor what they want and getting you more leads?

Inventory solutions: Still, amazingly, dealers will frame in their inventory pages and disconnect their inventory from the rest of their website, often stranding, confusing or frustrating a site visitor, and substantially affecting your site's search engine marketability.

See what Google itself has to say about frames: "Google supports frames and iframes to the extent that it can. Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don't correspond to the conceptual model of the web. In this model, one page displays only one URL. Pages that use frames or iframes display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. Google tries to associate framed content with the page containing the frames, but we don't guarantee that we will."

Using a frameset when designing a website can often be a bad idea, since it can really hinder your ability to create effective search engine optimization. The problem with frameset pages is that they cut into your ability to link all over the site, since generally the pages don't change, and links are accessible form one space. Not being able to link to individual pages can really hurt your SEO link structure, which in turn can hurt your link popularity and Page Rank rating, which is a huge part of SEO marketing. The website can have only one URL that can be linked to, which is that of the frameset index page. Homepage links make for less valuable links in link popularity strategy, so this can be a huge barrier. It will also make it hard to link within social media applications such as facebook.

At the end of the day, frames are bad, bad bad. Stop using them for the most visited and important aspect of your website - your inventory. Google hates them, other Search engines have difficulty indexing framesets, users have trouble bookmarking them, browsers have had a long-standing problem with printing framed pages, framed pages do not behave the same as normal HTML pages, and as such lead to confusion and awkwardness. Why use them on the #1 most visited area of your website?

Specials Solutions: If you don't have time to maintain the specials on your site, try using our auto-aged special inventory listings. And make sure your vehicle specials are clickable, searchable inventory that offer customers all the vehicle photos and details they are looking for. Trying using proactive chat selectively on specials pages since you know exactly what the visitor is seeking in this pages. For example, using your chat, you can proactively engage the site visitor when they go on the specials page and say, " I see you are looking for a special? We just came out with some that we do not have listed on our website yet. What are you looking for? Perhaps I can help."

About Solutions: On the about section load staff photos so it is personalized, or even better, load staff videos. If your dealership has a unique story or history, be sure to include it on this page. Remember, they may know nothing about your dealership at all - only what they are seeing online at your website. And you can not undo a first impression. Make it the right way and let the customer know who you are, especially for those who may be driving as many as 4-5 hours to buy a car from you.

What’s New

Digital Dealer Conference April 20-22, 2010 in Orlando FL. is coming up.

Come see us at booth 909 ! Want to come as our guest? Let us know!