There’s no doubt about it, the retail world is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Digital services have enabled shoppers to complete all of their purchasing needs at the drop of a hat and within the comfort of their own homes. No item seems too small to have delivered right to your door with the utmost convenience to the shopper — but what about the larger items?
Taking Advantage of Online Markets
Car sales have traditionally required a more complicated transaction in order to finalize a purchase. For many years, other retail industries have thrived online while dealerships could do little to take advantage of this market. Originally, dealership websites consisted of little more than an advertising tool designed to entice customers into visiting the local dealership’s physical location.
Ever since the dawn of the internet, retailers that sell smaller products, which can easily be shipped anywhere in the world for little cost, have been easily able to capture the attention – and dollars – of online shoppers. Auto sellers, however, understand that the process of closing a sale on a vehicle is more complicated than the few clicks it takes for simpler online transactions. For this reason, end-to-end auto sales have taken longer to transition to the digital world than other retail industries.
New Sales Technology Can Help
New online digital services are changing all of this because they enable dealerships to bring the skills of their sales team to the internet. Companies that specialize in developing internet sales and marketing solutions for dealerships – like Gubagoo – are truly revolutionizing the auto sales industry in a way that is similar to the online shopping revolution already long underway.
Here are 5 of the most important dealership website features that you should know about in order to take advantage of internet sales and marketing for auto sales.
1. Dealership Live Chat
Live chat enables you to bring the best features of your dealership sales team to your website. As soon as you establish a personal connection and start building a dialogue, you boost your website from being a merely passive venue to satisfying interactive customer experience.
New online customers are a difficult market to capture, but also one that has enormous potential for bringing growth to your company. When you add an online chat service to your dealership website, you’re maximizing your potential to capture the attention of new online shoppers and engaging them with the beginning stages of the sales process.
Those that may have once merely perused your online inventory and then left to compare prices with one of your competitors, are now be able to have their questions answered by a knowledgeable live chat operator. From there, the potential only grows as they engage in other innovative online apps and receive personalized offers from your sales team.
2. Photo and Video Sharing
A live chat service can give you the ability to retain web traffic and get more information about potential new customers so that you can build more powerful leads at a faster rate, but it can also do more. One of the most important parts of engaging with customers via instant message is the ability to share photos and video. Members of your sales team can jump into live chat at any time to offer tailored deals and updates at any time.
They can also share photos and video to live chat conversations in order to provide the customer with a guided tour of their potential new vehicle. Bringing the dealership experience to the online forum begins with introducing the ability to engage in full conversations but it goes a step further with photo and video capabilities. Since this is everyday technology, you’ll also be able to attract a new generation of the customer using these features.
3. Personalized Sale Offers
The live chat process helps to engage new customers and generate a higher level of customer loyalty through personal and informed interactions. As your live chat operators converse with new leads, they can also enter their information into a computerized analytic program that helps to build a portfolio on that customer which your entire team can access. This allows your entire team to build a more personal relationship with new customers faster than ever before.
4. Building Better Leads
Gaining a deeper understanding of your new potential new clients brings you the ability to build better customer relations and provide more accurate offers to your online clients, but it also contains the ability to give you and your team a better vantage through which to engage the client later on. By building these better customer relations, you’ll be able to bring more powerful lead generation to your dealership.
Part of the marketing package that a digital dealership solutions company will provide to you will be based on using your convenient services to craft an entire sales platform that can actually lead to complete end-to-end auto sales online. The entire process, however, begins by integrating live chat with your website.
5. Digital Insurance and Financing Forms
As a seasoned auto dealer, you may already be thinking that the next step in carrying a deal forward is to introduce your customer to insurance or financing options. Now that you can install such forms digitally to be accessed on your website, the customer can reach this stage of the deal without having to travel to your physical dealership location.
Services like digital online forms can provide an enormous boost to leads and bringing a potential sale further towards fruition. None of this is possible, however, without the guidance that is provided by your live chat operator.
Live chat services begin with a simple greeting and have the potential to lead to an enormous increase in dealership sales. Talk to an online sales and marketing software provider today to find out more about how you can integrate better services onto your dealership website in order to attract more customers, build better leads and open the door to online auto sales.
