Articles: Marketing & Sales

First Impressions

Dave LaLonde is Senior Vice President and Search Engine Optimizer for Auto Credit Express. The ACE Group is a special finance total solutions firm offering their dealership partners entry level and advanced sub prime training, an easy to use online software, and an expert auto sales lead system.

Take a moment and think of a restaurant that you've visited only once and will never return to again. You don't have to recall the name; in fact you've probably forgotten the name of the restaurant but remember its location. I asked this same question to my staff, my friends, and my family. Each of them instantly recalled at least one restaurant that they would never return to again. Next I asked them why. I was able to group their responses into a handful of reasons: Slow Service, Bad Food, Rude Wait Staff, or a Nasty Restroom.

A few months ago, I accompanied one of our marketing business consultants on a visit to a large dealer group in Northeast Ohio. To be prepared for my visit, I, like many car buyers, decided to research the group online at home. I found their group's website quickly by Googling the group name. They had two listings there, they were atop Google's organic results, and had a link to their site in the sponsored link section.

Slow Service

Once inside their website I was a little taken back by how busy it was. There were three animated graphics and a lot of banner type messages used to route web surfers. In total, I counted 34 gif images and 7 jpg images on the home page. There were also links to specific promotional vehicles that the car buyer could visit. After I clicked one of these links, I was greeted by a page with 13 images; the images were scanned reproductions of the dealer's recent print ads. Each ad had the following file size:


Do the math, the image file sizes totals 1815.28 K. I logged off and revisited the site, as many surfers do, with my 28.8K dial up account. I waited quite some time, and then I remembered what my wife always tells me when I get impatient at a restaurant. "As soon as you visit the restroom the food will come, it never fails." I went twice. The food still did not arrive. I closed the browser and logged back in with my high speed connection and revisited the site.

Since my mission was simply to learn more about the group I looked around for information pertaining to their history. At the bottom of the page I found a link beginning with the word "About", so I clicked it.

Bad Food

I was greeted with a blank page that contained only a Red-X on it. The page was trying to retrieve a graphic that was not in the location it expected. Being the nice guy that I am, I decided to report the broken page. On the home page I noticed a link asking for feedback on their website. I clicked the link.

Rude Wait Staff

A few seconds later my Outlook Express opened up pre-populated with the email address for what I assumed to be the stores webmaster or internet department. Outlook Express, is the default email client on my home computer. I do not use Outlook Express. I, like many web surfers, use my employment email address which is set-up on my computer at work, not my home computer.

I also have a personal email address provided by my internet service provider that I can access email via the web. At this point I had a choice to make. Should I write down the email address of the stores webmaster, leave their site, visit my ISP's site, log in, open my web mail, type in the email address of the webmaster, and compose an email notifying them that they have a broken link on their site? I took the path of least resistance and closed Outlook Express.

Nasty Restroom

I still needed more information on the group so I decided to dig deeper into the site. Atop the home page were links to each of their franchises; it's a big group representing 21 franchises. Most of the store sites were powered by Reynolds Web Solutions. I have no experience with this web site in a box solution provider but, based on the appearance of the sites, I'd guess Reynolds did not design these sites but simply provided the group a Content Management System. Similar to a truck stop restroom, many of the sites contained text that was not aligned or scattered randomly displayed on the page. In fact, some images were placed over the text; I could only read the ending of the message.

I decided to view the pages a second time with Internet Explorer. I, like a growing minority of surfers, switched to Mozilla Firefox as my default web browser after Google home page suggested I switch earlier this year (Search for "Google Promotes Firefox" on any search engine for more details.). The text was aligned properly after I switched to IE.

Frustrated that I could not find the information I was looking for I decided to call it a night and just show up for the meeting in the morning. The next morning, prior to visiting the group, I had a quick breakfast meeting with our local Northeast Ohio consultant at one of the turnpike rest stops. We compared notes and proceeded to the appointment. The group had multiple campuses, I only visited two, each campus had multiple franchises. I was shocked to see that nearly every store on both campuses had the dealer groups web address displayed prominently on the building, and later as I found, on all their print advertising as well. I could not help wondering how many people they drove to their site had the same bad meal I had?

To drive new traffic to their stores, dealerships as a group, spend a lot of money advertising and branding their store through traditional media sources such as print, radio, bill boards, and television. To monitor the effectiveness of their ad sources, some stores use an incoming call tracking service such as Call Source or Who's Calling.

Once a car buyer makes it to the lot successful stores ensure that the car buyer does not have a bad experience. All the used cars are serviced and detailed before they hit the lot, the sales staff is prompt and friendly, and Ups are TO'ed to management before they leave the store. Many dealers also utilize third party surveying services to monitor the car buyer's experience while they were at their store.

All this attention to detail is given because we understand the importance of the customer's overall experience as they advance through each of the sale's gates. By analyzing data it's easy to determine which gate in the sales cycle needs the most attention. Sometimes, however, we forget that the dealer's website often is the first gate in the sales process. One visit to a disorganized, poorly designed, difficult to navigate, or slow loading website could chase away customers before they call or visit your store.

If you use your website name in all your branding efforts make sure it serves up a good meal. If not you may be better served offering shoppers only a take out menu by listing just your phone number and street address.

Published in World of Special Finance Magazine
November Issue 2006