With online activity, everything can be made measurable with the right amount of time and investment. Great. However, this also presents a quandary – how to avoid drowning in statistics and work out what tracking is actually going to help the dealership achieve its goals?
To simplify – there are three areas you need to be tracking, at a bare minimum.
How effective your website is at generating traffic?
How effective your website is at converting visitors to inquiry?
How effective your sales team is at converting inquiry to sales?
Tracking this information can generally be achieved through a combination of specialist software and Google Analytics tracking, depending on the requirements. Don’t worry – the days of tracking via manually entered spread sheets should be done and dusted!
How effective is your website at generating traffic?
Google Analytics is the best way to measure how effective your website is at generating traffic. In particular, tracking how the traffic arrived at your website allows you to establish the best approach to build traffic.
Typically you will see a mix of ‘organic search’ (browsers typing search terms into Google), ‘paid search’ (Google Adwords) or ‘inbound links’ (vehicle listing sites, web adverts, email marketing).
Another useful (but straightforward) tactic to get the most out of Google Analytics is to take note of the page views – the pages that are viewed most on your site should be the pages to which you add important content. It sounds simple, but most dealerships would not be able to tell you which pages on their website are most popular.
How effective is your website at converting visitors to enquiry?
The key measurables are vehicle searches, detail page views, video views and most important of all – ENQUIRY!!!
This information can be tracked, and is often used in conjunction with Google Analytics to gain an overall appreciation of what is happening on the dealership’s website.
Another important way to track the effectiveness of your website is to set up Google Events in Google Analytics. It’s often something that is overlooked by website providers and dealerships alike.
Google Events will help you track any result desired on your website – whether the end goal is to get them to view a particular page, click on a particular button or submit a particular form. To set up Google Analytics, either search for instructions online, or contact your website provider for assistance.
If you are paying for search engine marketing (SEM) it is essential this is supported by setting up Google Events. This information will help dealerships establish if and where potential customers are leaving the site – which will in turn highlight areas of the website, such as complicated forms, that may need to be improved.
How effective is your sales team at converting inquiry to sales?
Any lead management tool worth its salt will be able to provide information on the source of leads, response times and closing rates.
This type of information will help management ensure all staff are handling email enquiry to the best of their ability, and that no potential sales are falling through the cracks.
The important thing to remember when tracking stats is to actually do something with them. Far too many dealerships just collect stats for the sake of collecting stats, without analyzing the information provided and taking appropriate action.
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