Page 24 - On The Move - Volume 18, Issue 3

By Nick Brunotte
Director at DHG

While no two digital marketing footprints are the same, there are some common themes particularly when it
comes to conducting website “audits.” Websites are a foundational element of any digital marketing strategy, and
they can also represent one of the larger fixed expense line items on your budget breakdown.

Among other things, your website represents an organic SEO opportunity, a knowledge platform for your
customers and your 24/7 showroom. The money that your dealership and your vendors spend in the digital space
is designed to funnel your customers to the website and ultimately further down the path to purchase.

When you conduct your monthly review of website metrics, it is likely that you consider items like pageviews,
bounce rate and average session duration, but how often do you tie the poor (or positive) performance metrics
to the health of your website? The items that typically cause poor conversion and/or website metrics are due to
the following:

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1 - INCONSISTENT INFORMATION 4 - OUTDATED RESEARCH PAGES
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While it can be as simple as varying hours of It can be difficult to maintain model accuracy
operation across platforms, your customers are during model year changeovers, but customers
visiting your website to learn something about are still visiting the online showroom to conduct
your dealership, whether it is details on vehicle their own research. Align your research pages
features or operating hours for service. Whatever with models that are current, may feature new
it may be, they should be able to see it correctly technology or are arriving soon. This is also
and consistently regardless of where they choose an opportunity to align your site content with
to find the answer. the manufacturer message regarding product
announcements.
2 - OUTDATED BLOG POSTS
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5 - AGING SITE COPY
Blogs provide endless opportunity 5 - A GI N G S I TE C O P Y
to boost your organic SEO content It’s unlikely that a brand new 2019 vehicle is still
and search result rankings, as well as serve as available in 2021, but your website might still
a way to inform your customers. Content older reflect this to your customers. Additionally, your
than a year is less relevant and may highlight old site copy can date your dealership
models, features no longer offered, etc. Therefore, and/or the last time it was reviewed
content should remain relevant and informative. for accuracy, so remember to keep it
updated to reflect the changing times,
3 - BLANK SPECIALS PAGES
3 - B L A N K S P E C I A L S P A GE S now more so than ever.
Few people visit your website
expecting to pay full price for
a vehicle. More often than not,
they will browse your “Specials”
section to decide if they are still
“just shopping” or leaning toward some intent to
purchase. This moment can make or break the
decision to stay or leave.
22 www .maad a. com
22 www.maada.com