#284 - Website Tuneup - Housekeeping Series

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you this week by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Our good guys at Buckeye Luke. It's hot. How hot is it?

It's really hot. I can't repeat the sayings we just did off air because they were really, really funny.

Chills out of the audience, but it is hot, man. And you know what that means? That means the dog days of summer.

Dog days of summer here. And it's time to stay indoors a little bit and do some house cleaning. Right?

Spring cleaning, fall winter, summer cleaning. Let's call this summer our summer housekeeping series.

Yeah, it's the summer Tune up. And today we're going to talk about your website. Tune up. And guess what? When it's hot like this, people would much rather shop your website, then come to your dealership and walk around. Because I don't know about you, Jeff, but it's going to be 100 plus feel like here today. And nobody wants to walk around in that. My dumb. My dumb stuff's gonna play golf, but you know, you know how that goes.

Yeah. So, guys, over the next couple weeks, we're gonna go through our housekeeping episodes. So we're gonna give you guys some basic housekeeping items that you can take care of over the month of August during these slower times. Right. We're kind of out of tax season. Everyone's out vacationing, it's hot. People aren't lots. This is traditionally, for me, a little bit of a slower sales month. Right. And I'm also wanting to get things geared up for the next year. Right. Going into tax time, going into the holiday season. So I think this is a really good chance for you to look at all your processes, look at all your vendors, if you have any new systems that you want to put in place. Right. If you have vendors that you want to go vet or interview, now's a really good time to do it because then you can get these things in place before the end of the year so that you can kind of feel them out and start the new year. Right. Or get them in place before tax time. Also, you could start the new year fresh. Like if you want to switch accounting systems or if you want to switch accountants, you can start January one off fresh. And if you start now, that's going to give you a solid, you know, four or five months to get those things in place.

Yeah, people underestimate fourth quarter. Fourth quarter for our business is so important for the first quarter. In the first quarter. We all know most of us probably make, you know, 40% of our income in the first quarter, but if you don't set it up in the fourth quarter, you're way behind the eight ball. So, yeah, do these, do these tune ups and you'll be ready.

You don't want to install a new CRM or a new website in January. That is not the time to do it. You want to do it now, in August, September, October and work the bugs out so that you're full speed come January. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And people think about, oh, it's just my website, I can flip a button and it'll work, right? Well, I've been through two or three different website changes and that is not how it works. Jeff, I can tell you that is not how it works.

Yeah, so let's talk about that, Luke. Let's get into this. Our, our website tune up episode. We're going to give you guys a couple tactical tips that we found that are, that are just good rules of thumb, common practices and sometimes some blind spots that we don't even know that we should be doing. Right?

Yep, for sure.

So first off, Luke, I want to ask you. There's a million different website providers, right. I feel like you've got the really high end ones that are trying to do everything under the sun and want to charge you three or four grand a month to have it. And then you've got some other ones that are like, you know, the cars for sale car search, you know, some of the almost free ones that are, you know, $99 a month.

Yeah, big difference there is. I'm a firm believer that there is a huge difference in them. I'm not saying that the $99 website doesn't fit certain, certain dealers because it probably does. But if you were looking to sell 100 cars a month or 60 cars a month, it's not going to cut it. Many reasons. It just doesn't have the functionality, it doesn't have the SEO built in, it doesn't have SEM built in properly. They're not continually building that site and making it better. So I think there's a sweet spot. I don't think that we need to spend 5,000amonth either. But there's got to be a happy medium. I'm with Dealer Fire. I've been with them in forever and I'm not, I'm not advertising for them currently. But I can tell you I am so happy with my website and the way it performs in the way it works and it's, it's in the middle between the two costs. Right. But I do believe that it's more important to have a website that works and runs properly and looks great than anything else when it comes to advertising. And it's a portion of your advertising expense. You got to think about it like that.

So I use ast. I don't know what they're called now. Dealer on or on network or something. I don't pay much attention because I pay them so little each month. I mean, I'm grandfathered into some sort of a clause where it's like a couple dollars a month. But I still rank really well in search engine Google because how of how strong my Google reviews are, Right. I am very, very active in my Google reviews, so I rank well. So one tip, the first tip we give you, I would give you guys, is go to your website through a private browser, right? Private browser or an incognito window. Shrink that window down to cell phone size, Right. Just as small as that window will let you make it. That's what your website is going to look like on a cell phone. Right. And you can search, you know, first off, do the Google search. Used car, My city, right. You're in an incognito browser, so you're hopefully getting unfiltered results and see where you rank. Right. And then go to your website in that small browser and see what that looks like. Because I know for me, 80% of my traffic is mobile.

I, I can't believe it's, I can't believe it's that little. I would think exactly. It could be, I think it'd be 95% of your website.

But every time we look at our websites, we look at it from our laptop, our desktop computers. Oh, it looks fine. Everything lays out just great. And it's like, how many times have you been on your own website from your own cell phone?

So that is the, I think that's the number one tip is open your website on your phone and try to work it on your phone. And if it doesn't work on your phone, you got a major, major problem. Check your load speed on your phone, right? Check all these things. Because your customer is using their cell phone, they're not sitting on a desktop like you and I are.

Yep. And the biggest thing, getting down to the details of like your, your VDP page, like, can you see the photos? Can you scroll through them like your forms, if you have a contact form or even an application form, does it come up with the auto fill. You know, I don't know what embedding that is, but man, that autofill is so smooth. If someone can just click, click, click, click, click all the way through all their contact info, make sure you've got the autofill set up. Like there's some really, really cool things you can find out if you're just looking at your website. Right?

Yeah, for sure. And you know, last, I think last year or two years ago. And this is a good thing to ask your website provider, hey, am I on the newest module or the newest mode or whatever they call it? Because sometimes you're not and you know a sales rep hadn't told you actually for what you're paying now we can do a little bit different and you will be on the newest, best series of our websites that we're providing to customers. We, we went through this about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. And the mobile speed from, from the first website to the second, Jeff was night and day buddy and I thought our website was performing perfectly fine on our mobile before we made the switch. And when we made the switch, I was like, holy cow. So just to let you know, the website company you use, it may not have you running on their latest version. So you need to do that if you're not.

Yeah. So another tip, I'd say guys on your back end, make sure you've switched over to Google Analytics 4. It's fairly new. They just barely made it to standard. Hopefully, you know, it's not necessarily a website provider thing. It kind of falls in between your marketing and your website provider. But if you're using or used Google Analytics in the past, which I think most of you should be, make sure you switched over to the GA4 system platform. Nonsense. I don't fully understand it. I think I'm switched over, but I can't really tell. So anyways, get with someone who knows.

Yeah, that's. I mean cali bum. That's a, that's a tough thing to know how to use. I do not do it. I. That's not me. Alexa tries to stay up with all that, but it is really a hard setup to do just Google Analytics in general. You may need somebody, you may need to do a course online or you may need somebody to help you with that because it's very vital to how you, how your advertising performs and whether you're spending money properly. So make sure you are set up on that.

Well, it's good to know too. So like for Me, when I get into my Google Analytics, I want to see, do I see a increase in traffic independently? Not what my website guys are telling me, not what my advertising guys are telling me, not what my CRM is telling me, but actually what is Google telling me my website is doing from a traffic standpoint. A page views a bounce rate. Do I have a certain page that just has a ridiculously high bounce rate because something's broken or something's not loading? So you need to be able to see those things. And a lot of this stuff we talk about, guys, it's. It really reminds me of the unfair advantage marketing group that's going on in South Carolina at the Carolina things, and we've been talking about them. But when you get a room of dealers in together, you can ask these questions, right? You can find out who has cracked the code, who has figured out how to handle this. Hey, nobody knew this was coming. All of a sudden it's upon us. How did you do it? Can I do it myself? No, you need to go out to someone. Great. Who are you using? Give me a reference, give me a phone number. That's the beauty of these conventions and getting together with a bunch of dealers. Right, Luke?

Yeah. I mean, Tracy is one of the best car marketers I've ever met. And then Troy Spring, who's also involved in the Mastermind, he owns an ad company and I promise you he's not going to try to sell you. But that guy knows how to advertise for cars. So going to the Mastermind group right before Ciada is going to be something that it's free, number one. And you will gain so much knowledge from sitting in the room with all these folks.

Yeah. So what about consistency in your website, Luke? And consistency, I guess I would say, across all of your advertising platforms. Like.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

It's got to be a. It's got to be a theme, right? Like, like branding. Your branding theme across your website, your building, your T shirts, your Facebook ads.

Yeah. It is so important. And consistency has many aspects of your. In your website. So the consistency on how you take each first picture.

Right.

That matters. So every picture, every first picture of every car should look exactly alike. They should all be pointing the same way. They should all be taken in front of the same backdrop every time. And then your order of pictures should be exactly the same every time. People don't walk on your lot anymore, Jeff, without going to your website first. It really doesn't happen if one of your salespeople is telling you, hey, this is a walk up. I want you to look them in their face today and say, you're a liar. You didn't. You didn't ask the right questions. Because I promise you, they went to your website first. And if they go to your website and they're looking at different pictures and this one's turned that way, and this one's turned that way, they didn't clean the floor on this one. There's shadows here, this, that, and other. The customer doesn't want to come to your lot after looking at dirty pictures and weird pictures. So you have to be super consistent in your advertising. If. I mean, if you've got a dirt lot and all your cars are dirty and you still have auction stickers on your car and they come to your lot and that's what it looks like, well, okay, that's fine. But people don't want to see that. I mean, really, they don't feel comfortable buying that way.

Luke, I have an embarrassing confession to make to you. And I think a lot of dealers struggle with this. So I don't think I'm alone. But premature picturing, I think, is. Is a. Is a medical condition that affects many a dealer. I'm so anxious to get pictures on the website, right? And my lot tech, who. My lot manager who takes the pictures is really good at, like, hey, the second that thing comes out from the back, it's been to recon, it's. It's been to detail, and then, boom, it's out on the front. He takes pictures. But sometimes. Sometimes there's something missing, right? The tent, a rusty bumper that hasn't come in yet or a hitch or maybe we had plans to do new tires, but they're just not here yet. Like, I struggle with. I'm like, man, we photographed that thing and had it on our website without tint or without the lift. And now that we put the lift on it, nobody knows it. Nobody knows that it's after 10.

So you should be auditing your website, and also your inventory manager should be auditing their website every day, because the inventory manager is the one. I mean, this is their baby, right?

Yeah.

And you need to write down a process for getting your cars on the website, and then I have an auditing process of them being on the website. So our rules, super simple, right? Three cars on the website within 24 hours of the car landing, and I promise you, within 24 hours. There's still body work needs to be done. There's tires need to be put on everything. But we consistently do the same three pictures when the car lands. And so you can disguise a lot in three pictures. You can Photoshop, you can do whatever you need to do to make sure that the car looks good enough to be on your website. Hmm. So make sure you get them on there, because that is your doorway to selling cars.

But you're a. You're of the opinion that a premature picture. Three kind of teasers coming soon. You like to get that on your website before the car's even been through recon.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Because we can take it. We can take a deposit on that car now.

Right.

And we can. We can have it number one in recon. If we get a deposit on it and get it through recon, we can sell it. So it's something we decided to do during COVID and it's really helped the system. It's really gotten cars sold faster. Does it cause problems? Sometimes it does.

I can't imagine the type of brain damage that would cause.

I tell you, there's nothing better. There's nothing better than selling that car, taking a deposit with the coming soon and a customer walking in. Put that deposit down and saying, you know what? You don't need to do that body work. I'm gonna take it just as it is because it's. I mean, it's just great. Right? Or knowing that you don't have to take the rest of the pictures because it's already sold. And this happens. I mean, this happens two or three times a week.

Yeah.

So it's a process that you have to feel comfortable doing. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, don't do it. But the reason we do it is this. It gives us more cars on our website. We can sell those cars. And it helps. It helps with our traction on Google because We have more VDPs coming up. We're updating those VDPs every day. And it shows Google that we really. We're doing something that's really interesting.

I would think that you would have to have a lot of guardrails on that to not just create a huge frustration for your salesman and your mechanics. When you've got cars that are being kind of shown. I mean, you're obviously not test driving them. People aren't getting in the cars. Right. Because if it's got a dead skunk in the back, you don't want them knowing that until you have it detailed. And then they can't tell there's a dead skunk in the back. Right. Like, no, I would hate to show a Car straight off the trailer. Right. Well, because now all of a sudden that person that could have been interested had the car been reconditioned and cleaned, right now they're not interested at all because they know there's a dead skunk in it.

There's a reason they want that car. And what we say is if the car is safe to drive, they can drive it. Because we've already done our pre driving all that they can test drive. It's already been through the initial inspection, the F1, because our F1 happens directly after those three cars. I know we're going down a recon here.

Yeah.

So let's just stop there. But you need to have a process of getting your cars on the website.

Okay. So back to your website. If you want to do that, do it.

Yeah. So we've talked about pictures. Let's talk about pictures of what our dealership looks like. Let me tell you the one thing no customer cares about.

Stock photos.

Stock photos and your building. They don't care about your building. They could, they could care less. They care about the people working there. They care about your staff. Are you introducing your staff? Do they know? If they call you and say, hey, I'm speaking to Jeff Watson, can I go on your website right now and find a picture of Jeff Watson? Okay, well I need to be able to, but you need to do this because people care about who they talk to. They want to face with who's behind the phone. So get your staff on there, talk about your staff, build rapport before the customer even calls you. Something I really think is important.

Yeah, what about the, like the why Buy? You know, I think those are really important. And that's something that we try to train our sales staff in that, that's the second step in our sales process after the meet and greet is the why Buy. So you know, having that kind of as a prominent area on your website because what's setting you apart from the dealer down the street? We all have the exact same, you know, Honda Odyssey. Why would you come here as opposed to down the road?

Again, that's about the, about us. The why Buy. You know, we talked about this. Our, our friends at Buckeye and Reinsurance. That is something you can use on your website. And your why buy say, hey, we offer a 12 month, 12,000 mile warranty. You can buy extended service contracts. We have CPI. You know, this is something that should be on our WI buy. And of course we recommend Buckeye for all those products because they can help you figure out how to Sell them. We'll talk about selling, you know, in a couple weeks. But the why buy matters and who you use your reinsurance with matters too, right?

Yeah. Especially if you're going to be providing any kind of a warranty or guarantee, which I hope all of you do, having that out there as to, hey, here's what we cover for free for this period of time to stand behind our car and give you that assurance. Right. You're, you know, using a company, Buckeye, to do that. I want to ask you real quick about descriptions on cars. You know, I've messed around with Chat GPT to do vehicle descriptions. I don't do them and I haven't done them for probably 5 years. I just have a generic 5 paragraph why buy? You know, that goes on the vehicle description page of each listing. I don't talk about the specifics of the Honda Odyssey. It has great seats and leather and there's a tear in the back and the tires are brand new and blah, blah, blah. Am I missing an opportunity?

I think there's two, two ways to think about this. I used to be super, super anxious about every description on every page. We had a, you know, start paragraph of, of why by right. And then we had a description of the car below. We've gone back to using Chat GPT to do some of that. You know, it used to be a. You got to have this for Google Analytics. You got to have this for SEO. You got to have this SEM. I don't know, I don't think it matters all that much. I think people come to sites to buy from you and then they go, okay, I want a Honda Accord. Okay, I see the Honda Accord. I like that color. I don't care what it says. Can I see from the pictures? Does it have a sunroof? Does it have leather? I can see all that from the pictures. I don't need to read about it. So I don't know that it's that important. I'm sure for retail dealers it's super important. Like our friends at Freedom motor, Freeman Motor Co. Because they sell such a high end car. Those high end buyers say, okay, does it have, does it have lidar? Does it have this? Does it have that? Does it have lane keep? All these things matter when you're selling a higher end card. I think if you're selling 20 to 25,000 under, I don't know that those things come into play as much.

Yeah, it does seem to me, and this is, has been my philosophy is yes, my photos should be Plentiful and good enough. You know, I require 30 photos of every car, right. I want all the good and I want all the bad in every listing. So a ton of photos of every single feature. Your customer should be able to determine if this is the car for them based off that. But you're right. On my high end stuff, like my personal vehicles, the Denali is my Tesla's that I sell, I write out a description because that is important. Does it have a subscription? Does it have, you know, certain features that you really can't see from the pictures all the time?

Yeah, you got full self drive. You got it. You got to describe that. Hey, this has full self drive, not a subscription. Was bought new, right? Yeah, you got to have that.

So I can see that on the, on the high end stuff. What about like calls to action? So I realizing as we thought through this episode, you know, I have my application and my call to action is very high on my page. You know, fill out an application. What I haven't done since I went away from my old CRM as I don't have a web chat feature. My old one was like a, it was a chat to text, right? So it was a little bubble that popped up that said, hey, you know, we have an agent here ready to talk to you, initiate a chat. And what it would do is it actually just send them a text so they put their phone number in and then it would turn over to a texting conversation. It wasn't an in website window, but I haven't done that with my new, with my NEO system and I think they have that feature. I'm not sure. But how important is, you know, is multiple points of contact and multiple points of a customer's access to you good on your website or can it be overwhelming?

I think it can be overwhelming. I think it needs to be clear and simple. So I have a chat feature on our website and I'm actually typically the back end running that. Okay. It's. It's through, it's through Facebook. So it's super easy. It goes to Facebook Messenger. It can get overwhelming at times. What I think what's super important is what do you want this customer to do in the buy here, pay here space? You want this customer to fill out application. So your application should be super easy and very easy to get to. You know, click here to fill out an application on a retail site. Click here to get more information. Right? So it's our click here to talk about financing, whatever. I think there can be too many call calls to action. They should be easy, accessible from any page and it should be geared to what you want that customer to do, is what I think. And it should always work. You need to check it on your phone and you check it actually on your browser, all these things. Because there's nothing worse to go than having a click to call. When you click the call and nothing happens, so. Or click the chat. Nobody's working the chat. So these are things you've got to be consistent on.

Yeah, yeah. I, I struggle with having too many access points. You know me, I'm a streamlined guy. Right. I want it to be simple.

Simple as.

I don't know, I'm not confident that my guys are logging into Facebook messenger every day to look at messages. We don't have a lot coming in there anymore because we push. We haven't been pushing messages on our Facebook advertising. It pushes all to the website. But even there from the website, like, I don't want to have another widget that my guys have to log into in order to capture that attention that might be coming in. So I do like to have it all streamlined into one place and maybe that's limiting the amount of access points. You know, if you have someone that doesn't want to call, they don't want to get on the phone and call me and they don't want to send in their name and email. They literally just want to ask a question. Do they have the ability to do that?

We probably get an extra 20 apps, let's say 10 apps a week from bringing people in through that messenger. And I'm not saying they're not gonna, I'm not gonna say that they wouldn't have found it and done it anyway.

Right.

But we have a specific way we handle everyone, you know, so what's the, what's the number one question about here pay here Customer is going to ask.

Yeah, what's the payment? How much down?

What's the down payment? So we have a word track for every time somebody asks that question. It fires it back to immediately. Right. So there's ways to set up this AI that really streamlines it. Just make sure your call to actions work. Make sure you can find it. Make sure your customers can find them. Because nothing's worse than getting somebody your website and not working.

Yeah. And what I do like is not having too many barriers to entry. You know, we go back to talking about having the auto fill. Right. And so maybe that's part of it is I like a five liner app. I don't like a Full two page application. Right. Like, I don't want to get on someone's website that I don't even have a relationship with yet and fill out 500 pieces of information about my entire life and all my references and this, that or the other. That's not how I would do it. I like to ask for a five liner, not put up too much hurdles. And once I capture a five liner, now I can start a relationship with that customer and get the rest of the info over the phone or through a secondary application link. So to that point I get where people would reach out to Facebook because it's super easy, there's low friction. They can ask a simple question, how much is down? Okay, now I can convert you over to a full application because we got our foot in the door with you. So, yeah, I like the idea of kind of the low barrier to entry for our customers.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how many websites I use where the chat feature is super helpful. And somebody that a company that's in the auto space that everybody in the world picks on is dealer, socket or solari. Right. Let me tell you this. We use the dealer chat function inside idms all the time when we have an issue. And you know how quickly they resolve that issue if we're having it. I mean, it's, it's within five minutes before I could have picked the phone up and called somebody. I can use that chat feature and get help. I just think if it's done properly, it is such a, such a great asset to your business.

Yeah, yeah. Like I said, quick, quick conversations, low barrier to entry. You're not having to jump through a bunch of hoops or give a ton of information. You know, I had the exact opposite experience with E. Oscar, right. I'm trying to get my E. Oscar set up for credit reporting. It's like to, to submit, to submit an issue or a complaint or a question, you have to log into a whole nother system and enter in like 50 things. And I don't expect that to work well, but that's a good example of how it can really, really just go off the rails when you start layering too much into your website or too many processes or hurdles for people. People.

Yeah. Hey, Jeff, if you do all these things right, what's going to happen to your business?

Well, you're probably going to sell more cars, which means you're going to need more money. And of course, we want to talk to you guys about Primal End. The guys that have the money.

The guys. The guys that have the money, guys that have the cash that you're going to need to grow. Because if you get your website set up right, you work it right, you're going to eat through some cash. And Primaland they can help figure out the best route for you to get the cash you need to grow because you will grow, I promise you. Listen to our podcast and doing these things, your business will grow.

Yeah. So let's give a couple shout outs. Luke, you made a couple notes on dealers that you like their website.

Yeah. So consistency matters. Consistency, lighting, all these things are just super important when it comes to your website. So three websites I think you need to take a look at and a first shout out to Jack Carter and those guys down there at Turn and Burn motors. It's their 10th anniversary, just happened. Congrats to them. That's awesome. They run a tight ship. But look, look at their website. It is wonderful. I mean it is really. The pictures they do is great. So look at their website. Our friends at freedom Freeman Motor.com Freeman Motor Company turn and burn is turning burn motors.com Freeman Motor.com to two locations, really high end cars. Consistency across the board. I've been to their setup, it looks amazing. And another guy who's got two dealerships, our friend Dan, real friend to everybody. Reelsautogroup.com super consistent. And both Freeman and Reels have two locations. And look how they do with two locations and combine it to one website. It's sharp, it looks good. I promise you. These guys sell hundreds of cars a month. They know what they're doing. All three of those, all three of those folks sell more than a hundred cars a month and they know what they're doing. So look at their websites. Take pick them apart, see what you like about theirs and make sure your websites have the same functionality.

Yeah, Luke, hopefully everyone's taking something away from this. This is a good time again, guys, this time of year. Go in, take this week, audit your website and then institute the changes you need. Get those balls rolling, you know, have the conversation with your website provider, switch providers if you need to. Now is the time to get rolling and kind of address these issues so that when you know things are going again, tax time picks up, you're up to speed.

That $99 website may be costing you $9,000 a month and you just don't know it.

I don't know, man. I don't. Like I said my SEO, my ranking is still really high. So what else do I need, right? I like the mobile version. It's okay. Could there be better? Yes. And we've talked about this before. Would I love to have a carvana style website that is just sleek and smooth and sexy and does everything from start to finish, including a finance menu and payments and there's some sort of AI that's integrated into the whole thing that could actually collect stips and score people and put deals together? Yes. But until that happens, and until someone builds that for me or I build up my dang self, this is. This is what I got.

All right, man. This is. This is good stuff. Hopefully everybody got something.

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