4 minute read
Sales & Marketing
from SBT issue 460
Whether it’s poor SEO or not enough content, automotive Shoreham-based website specialists, 67 Degrees, reveal why your website may be underperforming.
Now more than ever, it’s so important that your website is performing the best it can. Car buyers are browsing thousands of dealers’ websites each and every day, and you want to make sure yours is fulfilling expectations. Ask yourself these three questions: 1. Is your dealership appearing in the relevant online searches? 2. Is your website easy to navigate for customers? 3. Are you capturing all the necessary
Sales & leads in the correct way?
Marketing
Getting your website to perform at its best can be a timely process, which is why at 67 Degrees, we’re here to help. Our website design and development team have explained seven of the key reasons why your website isn’t performing…
Poor SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an extremely important factor to your website. There are quite literally millions of people searching for cars every single day on Google – it’s certainly tough competition to make sure you are on page one of the search engine!
Make sure you are ranking for the most relevant keywords; these include those relating to the brand and the type of stock you have. If you are a specialist Mercedes-Benz dealership, you’ll want to make sure you rank for primary keyword terms such as ‘Mercedes-Benz in [insert location]’ - this is SEO 101.
Bad user experience
User Experience (UX) is important to any website. To put it into perspective, it’s how browsers turn into buyers. If the user journey hasn’t been properly thought out, you could be missing out on leads flooding your inbox.
If you don’t have internal links on your homepage sending people to stock or services, how are users going to find them? Many car dealers want to talk about ‘their story’, which is great, but this should be a secondary thought. Why not put yourself in the shoes of customers by seeing how easy it is to navigate your website – you may be surprised by the results!
Not fully optimised
Every website should be optimised to whatever device the customer is using to browse your website on – be it desktop, mobile or tablet. If your website isn’t optimised, it’s harder for customers to navigate. It may be that the user needs to keep zooming in to try and view a page correctly on mobile – eventually they will get fed up and exit the website. Be aware that Google penalises websites which don’t have a mobile version, by showing them further down the search results.
Little to no content
Content is so important on your website – and we don’t just mean blog articles - but wording on all your pages. All of the pages on your website should have at least 500 words per page to be optimal for SEO purposes. Google considers pages with 300 words or less to be ‘thin’ and could be penalised by being shown further down the search list.
Your website content should answer your customers’ questions, and in the case of our automotive clients, it’s all about vehicles. The quality of your content is also very important; don’t just waffle for the sake of filling words on a page.
Page load speed
Did you know that 40 per cent of online buyers will exit a website if a page doesn’t load after just three seconds? Because technology has evolved so quickly over the past 10 years, consumers are used to being served information immediately. Slow page loading = lower Google ranking, it’s as simple as that.
Unclear call to actions
A clear call to action (or CTA for short) is a key factor of your website’s performance. A CTA usually appears as a button to highlight what a user should do, and in this instance will be:
Buying a car Enquiring about a car Sending an email enquiry Calling the dealership
Substandard design
Everybody loves a great looking website and as we know, first impressions count! The one thing potential customers want to see is images of your cars in stock. As such, your website should have big bold images that are full width, and the overall website design should be eyecatching and appealing. A website that has been created with design in mind can instil trust in your brand and show professionalism as a business.
Your website, your way!
Here at 67 Degrees, we pride ourselves in making sure each and every one of our car dealer websites is up to the highest standards. We have won multiple awards for the design and UX of our websites so we’d love to show you what we can do. Find us online at 67degrees.co.uk or call us on 01273 007855.
