In a previous video, I posited that there have been some dumb wars throughout history, but automotive software vendors fighting over the call to action buttons (the CTAs) on a dealer’s website is perhaps the dumbest war of all time.

The net of that commentary is that dealers need chat tools, they need digital retailing, they need trade-in tools, payment tools, etc, but we collectively have to work with the dealer to make sure that the tool helps them best achieve their goals and deliver the best user experience as possible while doing it.

I then went on to say that if your goal is to convert website traffic into actionable first party leads, you don’t accomplish that in a chat nor in a digital retailing tool. You need tools specifically designed for that purpose.

Case-in-point – our friend and customer Mason McFalls at Driver Seat pulled this data from two of the stores he oversees.

• He evaluated completion rates over a 15 month period, measuring the amount of people that started the process to request a trade-in.
• The website visitors that clicked the “value your trade” button and then entered the TradePending process – one question, contact info -done, they completed at a 40% rate. 
• The visitors that entered a chat to value their trade only completed at a 16% rate. That’s a 150% drop-off from 40%.  Why is it so much lower and why does this matter?
• That conversion rate is so much lower because it just takes longer. Grab your phone, try it for yourself and see. Time is the enemy of all deals, and website conversion.

It matters because of math and money.

If you get 100 people to start the trade-in process, on average 40 will turn up as leads with TradePending. Only 16 will turn up as leads if they get pushed into a chat.

If you close your leads at 10%, you’ll have sold 4 cars versus 1. Would you rather sell 4 cars or 1? 

We’re not hating on chat tools, they’re great at what they do – establishing a personal connection. You need them for that. But if your goal is to convert website traffic in order to buy and sell more cars, think real hard before pushing every “value your trade” call to action to a chat. Doing that could cut your lead flow by half or more. 

Seen different results? We’re all ears.