3 seconds.
That’s how much time your dealership’s website has to capture your customers’ attention and encourage them to interact with your VDPs (Vehicle Detail Pages).
If a car shopper can’t find what they’re looking for within three seconds of landing on a VDP, that’s a bad user experience, and it can end up costing you conversions.
The tricky thing, though, is that vehicles require heaps of detailed information in order to answer essential customer questions. It can be difficult to organize and present that content in a way that’s digestible, sufficiently informative, and most importantly, engaging. Here are some tips on how to convey all the essential info in that crucial three seconds!
VDP Conversion Maximization vs. User Experience
Conversions are the lifeblood of digital marketing, so obviously dealerships will always strive to maximize them on their websites. Put simply, more website conversions mean a higher likelihood for a sale. Whether it’s a financing application, request for information, or booking a test drive, conversions indicate a growing number of prospective customers. Keeping the number of conversions in mind is a key focus, which often results in an equally important factor being overlooked: user experience.
VDPs are a car shopper’s first impression of your dealership’s inventory (and maybe the last, depending on their experience). The online presence of your dealership influences a customer’s perception of your business offline and is often a deciding factor in whether or not they choose your dealership as their vehicle supplier. It’s kind of a make or break situation — so is your VDP user experience a positive one?
Common Problems With VDPs and How to Improve Them
Information Overload — Sure, providing all of the valuable information about a vehicle is important (the keyword being valuable). But not all details are created equal! The last thing a customer wants is to be bombarded with data. Not only is it overwhelming, but it can also distract them from the desired actions you want them to take, like booking a test drive or calling the store. Keep it clean and simple! Decide what’s really important and don’t be afraid to cut out the unnecessary stuff. Try hiding additional information behind a “More Details” button, or simplifying the content by using bullet lists and icons.
Crammed Content — Some dealerships tend towards a VDP layout that includes ALL information about a vehicle above the fold, meaning that every detail is shown at the top of a page without the need to scroll downward. This is ineffective since there’s no clear emphasis on what the customer should be looking at. There’s no need to keep everything above the fold, just critical information intended to capture user attention. Things like enticing images, price, and promotions work well here. Save all the less exciting information for the rest of the page.
Prioritize information and display it in an easily-digestible layout. Less is more when it comes to UX design!
Too many CTAs — You might think that including a variety of CTAs (calls-to-action) would help maximize conversions on your VDP page, but often times it just makes for more confusion. There should be a clear and succinct CTA. What is it you want your potential customers to do? All of the elements of a VDP should be a defined map to conversion!
“Which one am I supposed to click?!” – Flustered Car Shopper
Slowness —Speed is a massive contributor to a positive or negative user experience. If the content on your VDPs takes too long to load, your bounce rates will increase exponentially.
According to Google,
“…as page load time goes from 1 second to 6 seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 90%”
Check out our recent blog post about page speed and discover how to shave vital seconds off of load time!
Stress-Inducing VDPs —Your VDP page shouldn’t cause anxiety or confusion. Effective VDPs offer an obvious indication of where to look first and a clearly-guided journey from landing on the page to converting. Try it out — click on any of your dealership’s VDPs. Upon landing, do you feel slightly overwhelmed with where to look or what actions are supposed to be taken? Fixing this can turn your VDPs from a stressful experience into “love at first view!”
The Solutions: Customer-Centric Design
Simple, Easy-to-Navigate Design —Declutter your VDPs! Minimize the amount of CTAs used and create a simplified experience that’s easy to follow. Offer multiple engagement points that are clear and succinct (like a “More Details” button or a “Notify Me When Price Drops” button etc.), but remember: don’t over-do it with the CTAs!
Prioritize Valuable Information — Show the most critical information above the fold, including price, promotions, make, model, year, and images. The other stuff can go below the fold and be discovered by enterprising scrollers. This way, a car shopper can find all of the critical information immediately, without being overwhelmed with less pertinent content.
Make it Visually Pleasing —Seemingly simple page attributes like fonts, colours, and organization have a massive impact on a user’s experience. Create VDPs that include simple, legible fonts (none of that fancy shit, and don’t even think about using Comic Papyrus) with appropriate icon pairings and sensible colour combinations that don’t distract from your clearly-defined conversion goals. Organize your content in a balanced, visually enticing manner that will make a car shopper want to stick around and explore.
We repeat: Simple design is more effective when conveying lots of information!
Use Lots of Compelling Images — Photos are a powerful element of a VDP page, so be sure to include a variety. Click-through slideshows are an effective way of displaying images because they tend not to overwhelm the car shopper and allow them to view each image at their own speed. Remember, quickness is key! Make sure your images are high-quality and compressed so as to not bog down the page speed.
To Summarize:
Information overload, overwhelming design, and too many CTAs lead to high bounce rates and far fewer conversions. Get your VDP bounce rates down and your leads up with an effective user experience design strategy. Simple, functional layouts with clear information, distinct goals, and an overall enjoyable experience will do wonders for your VDP conversions.
At Convertus, our premium websites are designed with the car-shopper in mind. We create high-converting VDPs that engage users and drive traffic to the dealership. Want to improve your dealership’s online user experience? Reach out to our Customer Success team to discover how we can work together to make something awesome.