Look At Your Dealer Stats:

You may be proud that your bounce rate is at 20%. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but look at your top 10 keywords. I would bet that most of them contain your dealer name right? This searches are looking for you, so you can be assured they will not become a bounce. I’m sorry to inform you, but you cannot really credit that with your internet department. These are people driving by your dealership, or perhaps someone who saw your TV ad and forgot what your domain name was. Now I would hope that you rank first on all of your dealership’s queries, but you really can’t count that as seo. That’s a gimme.

The more organic traffic you get, the higher your bounce rate will be:

Here’s the problem. Yourself or a good SEO company will obviously optimize your website or misrosite for local traffic, using city and state related keywords. It wouldn’t make sense to target the word “Chevrolet Dealership”. Not only would it be costly, but why would you want Alaska traffic going to your website if you’re located in Miami Florida? If it was an easy keyword to rank on, I’d say go for it. That would be a great Google Map Phrase to advertise with the local business center, but to rank on that keyword phrase in searches would cost 10’s of thousands of dollars.

The reason why your bounce rate goes up is simple. The more you optimize your website, the more organic traffic you get by accident. This morning, my Orlando Dealer got a visit from a user that searched for light blue toyota sienna 2009 on Google. There was no mention of the word “Orlando”, or “Florida”. Here is another example:

The odds that this click was from the Florida area is pretty slim, therefore this will be a sure bounce. The more of these impressionsyou get, the higher your bounce rate will be. This unique long-tailed search term was number one on Google out of 3/4 of a million websites.

This was an accidental visit, and the odds of that person being located near Florida is pretty slim. That keyword phrase even shows up in Google’s UK Servers. So the odds of this visitor becoming a bounce is favorable.

How a bounce is calculated?

“A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.” – Says Wikipedia

This makes it obvious that you have to be careful which stats program to use. Never trust stats that a vendor gives you. Always use a third party program like Google Analytics. If you use a vendors stats, they can set their bounce rate to be “anyone who enters and stays for more than 2 second will not be a bounce”. I have also found that many stats programs count spiders as visits. That is so wrong! You know how many spiders are out there crawling around? Some shady SEO Companies can write bot codes to crawl your site too, to make it look like human traffic.

This is what Google says about their bounce rate:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.” —Says Google

Now if you were selling CD’s which could be shipped anywhere, this wouldn’t be applicable to you, but you are selling a high dollar items. Cars that many people just won’t buy without kicking the tires, or seeing it in person. Why would somebody from California buy a car in Miami Florida? Unless it’s Jay Leno, I don’t see it happening.

There are factors in other niches as well:

“While bounce rate is a useful tool for e-commerce sites, it is of more questionable value for sites such as news and information, where many visitors go to scan headlines and conduct research, and can find what they want immediately on the entry page. Indeed, for any kind of informational site, sophisticated users are likely to bookmark a page within the site, which then becomes their personal entry page, check it (e.g., for sports scores, the price of pork bellies etc.), then bounce right off. The page will have done its job, but might still have a bounce rate above 80%, bringing up the average for the whole site. For such sites, metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative and should be used to understand the overall picture better.” —-Says Wikipedia

Read more about Bounce Rates on Wikipedia here.

The recent Toyota recalls have certainly garnered a lot of attention in the media. And, why not? It makes for great drama, and drama sells. Toyota has had a long standing reputation of making reliable, safe vehicles that hold their value well.

As a long time, highly satisfied Toyota owner, I became very curious as to whether or not the media hype was an accurate reflection of the recall situation. Like many current Toyota owners, this could easily be the deciding factor whether or not I will purchase another Toyota again in the future.

Cat Ellis Of Showroom Logic Defends The Toyota Recalls

One of the biggest selling points for Toyota cars and trucks has historically been how well they hold their resale value. Toyota vehicles have traditionally required very little in the way of maintenance costs over the life of the vehicle. Where most new vehicles suffer massive depreciation, the initial depreciation associated with purchasing a new Toyota has been mild in comparison. When Toyota owners have traded in or sold their used car or truck, they have been able to recoup much more of their initial cost.

For those buying a used Toyota, one could reasonably expect the vehicle to last a long time without a major repair, and continue to hold its value better than other used cars and trucks. Potential repair costs are usually the biggest concern for used car shoppers. Toyota has proven to be a predictable, low-cost-to-own choice in used cars for people all over the world for decades. It takes a long time to build up that kind of reputation.

These recalls involved over 8 million vehicles worldwide. (That does not mean that all the vehicles recalled had experienced problems.) On the surface, this sounds alarming, however when one takes a look at exactly what was involved and the numbers associated with each recall, a different picture begins to emerge

Now, here come the recalls in question. Recalls involving floor mats, sticky accelerators, and ABS braking software have been in the news since 2007. These recalls involved over 8 million vehicles worldwide. (That does not mean that all the vehicles recalled had experienced problems.) On the surface, this sounds alarming, however when one takes a look at exactly what was involved and the numbers associated with each recall, a different picture begins to emerge.

The initial recall involving floor mats was the result of optional all-weather mats and unsecured mats intended for SUVs that ended up in other models. The recall involved just under 4 million vehicles worldwide, representing approximately half of all vehicles affected by all three recalls combined. Another point to consider is that there was nothing with the Toyota vehicles themselves. The issue was with the floor mats. The fix required nothing more than removing the mats.

This recall was ultimately amended to involve sticking accelerator pedals. This expanded recall involved all the same vehicles as the first. What was expanded were the precautions taken to prevent accelerator pedals from being caught by the inappropriate floor mat or floor mat installation. The amended recall provided for a reshaped pedal to avoid entanglement with floor mats, a brake override system, a newly designed floor mat, the removal of the old mat, and a reimbursement to the owner if they did not want the new floor mat. Again, there was nothing wrong with the vehicle itself, but was a precautionary measure.

The second recall involved sticking accelerator pedals that had nothing to do with floor mats. Certainly, a vehicle accelerating suddenly and not responding to the brake would be enough to rattle anyone. However, when tests were performed on affected models, independent sources like Car and Driver and Edmunds.com were able to slow and stop the Toyota vehicles in question.

The third recall involved a much smaller numbers of the newer 2010 Toyota Prius. The ABS braking software caused braking malfunctions, leading to the recall and rewrite of the software. The response time for this recall and solution was very quick, just a matter of days.

While the sticking accelerator recall did not include the Prius, some Prius owners have claimed that their vehicle suddenly accelerated. However, the Prius has a unique feature, something akin to a “black box”. Information from these devices have been checked by third-party and government inspectors, and have come to the conclusion that driver error is to blame. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), the information is more consistent with having the accelerator fully engaged, rather than the brake. In other words, the driver had their foot on the wrong pedal.

Pressing the accelerator instead of the brake has been a common driver error for as long as folks have been driving. The question is, how many of the problems reported that prompted the sticking accelerator recall were also driver error? Unfortunately, Event Data Recorders (black boxes) are not currently standard on most vehicles, though that will be changing in 2012.

While many media outlets speculated that these recalls would result in a massive drop in Toyota sales, this has not proven to be the case. Based on interviews with US auto owners conducted by marketing research firm TRC, Toyota’s solid history of designing and manufacturing quality, safe cars and trucks is winning out over media hype. The interviews revealed that most people still perceive Toyota as a safe, reliable automaker based on the product’s historical performance. This bodes well for Toyota maintaining their reputation of manufacturing vehicles that hold their value, and keeping Toyota at the top of the pack for reliable used cars and trucks.

My own experience as a Toyota owner has been a good one. I have owned both a Corolla and a Camry. They have both been economical to own, needing only routine maintenance that would be required of any other vehicle. Both were purchased as used Toyotas, and both have lasted over a decade. My Corolla made it to over 210,000 miles, and my Camry is still riding like new at around 150,000 miles. Both vehicles have been very inexpensive to operate, even with rising gas prices. After looking at all the information, I would absolutely purchase another Toyota.

After looking at all the information, I would absolutely purchase another Toyota

For those looking to buy a safe, reliable car or truck, Menlove Toyota Scion in Bountiful, Utah has a large inventory of both new and used Toyotas. Menlove Toyota Scion also has their own financing, as well as Service and Part Center for your convenience. Their Toyota Dealer web site,  provides Bountiful-area car shoppers with details about Menlove’s inventory, hours, and current new and pre-owned specials. Utah auto shoppers would do well to check them out.

Search Marketing For Service Departments

Last week Patrick and I were approached by a car dealer in Orlando Florida. They are already an existing customer of ours, using our Orlando Microsite to sell more new and used cars online.

Anyway, they wanted us to help them market their service department online because they are very happy with the results we’ve given them so far.

This dealer has 3 separate websites. The first is their main site, which is operated by Izmo Cars. The second is a macrosite provided by Showroom Logic. The third website is a microsite by dealer.com which attempts to target the Orlando Florida market.

The campaign we agreed upon will be Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing using Google Adwords.

For the SEO Aspect we felt it would be best to develop and maintain a blog for their service department. This will give us more flexibility to optimize the website for keywords. The reason we decided not to use any of their existing websites is because of the lack of technology available for creating new pages.

Their Izmo Cars website doesn’t have a log-in where you can add or edit a webpage. They have to be contacted for each change and they will do it. The problem is I do not wish to wait when I need something changed.

The Dealer.com website is much better than Izmo, but it still lacks flexibility. I could of created a new page for their service department, but I wouldn’t have access to change the title tags.

This is why we chose the blog, and it’s actually like having an additional website for our customer. Counting our used car blog, they now have 5 websites:

• Orlando Used Car Classified  Microsite This website shows up better than any of their websites for organic (free) searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo. We do not market their brand or franchise. We market their inventory, new and used. We also use our Google Adwords Software to promote their vehicles within a 40 mile radius of their dealership.
• Orlando Car Blog This blog helps to rank all of their other websites in search engines. Weekly blog posts are done about their new inventory as it comes in. Whenever a blog post is published, the system “pings” Google, and the article is crawled and indexed within a couple of minutes. A couple of months ago they acquired over 10 used Corvettes. I made the Corvette keyword a main focus during one week, and since then all of the Corvettes have been sold.
• Service Department Blog: This blog provides the same as above, only the traffic is funneled to either their lead management tool or their existing main dealer website service pages. It also blends in social networking accounts like Twitter and Facebook.
• Main Napleton Website: This website is their main dealer website, operated by Izmo Cars. It obtains most of it’s traffic by drive-by’s, newspaper and TV advertising.
• Corporate Website: This website is provided by Chrysler and it has backlinks from corporate Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge websites. It also offers more flexibilitythan their main dealer website.

This is why Napleton is a leader in internet sales in the Orlando area. They have a large internet presence consisting of 5 different websites and they blast their inventory daily to Twitter, Facebook and Craigslist using our automated tools.

We can only service one dealership per city, so it’s first come first serve. If you would like more information regarding our services, please email mike@showroomlogic.com.

The Twitter Experiment For Car Dealer's Tweets

Each Tweet came in at the same time (30 minutes ago on a Saturday morning). Here is the information for each:

• Example A: This Twitter account has 661 followers. Not one single Twitter user clicked it, and it was broadcasted to 661 people.
• Example B: This Twitter account only has 87 followers, yet 12 Twitter users already clicked  the car.

So why the difference?

Example A is a Twitter account set-up by the dealer. They went to one of those third party websites that promise you loads of followers. The problem? You won’t be able to sell many cars in Bolivia, because most aren’t even in the country.

Example B is a Twitter account I set up last month. I took the time to find and follow local people, and you can see the results. As I mentioned above, we set up an entirely different website so we could perform this test.

So, it’s really not how many followers you have. It’s the quality and location of them. Don’t be intimidated if you see a dealer down the street using Twitter and they have thousands of followers.

I monitor many dealers using Twitter all over the United States. One Chevy Dealer in Texas has created an illusion that their Twitter campaign is a success, but if you look deeper you will see that they are simply going back and forth with their sister stores and vendors.

You know the old saying “only speak when you have something to say”? That applies to Twitter in a huge way. I suggest keeping it simple, Tweet your new inventory as it comes in. Tweet about new incentives your franchise is offering (like 0 % Financing).

Do not tweet to third party blogs. I can see third party companies encouraging dealers to tweet their articles. If there is advertising on that website or blog you are sending your customers away to others!

To learn more about how you can track your Twitter Followers with bit.ly, click here.

We hope you will consider letting Showroom Logic help you dominate your market. If you have any questions please direct them to mike@showroomlogic.com.