Directions To Car Dealership Clicked More Than We Thought

The toughest website traffic to track are the potential car buyers that simply show up on your lot. When asked how they found you, they simply say “The Internet”.

This can be very frustrating for the incentive based internet sales managers and directors. Our study last month indicated that 51% of internet customers don’t call or email, they just show up. A Florida area AutoTrader rep insists the number is as high as 80%.

We at Showroom Logic always tracked phone calls and email leads, but we figured it was time to start tracking map clicks.

About 2 weeks ago Patrick Bennett of Showroom Logic went to work on implementing this. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be so I waited until today to check the stats.

Dealer Map Clicks (Click To Enlarge)

I was actually shocked at the number, in 2 weeks there were 162 map clicks to one single dealer. This number is only the clicks from the macrosite and blog provided by Showroom Logic. About 70% of these people come from Google, Yahoo and Bing. The rest are from our Twitter & Facebook Inventory Updates.

If you look into it further, how many ups have you had that knew where you were and didn’t have to click a map. Last week I had a Sunday meeting with a car dealer. The Internet Director and I were waiting for the guy with the key to show up, so we were standing by the door chatting. In the 10 minutes we waited there were at least 5 ups driving around the lot looking at their inventory.

I couldn’t help to notice some had pieces of paper in their hands. They were computer print-outs. You don’t even know how tempted I was to stop them all and ask.