Article

Avoid Merchandising Pitfalls Inhibiting Profit and Growth

Published June 6, 2018
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The best part of presenting in webinars is learning from my audience. In a recent webinar with DealerOn, I reviewed several strategies that dealerships should use with online merchandising to generate more profit.

These strategies included:

  • Understanding current industry insights
  • Decreasing time to market to increase exposure
  • Utilizing descriptions, photos, etc. to differentiate the dealership
  • Leveraging social media to engage shoppers with interactive content
  • Tracking website/listing traffic and vehicle photo clicks

A quarter of the audience for this webinar reported they took photos of a vehicle before it reconditioned. Another 25% stated fully merchandised their vehicles within five days. A vehicle listing with custom photos does attract shoppers, but incomplete merchandising can lead to decreased search relevancy – sending your car in the bottom of the search results page until relevant merchandising is added.

Consider that only 17% of the audience used vehicle details pages (VDP) clicks as a measurement of merchandising effectiveness. The more complete a listing is, the more likely it is to be ranked higher on search results pages and drive more engagement.