Adam Dennis

In my last article , I touched on a few trends that we are starting to see after 3 years of doing our Hispanic Car Buying Preferences surveys.   This article will dig into the data to see if we can surface more details about the topics I covered in the last post, and add some additional trending data that was not discussed. Please note that in some cases, the data is only available for the final 2 years since we’ve been refining the survey as we go along. Let’s get started! Reputation A dealer or manufacturer’s reputation is critical for their ability to sell in general, and sell to the Hispanic market in particular.   Top 3 Favorite Brands Fortunately for this section, we asked the same question for each of our 3 years conducting our surveys. When we asked our respondents for them to rank their top 3 favorite automotive brands, the said the following: Notice a trend here? Toyota holds the #1 position all three years in a row? Why? Toyota, of all the manufacturers, has a well established history of consistently marketing to the Hispanic community.  Here’s a news article from NPR from back 2011! Spend a moment surfing and you will find this same commitment to multicultural outreach continues to this day. No surprise that Toyota is consistently popular and effective at capturing the Hispanic market. This statement is no disrespect to the other brands, but consistent commitment works. Hispanic Referrals Next in our lineup is a look at the question, “How likely are you to refer a customer to a dealer who speaks in Spanish AND treats you well?”. We asked this question in 2021 and 2022. What we discovered is that the trend dipped down between the two years. In 2021, 79% said that they were Very or Extremely Likely to refer someone if the dealer spoke Spanish and treated them well while in 2022, that number dropped to 68% . What this tells us at this point is that we’ll need to ask the question again in 2023 to see where the responses trend. Advertising and Social Media Now we get to delve into US Hispanics’ attitudes about bilingual advertising, social media, and the search methods they use to hunt for their next vehicle.  Advertising So, when we asked, “How likely are you to visit a car dealer who advertises in Spanish?”, the results were a bit odd over the period, varying unpredictably. However, overall, the data suggests an upward trend, especially with the big jump in 2022 AND if one takes into consideration that the 2020 and 2021 advertising answers might be skewed by COVID related attitudes during that time period. Speculation aside, this is a very important question since it gets to the ultimate question of why dealers who don’t advertise in Spanish should consider doing so. If you just did some messy math and averaged the results over the 3 years, you would see that over half (or roughly 54% ) of the respondents see Spanish language advertising as valuable. That’s still a mighty big chunk of people, especially for dealers who have large Hispanic populations around their dealerships. Conclusion: Outreach = money. Travel Further to a Dealer that Advertised to You in Spanish? Now let’s look at the impact of Spanish language advertising in the community and how it might influence behavior. For 2021 and 2022, we asked shoppers if they would travel further to a dealer who advertised to them in Spanish and the results were significantly different between the two years. For 2021, only 43% gave a positive response, while in 2022, 74% , nearly double, had the same answer. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here you go: 2 Most Popular Social Media Platforms One question that we’ve started to explore is which social media platforms rank highly for Hispanic shoppers. When we asked the simple question, “Which are your two most favorite social media platforms?”, the breakdown showed a consistent pattern between the two years with Instagram in first , YouTube second , (and Facebook third). This data, especially if it is supported in our upcoming 2023 survey, tells us where we might focus our digital outreach when targeting Hispanic shoppers.   Top 2 Online Resources for Doing Research As we all know, everybody uses a range of resources to conduct online research. For Hispanic shoppers, what happened when we looked at the question, “Which online sources are you likely to use when you research buying a car, truck, or SUV? (Check all that apply)”? Since we didn’t ask this question in 2020, we lack it here, but for 2021 and 2022, the data speaks for itself. In short, it is consistent from year to year: Search Engines were first , dealer websites second . What does this mean? Simply put, you should make sure that your website ranks well organically (while taking care in spending some money to boost that ranking). Next, you should make sure that your website is easy to use for Hispanic shoppers. A mix of English and Spanish would be wise, especially if your Spanish copy is customized to the dominant Spanish sub-culture in your area (for example, people of Mexican origin). Do You Want a Test Drive? The test driving data is quite interesting and it merits further study. We asked this question all 3 years and found that there is a big difference between 2020 vs 2021 and 2022. Here’s what the data looks like in a nice little bar graph. As you can see, there is a clear upward trend for Hispanic car shoppers when asked, “How important is it for you to test drive a vehicle before you buy it?”. What’s notable, and not seen in the data here, is that a vast majority of Hispanic women think that a test drive is very important. This should tell your sales people to think about this fact when an Hispanic woman contacts them about purchasing a vehicle.      Buy Online… or Not? COVID, most certainly, accelerated a change in public attitudes and behavior regarding digital retail. Consequently, for 2021 and 2022 we introduced a question so that we could trend Hispanic car shoppers’ attitudes toward online car shopping over time. For both years, we asked, “How likely are you to buy your next automobile online?”. Here’s what we found out: Notice something here that we did differently? The blue column represents 2021 respondents where only 12% said that they were Moderately, Very or Extremely Likely to buy online. The red and orange columns, on the other hand, are 2022 results but separated by one response. For Year 2022, we just included Extremely or Very Likely responses (at 23% ), while Year 2022+ includes all three (jumping to 43% ). We provided the visual distinction so that you could see the difference between those who felt strongly about digital retail in 2022 vs those who were wishy-washy about the subject. Regardless, the data shows us that attitudes started shifting heavily about only car buying from 2021. It also tells us that there is a portion of Hispanic shoppers that will buy online. In 2023, we plan to see how these attitudes shift with income. Now, that will be fun! Data Whisperers Listening to data is important; acting on it is even more important. This is why we love using data to inform our decisions, and those of our customers. All of the trending we see above lacks sufficient data for certainty, but it does whisper to us certain things that are happening in the market.   First, brand reputation is always important, but Toyota does a consistently great job at promoting a good reputation in the Hispanic community while Honda, Chevrolet and Ford compete for lower rankings. The OEM that rivals Toyota will be the one that makes multicultural marketing an everyday part of doing business, not a cool idea to pursue on the side. Second, Spanish language advertising is important to US Hispanics. Even though the positive responses to the question took a dip in 2021, it is clear that a growing majority see it as valuable. And, if you include the very positive behavioral element of whether Hispanics would travel further if a dealer advertised to them in Spanish, advertising becomes even more important. Don’t advertise at your own risk, or to put it differently, don’t let your competitors steal business from you because you’re not advertising to the community. Finally, while covered only lightly above, Hispanic women hold some very strong opinions in contrast to men. We see this in the case of test drives where 100% of women thought that test drives were very important in contrast to roughly half the men. We saw this same division elsewhere on other questions, such as the question about whether an Hispanic shopper would travel a distance to shop from a dealer who marketed to them in Spanish. Again, women held strong with a 100% vote for Very and Extremely Likely while men were much less committed. With all that said, let’s wrap up on this point: The data revealed by the three annual surveys is very important if you want to develop a nuanced marketing message to your local Hispanic community. For 2023, more data is needed to suss out attitudinal trends over time. This means that we’re REALLY looking forward to 2023’s results, with the survey outreach planned to start at the end of this month. Should you wish to contact us about these surveys, or other data, you can find about our services via surgemetrix.com , or contact me via adam.dennis@surgemetrix.com , or 954.507.6468.

Social Media and Culturally Sensitive Advertising Most people these days can be found on one social media site or another spending countless hours looking at whatever pops up that piques their interest. It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you're from, you're more likely to be on social media than not. The Hispanic community is no different than the general population in that they are online and in force. Actually, that’s not exactly true. In 2021, Pew Research found that Hispanic women can be found repeatedly above the national average for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok usage. Hispanic men, on the other hand, were found to spend more time than the average on LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Reddit.  In the case of advertising, any advertiser knows that advertising works. Spend money, focus that money on a message that will be heard, and you can get sales. For the Hispanic community, there is a lot of data which shows that if you market to them in Spanish (especially with a culturally tailored message), you will be heard.  For our 2022 Hispanic Car Preferences survey , we collected data that gives perspective on Hispanics use of social media and the impact of Spanish language advertising. Let’s look at the numbers…  2022 Results We asked a series of questions about the social media platforms that Hispanics prefer and their attitudes regarding auto dealers who market to them in Spanish and/or speak Spanish themselves. The survey did not delve into the nuances of culturally flavored advertising, but is widely understood that Spanish language advertising works well, but is even better when you provide a cultural twist such as recognizing events celebrated by Hispanics throughout the year. Will You Visit Dealers with Spanish Ads? This is the essential question when it comes to Spanish language advertising. When you look at our data, and those of others, you quickly see that advertising in Spanish works. So, when our respondents were asked, “ How likely are you to visit a car dealer who advertises in Spanish? ”, 63.4% of the respondents answered “Very” or “Extremely Likely”. But that’s not where it gets interesting. For the same response, 100% of the women agreed, while only 37.5% of the men only said that they were “Very Likely”, and none said that they were “Extremely Likely”. Travel Plans Anyone? When asked “ Would you travel further to shop at an auto dealership if they marketed to you in Spanish? ”, the results are quite interesting with 100% of women responding with an emphatic “Yes”, while only 55.5% of men shared similar sentiments. Average the two and you get 74% agreeing to the question.  Referring Dealers if They Speak Spanish? Let’s play out the idea a little further. What happened when we asked “ How likely are you to refer a customer to a dealer who speaks Spanish? ”? Women spoke up again, in very clear terms, with 100% of those surveyed saying that they were Very or Extremely Likely to refer a customer to a dealer who speaks Spanish. Men, as you will again and again, had a different view. Only 48% agreed with the women. None of the men actually said that they were Extremely likely. Those are some real differences that should inform any dealer marketing to the community. Favorite Social Media Platforms Now we get to look at the community’s favorite social media platforms. When asked “ Which are your 2 most favorite social media platforms ?”, both men and women picked Instagram (at 33.3 %) and YouTube (at 27.5% ). Interestingly, men and women held roughly the same view on YouTube at ~27%, but widely differed when it came to Instagram. For Instagram, men preferred at 72% while women favored it at only 27.4% . Digital Sources You Use For Research? Our final survey question wanted to find out how people shopped for vehicles so we asked “ Which online sources are you likely to use when you research buying a car, truck, or SUV? (Check all that apply) ”. What we found was that there was no definitive source although men’s search behavior was considerably less diverse than women’s. Here is how the information broke down: Digital Research Sources What Stands Out What’s notable for these data segments is that men and women often differ in their beliefs and behaviors. You see this repeatedly in an extreme way with the advertising segment, but less so with social media behavior. Nevertheless, these differences should stand out as you consider your approach to the market. Trends From Previous Years Advertising in Spanish Our first survey was done in 2020. At that time, when we wanted to explore if Hispanics preferred dealers who are bilingual, we found that roughly 55% of the respondents preferred to buy a vehicle from a dealership that advertised in Spanish. In 2021, when respondents were asked if they would visit a car dealer who advertises in Spanish, 79% chose that they were moderately likely or higher. Moreover, 66% said that it was moderately to extremely helpful if a dealership advertised in Spanish, and 43% said that they would travel further if a dealership advertised to them in Spanish. Compare this data to our 2023 report and it looks like shopping with dealers who advertise in Spanish, and traveling further to shop with those dealers is trending up from the previous years. Online Activity Our 2020 survey told us that Hispanics are very engaged online with search engines and the dealer website as their primary source of information. And, even more interesting, Hispanic women were found to use more channels when researching cars than men so we can see that the pattern we found in 2023 has roots in the previous years. For example, for 2021, our survey found that the three most popular social media platforms are Facebook ( 34% ), Instagram ( 47% ), and YouTube ( 42% ) indicating that Facebook use has declined in 2023. Finally, when it came to researching a vehicle, 88% used major search engines and 59% cross-selected with dealer websites. The numbers varied a bit from 2023, but it is clear that Hispanic online activity consistently tracks heavily from year to year. What Does This Data Tell Us? The data here suggests quite strongly that you should market to customers in Spanish if you have a large community around your dealership. Furthermore, the trends over time support the argument that marketing in Spanish is a tactic that is growing in value, as opposed to declining. Next, the data also shows that you should have bilingual digital presence targeting a range of social media platforms if you want to be heard by the community. Finally, and to us most importantly, if you are a dealer who wants to reach the community, you should seriously consider crafting a mixed message for men and women… whether when you advertise or conduct sales. For example, the data tells us that women more than men will drive further if a dealer advertises in Spanish and prefer a test drive almost exclusively. In response to this information, if a Hispanic woman is shopping for a car and I were a sales person, I would always offer a test drive as part of my primary pitch. Facts and data give you the power to sell well and succeed over time. We hope that you put this data into practice and reach out to us if you have any questions. For now, feel free to download the surveys by following this link …  

You have no choice but to care about whether your website is accessible for people with sight impairment because the law tells you that it must be so. If your site is configured well for assistive technology (think website readers that read text out loud or make text larger), then you're good. But say your website is not configured properly, then what happens? Simply put: You are at risk of violating the  Americans with Disabilities Act  (ADA), and that puts your dealership at risk of a lawsuit.  _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This article was written by Adam Dennis, Principal at SurgeMetrix and Tom Kline, Lead Consultant and Founder of Better Vantage Point. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Facts We like facts. Facts aren't opinions. They don't have feelings. They tell you what's up and, when used properly, inform good decisions.   As we've discussed in previous articles, we've analyzed over 35,000 dealer websites for a variety of performance issues as well as demographic and digital market data to set a context for the industry and individual dealers who want to see how they rank relative to their competitors.   In this article, we are reviewing the Accessibility of a website as per Google's algorithms. Now you might look at the data and conclude it means nothing to you, but the reality is that with Google being the dominant force in the search market and recognized authority of website performance, you can't ignore their conclusions. So let's look at the facts. Of the 35,444 dealer websites we analyzed, we could not match 5,930 of them due to a range of issues, from configuration problems to software setups that retard Google's ability to analyze certain data about a website. Consequently, our actual surveyed total was 29,514; a not-too-shabby number all by itself. When Google ranks a site for its technical Accessibility, it does on a three-part colored scale out of 100. The sweet spot you want your website to occupy is the 90-100 bracket. This rating is the best and indicates that your website is technically very well constructed for people with sight limitations to be able to read and for those people who use assistive technology, to be able to understand the website as well.   The other two ranking categories stake out in brilliant clarity those websites that do not perform well in terms of their technical configuration for meeting accessibility requirements. The yellow category covers sites with ratings from 50 to 89/100. This is a nether world where you're meeting some, but not all, of the ADA requirements. The lower you are, the greater the risk. Finally, if you are in the red zone, you are in potential trouble. Simply put, you are broadcasting to enterprising lawyers that you could be sued. The red zone covers ratings from 0 to 49. What did we learn? We found the following results with 1.8% of the websites in the Red, a whopping 76.5% in the yellow, and only 21.7% in the green.    That big yellow area was concerning, so we broke that down even further into 10% chunks giving us 50-59 for the first chunk, 60-69 for the second, and so on. We did this because we still see a risk for dealers in the yellow area, especially if they are in the lower ranges. Here is what we discovered: Would you want to be in those lower ranges with an Accessibility rating of 68 or 72? I wouldn't; I have faith in opportunistic lawyers. If I were a dealer who wanted to mitigate risk, I would ask my website vendor to improve my performance: at the very least, to the high 80s.    The Risks According to the Seyfarth law firm, ADA website accessibility lawsuits filed in federal court were up fourteen (14%) percent from 2020 to 2021. This translates to 2,895 cases, an increase of 372 actions. These numbers do not account for the following: Demand letters that were sent and/or settled; State court actions; or Mobile application lawsuits were accounted for differently Just as there are attorneys specializing in suing dealers in the automotive industry, there are plaintiff lawyers specializing in ADA lawsuits. The  Center for Disease Control (CDC)  cites these statistics: "Approximately 12 million people 40 years and over in the United States have vision impairment, including 1 million who are blind, 3 million who have vision impairment after correction, and 8 million who have vision impairment due to uncorrected refractive error. As of 2012, 4.2 million Americans aged 40 years and older suffer from uncorrectable vision impairment, out of which 1.02 million are blind; this number is predicted to more than double by 2050 to 8.96 million due to the increasing epidemics of diabetes and other chronic diseases and our rapidly aging U.S. population. Approximately 6.8% of children younger than 18 years in the United States have a diagnosed eye and vision condition. Nearly 3% of children younger than 18 years are blind or visually impaired, defined as having trouble seeing even when wearing glasses or contact lenses." These are large numbers. Unless you have addressed website ADA accessibility, you open yourself up for exposure to these enterprising lawyers who make a living from ADA-based lawsuits. As with any compliance topic, "willful non-compliance" opens you to higher settlement numbers and further unknown liabilities, and other unintended consequences.  Willful non-compliance  is a term we use to describe a situation where a business lacks a robust Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) program. In short, a GRC program follows the outline of what a "prudent business person" would do in a similar situation. This entails having written (and acknowledged) policies and procedures with your employees, which are then checked by someone performing an audit function. Remember, you manage what you monitor.   Importantly, depending on how the allegations are crafted in the lawsuit, your garage insurance may not cover any of the allegations. If that is the case, settlement indemnities will come from your dealership's bank account.   What To Do This is a simple one, folks, with just three steps to get you compliant.   Step 1, have the website reviewed for accessibility compliance using a tool such as Google's  PageSpeed Insights  tool. The tool has an "Accessibility" section that, when selected, will give you the issues that will need to be addressed.   Step 2, once you understand what needs to be fixed, buy a tool to install on your website to help make it ADA compliant very quickly. We really like Userway ( www.userway.org ) as the interface is simple and clean. Its pricing starts at $490 per year for up to 100,000 website page views per month, to $3,290 per year for up to 10 million page views per month. Finally, for Step 3, test your website again with PageSpeed Insights to see if you have improved. Our experience is that most dealer websites will quickly go into the green. If not, then ask your web provider to use the PageSpeed Insights data as a guide to improving performance. It's that simple. Test, buy Userway, install it, test again to validate (and fix anything that remains), and then eliminate this risk. Don't make it easy for the attorneys.

How Do You Measure Up? We’ve now written three articles on how Google views our industry for speed and performance. We touched on Page Speed, Speed Index, SEO scores for OEMs (vs Independents) and vendor vs vendor . Next, we looked at Google’s accessibility and best practices score for OEMS. In this article, we will wrap up this four-part series with an analysis of how Google ranks website vendors for average SEO, Accessibility, and Best Practice scores. Remember, our data source is quite large pulling from over 35,000 dealer websites. No joke. Average SEO Score As everyone knows, technical SEO is a very important requirement for good website design. If your technical SEO is poor, then your site will behave like a one-legged man running a marathon.   The average SEO score for all vendors was 86%. Overall, this is pretty good and a sign that most vendors are getting their technical SEO right. This is in sharp contrast to our mobile Page Speed analysis where the performance was dismal. But let’s look at the data… What does this bar graph tell us?  The most obvious thing we see is that Sincro Digital has work to do and YourCarLot is doing slightly better than most.   Average Accessibility Score What is Accessibility and why is it important? Google’s Accessibility audit/score is rooted in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a civil rights law that “prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.” What does that mean for web providers? Simply put, websites need to be designed in such a way that they can be easy to “read” whether by adjusting sizes, maintaining strong contrasts, and/or by allowing digital readers to “read” the website out loud for someone with a severe visual impairment. Google’s Accessibility Score weighs the average of a number of accessibility audits to create the score that you see. These scores are important because if you have a low score, you are not serving your customers well AND you are possibly exposing your dealership to a lawsuit by an enterprising lawyer or two. Enough with that. On with the data: By and large, these results are good, but as you can see some providers, such as Naked Lime and Dealer.com average below 75%. Realistically, the average should be higher and technical and design adjustments to the website can improve performance. I would recommend that any provider who is below at least 85% should seek to improve their positioning. Otherwise, they are risking causing trouble for their dealers. That said, kudos to those website vendors 90% and above such as AutoFunds, Jazel, LotWizard , ProMax , SOKAL , V12 , Team Velocity , eBizAutos and SurgeMetrix . Average Best Practices Score Your Best Practices score is based on an audit of common web development mistakes, some of which serve as the root cause of scoring deductions for other scores such as those above.   A poor score here is very avoidable so the overall vendor average of 75% is something to decry and not celebrate. Realistically, you should score over 90%, but like I said above, 85% or higher is a good start. Here’s some data-driven eye candy since a “picture”, or in this case graph, is worth 1,000 words. As you can see from the data, most website vendors hover around the 75% mark with some, such as CarBase, Dealer eProcess, Dealer.com, DealerFire, DealerInspire, FusionZone, Motorcar Marketing, Naked Lime, and PixelMotion all scoring in the 60s.   Sadly, there are only two website vendors above 85%: V12Software at 88% and SurgeMetrix at 91%. The Final Word While Brian Pasch drives conversation around GA4 standards for the dealer community, we need to have the same standards discussion for website vendors as I suggested in my last article . Some standards are pretty obvious. For example, since we know that bounce rates increase dramatically the slower a website loads, we should set our speed standards according to user behavior. 3 seconds is a good goal for mobile sites although 4 is fine to start. In the case of the stats above, it is not hard to reach 90% for a performance goal for all three measures. We can do better.   If anyone wants to discuss the data we collected, have opinions and suggestions for standards, or want their site (and even their competitor’s sites) evaluated, then contact me via email or 954.507.6468. Until then, use this data to push for better performance. You deserve it. 

How do you measure up? PART ONE In our previous two articles, we wrote about how Google uses its software to assess a website’s performance, from page speed and technical SEO, to download rates and accessibility compliance. The first article looked at page speed, your speed index score, and SEO rating, while the second article reviewed Google’s accessibility and best practices score. The focus of those two articles was on how OEM websites performed relative to each other and Independents.  The topic of this article will be to review how website vendors perform relative to each other, as seen through the eyes of Google. Our data source was over 35,000 dealer websites. Google’s Speed Index Score Google’s Speed Index Score is based on the average time it takes for visible parts of the page to be displayed. For this study, we only looked at mobile devices since around 80% of car shoppers shop by mobile device, while over 90% of Hispanic shoppers shop the same way.   Let’s look at the data… As an industry, we can do better than this. I’ve identified two critical cut off points - at 5 seconds and at 10. Ideally, mobile load times should be 3-4 seconds at most. Any time longer, and you start to suffer an increasing volume of drop-offs.   I have chosen the 5 second mark just to be practical, recognizing that some OEMs require a lot of time consuming add-ons and features that guzzle load time. But even with this said, it is hard to justify the speeds we see here. I imagine some providers might not like this article and will argue that our data is faulty or should be ignored. That’s fine, they can take that argument up with Google. These are Google’s numbers after all. We need Standards Brian Pasch , a well known automotive veteran, has quite wisely launched an initiative to have the automotive community come together on some GA4 standards in the hopes of crafting common and usable standards for the industry. Based on these numbers, we would do well to apply the same thought process to automotive website performance to ensure that we deliver highly usable, fast, and Google complaint websites to our dealer customers.   To do this, we would have to identify what’s slowing down the sites (think third party code), what metric we’ll use to gauge success (think Google since it’s the 8,253 ton Gorilla in the room), and ensure that all vendors play by the same rules. Otherwise, we’ll continue to get results like you see below for Google’s sister metric to Speed Index, that is, their Google PageSpeed Score. Not good. The Final Word Like I said in my previous two articles, you can’t bury your head and try to ignore Google’s ranking factors. You have to learn how to work with them to maximize the performance of your customer’s website. Google can’t be ignored, but it does serve as a neutral metric for evaluating website performance. If your provider is listed here, see where they rank relative to their competitors and contact me for a deeper analysis, or just use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to do your evaluation. Speed counts, and your website should be as fast as possible on your customers’ mobile and desktop devices. Otherwise, you risk losing potential customers who don’t want to sit around waiting for your website to load. Part 2 of this vendor review will follow in a couple of weeks… Stay tuned.

How Do You Measure Up?  PART 2 In Part 1 of this two-part series on website ranking factors, we discussed Page Speed, Page Index, and Technical SEO scores. We look at the results of our AntiguRecon tool which surveyed over 35,000 dealer websites using Google’s algorithm to drive its calculations. We found that independent dealer websites tend to be faster than franchise websites and that we have some work to do if we want to improve our industry’s performance overall. In this article, we look at dealership website Accessibility and website design Best Practices scores. Let’s have some fun… Average Accessibility Score What is Accessibility and why is it relevant? In the past I’ve written about this topic in detail, but for here let’s just say that your website should be designed so that it can be “read” by people who have limited sight, or are sight impaired in full. In the latter case, a screen reader needs to be able to “read” the page in an understandable way. All of this is required because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990 and lawsuits have been on the rise for non-compliant websites. All that said, there is good news in that while there is room for improvement, the ratings are not as horrible as the page speed and index ranking factors. If we look at the graph below, Independents over-perform OEMs again with an average score of 83.4 to an OEM rating of 73.9 . Mazda got the lowest average rating at 67.1 , while the highest score went to Bentley at 87.1 . Average Best Practices Score The final score in Google’s Lighthouse algorithm gets into the best practices that are employed in the creation of a dealer website. This score tracks common mistakes made by web developers. Google’s algorithm weights elements based on risks they might pose, among other things. Google itself states that this quality score is a “helpful diagnostic tool, not a key performance indicator”. Nevertheless, a low score tells you that you should talk with your provider to see what might be improved to improve performance. Often you will find that some of the best practice issues have to do with optimizing file use which in many cases can improve speed. So how did our intrepid OEMs and Independents do? Let’s look at the table below. Bentley, following its previous trend, is the top performing OEM, while Hyundai has work to do at 57.8 . That ranking definitely says that there is room for improvement on their websites. Further research could tell us why those sites score so low, but we’ll leave that for another article. Finally, Independents outpaced OEMs at 76.7 . The Final Word - Part 2 What all this data tells us is that there is a lot of room for improvement in how we construct dealer websites. OEMs and their website providers would do well to look at the data and think seriously about how they can reduce the impact, or volume, of third party code on their websites.   This is a bigger conversation than what you might think. In my view, many dealer websites have become cluttered and clogged with distractions that slow down the site’s load time and lose sight of the purpose of the website, that is, to generate leads and business for the dealership. With mobile by far outstripping any other tool that is used to view a website, it would behoove us to have websites that really are designed with a mobile first mentality and a commitment to speed.   I can only hope for change, but in the meantime we’ll keep collecting the data and releasing it to spur conversation and improvement. Should anyone want to discuss this article, or the tool we used to collect the data, you can reach me here .