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The automotive industry has certainly been hit hard by the pandemic resulting in everchanging ways of how car shoppers are shopping. This calls for dealerships to implement effective digital retailing platforms to support the new customer of today. To identify what draws these shoppers to a dealer's website and how to keep them engaged, Dealer Marketing Magazine interviewed Lyamen Savy, Founder & CEO at 321 Ignition. She explains why it’s critical for dealers to optimize their websites and monitor their search/SEO strategy — not just today, but constantly. Dealer Marketing Magazine: How have you seen dealership websites change over the last 5 years and are there any important lessons that have been learned that dealers should be aware of going forward?  Lyamen: Dealership websites haven’t kept pace with websites in other industries for many years and that’s part of what inspired the idea for my company, 321 Ignition. As I was doing research on what was currently available to dealers from their website providers, I was shocked. There wasn’t a single mobile-first website provider even though the large majority of dealership website traffic is on mobile. The other thing I noticed was how the industry was very segmented with few companies offering integrations and no one discussing their partners. My previous experience at Microsoft helped me to really understand the power of partners. When I was developing our company, I knew we needed to be mobile-first, customer-first, and partner-powered from the start.  DMM: Creating a seamless customer experience is crucial with an increasing market of millennial car shoppers. How should a dealership set up a successful website? Lyamen: Research has found that 78% of car buyers start their shopping online and of those, more than 70% of people are using their smartphone to access the dealership website. Because of all that online shopping, consumers are visiting less than 3 dealerships on average. If people can’t visit your website, your chances to get them into your dealership are getting smaller.  When it comes to setting up a successful website, it needs to be mobile-first, not just mobile-responsive. A mobile-responsive website is designed for a large screen and is adapted to fit a smaller phone screen. The problem is that a design that works on a computer looks busy and overwhelming on a phone screen. A successful website won’t just work on any device, it has the correct user experience for the device the user is on. 321 Ignition websites are designed with mobile-first in mind and they look amazing on desktop, too.  DMM: How can dealerships use tech tools to create a high-functioning website and create a successful customer experience? Lyamen: A tech tool alone is just a widget. Dealerships invest in tech tools to help them solve business problems. However, if tech tools are not installed on a website using an API, then they won’t achieve the business objective and goal. The problem with a lot of website tech tools in the automotive industry is they are just widgets and iFrame codes vs API integrations. Widgets and iFrames create a poor user experience, they are disjointed single-point solutions vs a complete solution, they slow down the website, they hurt SEO, and most of them don’t match the rest of the dealership branding. At 321 Ignition, we invest in API integrations with any technology provider in the automotive industry to help dealers provide the best consumer experience and achieve the ultimate business outcome. DMM: What inspired the start of 321 Ignition and what is the core dealership problem your business is solving? Lyamen: One of my best friends used to work at a car dealership and she used to come to me for marketing advice all the time as a friend and trusted advisor since I’ve been doing marketing for 18+ years. One day she contacted me because her website provider, MotorWeb, was acquired by FusionZone. She wanted my help and opinion in evaluating them. As I started digging deeper, I discovered all automotive website providers were missing critical elements that I knew helped convert website visitors to leads. These were things we had tested at Microsoft and CapitalOne and I knew would work in the automotive industry, too. I also quickly realized that website providers were charging extra for services and solutions that should be table stakes — things like technical SEO or Google Analytics tracking. On top of all of that, other vendors were calling her every day trying to sell her website widgets that should have come standard with any website. I couldn’t believe what was going on in the industry and realized that it was a good opportunity to help small businesses and follow my passion for marketing. My company, 321 Ignition, is the only mobile-first website provider in the automotive industry designed to assist new and used car dealerships of any size in creating the best customer experience to serve the exploding online car shopping market. Using native mobile features and the best practices from Fortune 100 companies across a variety of industries, 321 Ignition offers a time-saving and frictionless online customer experience optimized for car shoppers on the go. DMM: Why are VDP visitors so important and does 321 Ignition leverage these visitors? Lyamen: The VDP is the moment of truth. The purpose of the SRP is to intrigue consumers about the cars available in stock. The purpose of VDP is to educate and close (aka ask for the sale). When a consumer lands on the VDP page, their sequence of thought is, “Do I want this car? Can I afford this car? How do I buy this car?” The goal of the VDP is to collect micro “yes’s” to all these questions along the way to get to the ultimate “Yes” which is the sales lead and car sale.  To get to the ultimate “yes,” you have to anticipate and overcome all sales objections and eliminate all elements that cause friction and anxiety. You have to be ruthless in prioritizing content based on hierarchy and sequence of thought, especially for shoppers on a mobile device. Imagine as the user is scrolling down the VDP, you’re anticipating their sales objections, overcoming them, and collecting micro “yes’s” along the way. DMM: How do your smart financing applications work? Lyamen: Credit app leads are probably the warmest and highest quality leads salespeople can receive because these are people who are ready to buy a car and they just want to know what they can get approved for. There are 2 parts to the credit app, the consumer experience and the internal staff at the dealership experience (BDC reps, F&I managers, etc.) For consumers, since we know that majority of them, over 70%, are filling out the credit app on a mobile device, with one finger, instead of a keyboard with two hands and ten fingers, it‘s all about having empathy for the consumer. It’s important to think about in that given moment, at that given time, what would be most helpful for the consumer filling out a long credit application with one finger. At 321 Ignition, we leverage mobile-native features to make it faster and easier to complete a long credit application on a mobile device. For example, this means that the keyboard automatically changes to a numeric keyboard when adding in numbers and our Google maps integration allows us to autocomplete addresses. We also use smart field technology which subtracts or adds fields to the form the user is filling out based on their answers. This saves the consumer time by skipping fields that are not relevant to them.  For internal staff at the dealership, they want 2 things — 1) to get more leads i.e. capture consumers' contact info that started but did not complete full credit app — and 2) to save time re-entering credit app information into credit soft pull and hard pull software. To address the first need, our credit app has a shopping cart abandonment feature to help. When a customer starts filling out the credit app, on step 1 we only ask for basic contact info (name, email, phone). When the customer clicks “next”, we wait for 25 minutes and if they didn’t complete the full credit app, we send a lead notification to the dealership’s CRM saying “John Doe started credit app, but did not complete” so that the salesperson can follow up and try to close them.  We also have an API integration with DealerCenter and 700 Credit and all credit app leads are automatically sent to DealerCenter, 700 Credit, DealerTrack, RouteOne, CUDL, and AppOne for F&I Manager to do credit pulls and submit applications to banks. We’re always looking for more credit and banking partners and can share our API documentation. DMM: So your company offering will help a dealer operate a successful and optimized website. What should a dealer focus on after that? Lyamen: Most dealerships we talk to think they have a website traffic problem when really they have a website conversion problem. Once dealers sign up for 321 Ignition mobile-first website, they can confidently invest in paid media and SEO content, and accurately measure ROI. These are some of the ways we’ve seen dealerships leverage their new website:  Google ads When we launch dealership websites, we set up their Google Analytics goal conversion tracking to only track real leads (i.e. online web form submissions, click-to-call, and click-to-drive) instead of page views and average time spent on site. This allows paid media managers and agencies to launch Google Ads with a “Target CPA” bid strategy that will use Google machine learnings to optimize campaigns that will generate maximum leads at the lowest cost per lead. Facebook & Instagram Shops Facebook Marketplace for Auto has been discontinued. Dealers now have an opportunity to advertise their inventory on Facebook and Instagram shops. 321 Ignition mobile-first websites have the microdata schema dealerships will need to get their inventory live in Facebook & Instagram shops. On-page SEO & blogging In-house marketing teams and agencies can save time from cleaning up schema markups, SEO title tags, and meta description, and instead, focus their time on producing fresh new content. Our WordPress backend has a ton of content blocks that help save time and create new pages without HTML knowledge. We also offer a mobile-first blog that helps increase organic ranking and convert organic visitors to leads using relevant HTML5 banners (no coding knowledge required to create them). DMM: Thank you for your time today! Is there anything else you’d like to share? Lyamen: As a company, we’ve been partner-powered from the beginning. We partner with other technology providers to help them provide complete solutions for dealers and we partner with agencies and consultants to help them increase value and achieve more in less time. We know we’re all better together and nobody can do it alone. If you’re looking for a true partner for your dealership or clients, we’d love for you to get in touch. For more information click here

Several of the DealerScience tools integrate directly into dealership websites. This means that throughout the process of discussing our products with a dealer, installing and onboarding that store, and then ongoing account management, we see a lot of different website setups and digital retail integrations. As a fresh set of eyes on a dealership’s website, we can often offer suggestions that help the performance of a dealership’s website by making it more user-friendly for the everyday consumer. Customers are more likely to interact with a tool that’s well integrated into a thoughtful experience than a bolt-on payment widget next to eight other buttons but as dealers who live and breathe this information, it can be hard to recognize that on our own websites. So as a part of our process, the DealerScience team offers our dealers recommendations for ways we have seen websites more successfully engage the customer. Some are common sense, like ensuring data is consistent and styles match. Others are learned from observing what the best in other industries do and applying those concepts to automotive. During a recent installation, a dealer asked us how many calls to action (CTA) they should have on their search results page (SRP). We had two different opinions on the team: Simple is better. Let’s focus customers down a specific funnel where we want them to engage. Every customer’s journey is different. We need to offer a variety of ways for them to interact with a dealership.  How does the DealerScience team handle something like that? Together, we researched some digital retail leaders in other industries so we could feel confident in what we suggested for this dealer.  So we started with Amazon, specifically targeting high dollar items like televisions and computers for the closest comparison to purchasing a vehicle. What we found was not surprising for Amazon: it’s how we were all used to shopping there. But reviewing it through the eyes of automotive digital retailing, we were surprised. Their SRP showed upfront pricing, user ratings, and key feature comparisons as well as Amazon badging and free delivery by date. We could also see four horizontal tiles at once, making it very easy to compare different models. And the biggest takeaway? Amazon’s SRP had only a single CTA that directed a consumer to their version of a dealership’s vehicle details page (the VDP).  As a consumer, this made it clear that if I was interested in that item, I needed to go to the VDP. So we clicked. And it’s on the VDP that we started to see some real CTAs. The right side of the screen displayed a low commitment button allowing consumers to add the product to their cart followed by a higher commitment button to buy now. We considered those the primary CTAs. But there were also secondary CTAs as well. Below the primary buttons were options to add the product to a consumer’s wish list or add an Amazon dash button. We could also add a protection plan or accessories (simple checkboxes with hyperlinks that display a modal with more details) or for certain products, like a Nintendo Switch, begin a trade-in process. It became clear to us that Amazon prioritized calls to action on their VDP and, while they had many, each reinforced purchasing to the consumer.  Our takeaways? Amazon carefully crafted their CTAs to match the page the consumer was reviewing so that they can review and compare items to select the one they’re interested in and then offering them several options to move them towards a purchase. So both DealerScience opinions were right: simple, focused tiles on the SRP with a primary CTA help condense space and move customers to the VDP. And a thoughtful variety of CTAs on the VDP empowers customers to choose their journey towards purchasing. The DealerScience team shares this information with any dealer we are onboarding or any of our customers who ask for an unbiased review of their website. It’s one of the most valuable things we can do for our dealers. While I would be happy to help any dealer review their website, you can also do this too: go through your SRP and VDP and measure which CTA’s don’t get clicked. See what happens if you change or remove some of them. Don’t like your results? You can always change it back! Or ask a family member or a friend unconnected to the automotive world to go on your website and try to perform a specific task. Watch over their shoulder but don’t say anything. Observe where they get stuck if they have questions, or why they can’t get the information they want. It’s a low-tech way to follow their customer journey on your site. Sometimes it takes watching a fresh set of eyes, like the DealerScience team who was initially asked about CTAs, to highlight opportunities for better customer engagement.

Los Angeles — September 12, 2018 — RelayCars , the virtual reality automotive experience that puts users in the driver’s seat of thousands of vehicles, today announced a series of updates that will continue to aid these consumers in the car buying process. With a new host of features, these updated visual enhancements, optimizations and custom showrooms will provide the most immersive and accurate experience available for those looking to get a detailed look at their potential new car. As recent automotive studies show, 62% of purchasers would rather research cars online than speak with a salesperson, while 75% of shoppers go through up to four phases of online research before physically going out to look at cars. Now, from the comfort of their homes and with no headset required, car buyers have the power to experience vehicle category, year, make and model from RelayCars’ most expansive and high-quality VR automotive library on the market. The application allows users to view interior panos and exterior spins for any vehicle selected. The VR library includes top-of-the-line technology and almost every car and truck on the market since 2015, giving users an up-to-date view of the latest cars in a realistic environment. Other key updates include: New perspective controls to ensure the best view of the vehicles Asset optimizations to reduce download times A ‘featured vehicles’ section that is continuously updated to highlight a curated collection of cars “At RelayCars, we are constantly evolving our products to reflect the most current, up-to-date technology and features available on the market,” said David Falstrup, RelayCars CEO. “We are excited to present this new range of updates that will further enhance our user experience.” RelayCars is available now for free on iOS, Android, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and Microsoft MR. About RelayCars Featuring the most expansive and high-quality VR automotive library on the market, RelayCars is a virtual reality suite of apps that allow both enterprise and general consumer users to explore the interior and exterior of thousands of different vehicles via smartphone, tablet, web, or VR headset. The app is available for free on iOS, Android, Oculus Go, Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR and Microsoft MR. RelayCars is the sister company of EVOX Images, a company best known for providing rapid, large-scale global image creation solutions on-demand with a focus on automotive VR and 360 images. For more information on RelayCars, please visit www.relaycars.com or follow RelayCars on Instagram , Facebook or LinkedIn . Media Contacts Sanaz Marbley/Alexandra Domecq, JMPR Public Relations, Inc., (818) 992-4353, smarbley@jmpr.com ,  adomecq@jmpr.com

August 20, 2018 — Reunion Marketing personnel noted a remarkable increase in organic traffic for CDK websites that directly coincides with a Google algorithm update. While conducting regular audits, members of the Reunion team discovered a pattern of significant increases in organic website traffic throughout the month of August compared to July. These numbers prompted an internal audit across Reunion’s entire national dealer network to substantiate the initial finding. We found 91.7% of CDK sites in Reunion Marketing’s dealership network were affected. These sites saw an average month-over-month increase of 45% in organic traffic. Mobile and tablet devices experienced a more significant share, with the top 20% of dealers achieving 209% and 145% increases respectively. This change comes on the heels of Google’s “broad core algorithm update” that occurred on August 1, 2018. According to an official statement, Google intended for the update to reward previously undervalued sites, focusing on medical organizations. It is evident, however, that it also affected automotive websites. CDK was not the only platform to experience a jump in traffic. Others like Dealer.com and DealerOn also had several dealerships with increases ranging from 10% to 50%; however, the volume of dealerships affected on these other platforms was not as high a percentage and not outside the range of typical results month over month. The Reunion team did not find that any major automotive CMS suffered an overall loss in traffic. For more information about our findings, please contact our Operations Manager at michael@reunionmarketing.com or visit our website at www.reunionmarketing.com/contact . Media Contact Dane C. Saville, Public Relations and Brand Manager/Co-Founder, 919.413.1975, Reunion Marketing

Buffalo, NY — ACV Auctions Inc. , the leading dealer-to-dealer full-service wholesale online auction platform, reached a major milestone in March selling more than 5,000 units online for a total of more than $35 million in vehicle inventory sold. The rapidly growing automotive company is increasing vehicle sales at a rate of 400% per year, including over 500 new dealer sign-ups per month. “ Our track record is now proven. We have become the trusted partner for dealerships across the country and have exceeded expectations,” said George Chamoun, CEO of ACV Auctions. “The transparency we provide has made ACV Auctions the best place for a dealer to buy a wholesale vehicle and ultimately the best place to sell.” ACV Auctions enables franchise dealers to instantly sell wholesale vehicles directly from their lots. The online platform includes a thorough vehicle condition report completed by ACV inspectors who come to the sellers’ lots and take 30 to 40 detailed photographs. The platform alerts independent and franchise buyers when a 20-minute auction begins. ACV Auctions operates and sells vehicles in 52 markets throughout the East Coast and Midwest. By the end of 2018, ACV Auctions will increase its presence to over 70 markets by expanding to the West Coast. ACV dealers are having tremendous success across many markets. In Washington, D.C., the company is seeing an overall sell-through rate of 80 percent across 33 dealerships. “Listing vehicles with accurate descriptions online creates a fair playing field that has increased profits and expedited wholesale turn for the dealer,” said Andy Benone, general sales manager at Ourisman Volkswagen of Bethesda. “Vehicles are listed, sold and picked up in a matter of just a few hours with all paperwork generated electronically. ACV Auctions makes the wholesale process slick and simple." ACV Auctions’ world-class technology modernizes the wholesale auction operation, including title management, floor plan purchasing, arbitration, and facilitating the transportation of the vehicles. The end-to-end service includes over 200 trained professionals who ensure selling and buying dealers are successful. “Dealers want an easy-to-use experience and they trust ACV Auctions,” said Todd Caputo, CEO of Sun Auto Group in Syracuse, New York. “This has enabled us to sell over 90% of our wholesale inventory on ACV Auctions while delivering financial results that exceed what we have been able to accomplish prior.” Digital auction platforms enable the opportunity for a mature vehicle life cycle, ranging from live appraisals of fresh inventory to the selling of aged inventory. ACV Auctions has thousands of registered buyers who signed up at no cost to purchase vehicles from sellers who are, on average, over 350 miles away. “It all starts with our condition reports,” said Joe Neiman, a founder and head of product at ACV Auctions. “Everything we’re focused on doing is to build up-to-the-minute data and transparency for our users to make informed decisions.” About ACV Auctions ACV Auctions’ mission is to become the trusted source in the industry for dealers to purchase wholesale vehicles. The ACV Auctions platform leverages mobile to maximum benefit: It starts with a thorough vehicle condition report and then instantly alerts buyers that a 20-minute auction has begun. ACV Auctions modernizes the entire arc of wholesale auction operations, including title management, floor plan purchasing, arbitration, and facilitating logistics. ACV Auctions originated from the dynamic start-up community in Buffalo, New York, fueled by Z80 Labs and the 43North startup competition. To learn more, please visit us at  www.acvauctions.com  and follow us  @ACVAuctions .

Las Vegas — March 22, 2018 — AutoLoop LLC, the leading provider of auto industry sales, service, and marketing solutions, today announced at NADA 2018 the acquisition of Trade-In Valet. A leading vehicle appraisal tool for auto dealership websites, Trade-In Valet is proven to dramatically increase traffic, sales, and CSI by delivering guaranteed cash trade-in offers through a quick, four-step process. “I’ve never seen a product like Trade-In Valet produce this much ROI for dealers, so I’m excited to offer it to our customers,” says AutoLoop CEO Steve Anderson. “By adding Trade-In Valet to our already-robust AutoLoop Sales and Service Suite, we will fill in the industry gap to deliver an all-encompassing solution for modern dealerships.” Customers access Trade-In Valet by using a simple online appraisal tool on the dealer’s website. Using the data entered by the consumer, Trade-In Valet’s appraisal professionals then deliver a precise, guaranteed offer directly to the consumer. “Our dealers will now have access to the largest live appraisal desk of its kind to hold more deals together,” Anderson says. “We can now walk hand-in-hand with every appraisal a dealer does, offering the confidence they need to transact. The acquisition of Trade-In Valet strategically aligns with AutoLoop’s existing solutions and long-term objective of solving daily dealership challenges.” “Some of the challenges dealers face today include diminished customer trust in a dealer and disconnected goals between the new and used sales managers,” AutoLoop Chief Product Officer Matt Rodeghero says. “Trade-In Valet uniquely addresses these challenges by providing customers with an accurate — and guaranteed — value for their vehicle from a live, third-party appraiser. And it allows dealers to create the inventory mix that works for them, because Trade-In Valet buys back any vehicle that they can’t sell, or isn’t the most profitable for their market.” Trade-In Valet allows dealers more flexibility in the trading process, meaning dealers will notice a significant impact on their used vehicle inventory. rading directly with the consumer allows dealers to eliminate auctions, minimize wholesale loss, and increase gross profit per sale with higher-quality trades. And because Trade-In Valet is fully integrated with the core AutoLoop products, dealerships using the product will also be able to track, respond to and engage leads with best-in-class creative, as well as identify and target those customers most likely to trade-in their vehicles. “Trade-In Valet is an innovative, yet user-friendly tool that delivers true results for dealers,” Trade-In Valet CEO Mike Dodd says. “And as the industry’s top valuation and lead conversion tool, I know Trade-In Valet is the perfect fit for the AutoLoop Sales Suite platform. I look forward to the success we can achieve together with this proprietary all-in-one automotive technology solution.” For more information about AutoLoop’s acquisition of Trade-In Valet , call 877-850-2010 or contact info@AutoLoop.com . About AutoLoop Since 2005, AutoLoop has helped automotive dealerships nationwide increase sales, improve client retention and achieve overall higher customer satisfaction ratings throughout the Sell, Service, Repeat cycle. With the AutoLoop Customer Engagement Suite — an all-encompassing platform that includes everything from CRM and automated messaging to equity mining, service scheduling and more — AutoLoop is the industry’s first and only single-vendor, end-to-end marketing and engagement solution. An Inc. 500 company with nearly 50 million names in its database and over a billion individual communications initiated, AutoLoop is passionate about being America's best customer retention partner for progressive dealerships. Media Contact Sara Callahan, Carter West Public Relations,  www.carterwestpr.com ,  scallahan@carterwestpr.com , 727-288-2159 (office), 949-742-0477 (cell)