Achieving Objectives Series: How to Make My Website More User Friendly

Firstly, it’s vital that you try and simplify the journey and the car buying experience wherever possible. Remember that you, as someone working with the motor trade, are NOT a traditional buyer, and that your base level of knowledge is likely to far exceed most of your customers.

As such, wherever you can we recommend that you consult with other people when reviewing and assessing your site – whether you use online tools like usertesting.com, or consult with friends and family. Don’t be afraid to take criticism and make changes – your bottom line will thank you for it.

1. Clear navigaton

The chances are that a user will arrive on your website homepage or franchise homepage if they haven’t visited before – unless, of course, you have some good PPC advertising set up to get them to the most relevant page.

Regardless, you need to ensure that your website navigation is simple, giving all the pages they need – and ideally that your homepage has clear panels to help them get where they need to.

2. Anticipate needs

What is a used car customer likely to need? What will a new car customer be looking to find out? Have you forgotten the needs of your (highly profitable) servicing market? Anticipating these needs and delivering them at the relevant points of a user’s journey through your website will help maximise your chance of conversion.

As an example, Motability customers often have a higher interest in understanding dealership accessibility, and also seeing “meet the team” content. Does your website meet these needs without unnecessary digging?

3. Provide clear CTAs

A user-friendly dealer website will always make it as easy and straightforward as possible to progress towards your target end action – whether that is live chat, calling the showroom or submitting an enquiry – or, ideally, completing a vehicle purchase completely online.

As such, you need to make sure that your site has clear obvious calls to action, that help the customer whilst also prioritising the contact-types that you know your team are best at converting.

Bluesky’s innovative solution, AutoEdge, allows your automotive website to automatically adapt to the needs of your customers, without you having to lift a finger.

By using machine learning to understanding what your customers are doing on your site (what business areas they’re looking at, what their search criteria are etc), AutoEdge can automatically segment them into user types, and present completely different content and layouts to them.

This means that your website can give your customers exactly what they need at exactly the right moment, significantly improving website usability. In fact, we often see conversion rates upwards of 20% when we use the powerful AutoEdge artificial intelligence to adapt your site – it’s truly remarkable.