HOW TO MAKE YOUR VEHICLE LISTINGS STAND OUT
WHY ARE VEHICLE DESCRIPTIONS SO IMPORTANT?
“94% of customers are looking at inventory online before buying.”
“Only 1 out of 15-20 views will send an email lead.”
“A recent study by Cobalt shows that the more VDP views a vehicle has,the quicker it will sell.”
If stats don’t lie then you can see the underlying importance of a good VDP (Vehicle Detail Page). Vehicle descriptions inform the potential buyer about the different details they need to know about the car; details that are inherent to the vehicle like model, make, year, features, etc. and collateral pieces of information like pricing, financing options, and others.
Efficiency in vehicle shopping is a customer’s primary obsession whether they admit it or not, and a well-written and effectively laid out VDP will help meet the needs of your customers.
Now you know why this is important, we can now get to the reason you’re here. Listed below are 10 steps you can take as a dealership to help your Vehicle Listings to stand out:
1. INFORMATION IN THE RIGHT AMOUNTS
When it comes to vehicle descriptions, the rule of thumb is to provide the right amount of information. Offer only the most essential information based on the product type and ensure the text and wording remain catchy.
2. RESPECT THE INTERESTS OF YOUR CUSTOMER
When writing about pickup trucks do you adopt a writing style that a Wall Street broker or Hedge Fund manager would appreciate? Certainly not. You need to write based on the interests of your customers in line with the product you are selling. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
3. DESCRIBE THE VEHICLE AS IF IT WERE IN FRONT OF YOU
Try to imagine you are on the phone and you are providing a description of the car right in front of you. How would you go about it? Provide information on how the car runs, the appearance, the paint job and if there are any other special features worthy of mentioning.
4. JUST LIKE WRITING TO A FRIEND
When you’re writing to a friend, you tend to keep things simple and easy to understand. This is the way vehicle descriptions should read. You are trying to sell a car, not presenting a dissertation at university. Don’t make them feel like they’re reading details of a tax conference.
5. ORGANIZE THE CONTENT
Start with a short introduction then move on to the physical features on the exterior before moving to a paragraph that describes interior details. There should be a dedicated section on the engine and gas mileage and other similar subjects, a section on pricing, financing, and other details. Make sure the content is broken up so it’s not just one long piece of text and highlight or bold the most attractive points so a reader can scan your VDP with ease.
6. PROOFREAD
Once you’ve written the content and organized it into different sections, your next step should be proofreading what you wrote. Customers are not stupid and they will notice glaring errors like spelling and grammar. Quality content needs proofreading to ensure everything is in the proper place and reads correctly. This is a sure-fire way of ensuring that customers will be happy with the descriptions.
7. GET CREATIVE
Don’t get too technical with your descriptions. Who wants to go through a table of tire specifications and gear ratios, right? If you want to sell cars, you need to not only inform, but also entertain your audience. An entertained and informed customer is one car dealerships will appreciate any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).
8. USE REAL PHOTOS
Potential buyers do not want to see stock images of the vehicle they’re looking at. They want to see pictures of the actual vehicle they’re thinking of buying so make sure to include numerous images covering the vehicle inside and out from bumper to bumper.
9. DON’T COPY AND PASTE
Okay, so you’re creating 5 VDPs on the same model of SUV, while it’s tempting to copy and paste the same description across each vehicle, we don’t recommend it. Search engines, like Google, will crawl your site for repeated text, and they’ll punish you when it comes to the visibility of your search rankings if they think you’re trying to cheat the system.
10. USE VIDEO
25% of shoppers are auditory learners, meaning they respond and learn by watching and listening. By creating walk-around videos or a more dynamic presentation of your images using a video editor tool, your vehicle listings will appeal and resonate with more people.
Now this seems like a lot of steps, right? We never said it’d be easy. Unless of course you have the tools that will do a lot of these things for you.
For example, if you use DealerXchange, a lot of these steps are automated or are easily attained in one-click. Videos can automatically be created from your vehicle images, photos are optimized, and various templates can make creating vehicle descriptions quick and simple, to name a few.
Now we’ve explained how it can be done, let us show you how we can do it for you, save you time and money, and have your vehicle details pages really make an impact with your potential customers.