Quick Tests to Ensure Your Virtual Showroom is Set Up for Success - Adpearance

Quick Tests to Ensure Your Virtual Showroom is Set Up for Success

Today, we want you to have peace of mind that your virtual showroom is functioning efficiently and effectively. Here are some quick tests you can run to make sure the conversion points on your website are properly routing leads to your sales team and CRM.

1. Call the sales and service numbers listed on your website

Evaluate the following:

  • Who answers the call?
  • How long does it take before you actually speak to someone?
  • If you’re sent to voicemail, is it up-to-date with your correct business hours and contact information?
  • If you leave a voicemail, how long does it take to get a call back?

Especially if you are forwarding calls to someone’s cell phone right now, consider whether or not the person who answers incoming calls is the right person. To set your digital showroom up for success, this person needs to be responsive first and knowledgeable second, but fully up to date on recent changes and current processes.

Have a phone tree set up in case the designated point person can’t answer a call. Everyone on the phone tree should have a professional voicemail recording related to the business, with up-to-date hours and contact information. If you’ve had layoffs or staffing changes, make sure to test that your calls aren’t going to a former employee’s personal phone as well.

2. Do a test submission for ALL forms in your virtual showroom

Try requesting a quote, booking an appointment, scheduling service, and completing a contact form. Assess each of the following items:

  • Does each form complete successfully?
  • Did the form submission make it into your CRM?
  • Who does the lead get routed to?
  • How quickly does your sales or service rep get notified of the form fill?
  • How long is the response time before your team follows up?
  • Did your sales rep’s follow up make it into your CRM?

It might feel unnecessary to test each individual form, but forms break more often than you may think. Now is the time to quickly identify and resolve these issues, before they result in lost leads. If you are working with a limited staff right now, it’s essential that your lead routing stays up-to-date. If you haven’t done so already, put a process in place that allows you to quickly and easily update lead routing if your staffing or circumstances change.

If all or part of your sales team starts working from home, it’s critical that forms and follow-up are recorded properly in your CRM. In our work with automotive, we see on average 10-30% of leads do not make it into a dealer’s CRM. If you haven’t done a CRM training or refresher recently with your team, now is a good time to do so. Make sure your employees have access to the CRM remotely (even on a mobile device) and know to update records quickly and completely.

3. Visit your virtual showroom on mobile

Scroll through online inventory and assess your customer experience shopping on mobile with the following:

  • Is your website mobile-friendly?
  • How long does it take to fully load each inventory page?
  • How straightforward is it to search, sort, and filter inventory?
  • How easy is it to submit a form?

If you added any COVID-19 related messages to your website about new hours or specials, how prominent are they on mobile?

User experience on mobile is key for your digital showroom. Leads need to be able to search, navigate, and filter inventory by price, make, model, trim, year, etc. Once they find what they want, it should be simple to submit a form on desktop or mobile. If you have any messages about new or updated working hours, special promotions, or community support, make sure this information is visible on the mobile version of your website. Over half of new-vehicle internet shoppers use a mobile device to do online research for a car or truck.

Mobile is also an increasingly important ranking factor for search engines. Yes, mobile-optimized websites have been a best practice for a long time, but mobile page speed and load time are now considered an important ranking factor as well. With a high potential for online activity to spike in the coming weeks, now is the time to do everything you can to boost your rankings. This fall, these elements will become even more important—starting September 2020, Google will roll out mobile-first indexing for all websites.

4. Track and identify lead activity on your website

While in-person interactions are limited, you should be able to lean on website analytics to understand the following:

  • How many active users are visiting your virtual showroom right now?
  • What time frames generate the best traffic to your virtual showroom?
  • What inventory and VDPs are generating the most visits?
  • What leads are actively shopping?
  • Can you identify your return shoppers and their current interests?
  • Are you flagging your hottest sales leads for your team?

Although you may be used to getting a pulse on sales traffic and activity by walking out on your showroom floor, use website analytics and user-level tracking to get the same visibility from your virtual showroom. Get a feel for how many visitors are going to your digital showroom, what pages they’re visiting, and what inventory each lead is interested in.

Use the insights provided to find your most active sales leads and target these hot leads first! They’ll have the highest chance of converting since you know they’re actively browsing inventory online and still showing interest.

5. Review your online inventory

Consider the user experience of your online shoppers as you assess your virtual showroom:

  • Is your inventory up-to-date?
  • Are you using high-quality images or video?
  • Are you using custom photos or stock images?
  • Do you have video walk-arounds?

I can’t stress this enough: leverage video as much as possible. You can use your smartphone to shoot quick video walk-arounds of your inventory to provide customers with an in-person experience. Consider adding them to your VDPs or YouTube. This allows shoppers to get up close and personal with inventory they are interested in, all while staying at home.

We’re Here to Help

With these quick tests, you can be confident that your showroom is set up for success. If you have any questions about your business or digital marketing during the coronavirus outbreak, contact your Digital Advertising Strategist or reach out directly. We will continue sharing data and updates in our resource hub, and partner hard to help your business succeed.

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About the Author

Kendall Richarz

Kendall drives client success at Adpearance as the digital strategy team lead. Her depth of digital expertise combined with her understanding of the specific needs of our clients gives her a unique ability to deliver results.

Adpearance is the digital marketing company obsessed with generating quality leads. Our solutions combine cutting-edge technology, premium tracking, and an expert team to transform business results.

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