Last week, we looked at how dealers can cater to the type of tech-savvy customers who expect at least part of the car buying process to take place online. Backing up our advice with cold, hard facts from Cox Automotive’s Future of Digital Retail study, we found that customers cared most about one thing — saving time.

Saving your customers time with interactive web forms and trade-in pricing tools (like Accu-Trade’s Instant Offer and Appraiser) can definitely help you win leads and make sales. The average appraisal can take up to 45 minutes — but with a mobile appraiser your dealership can save time, cut the negotiation time in half and bring transparency and trust to every trade-in deal.

Not bad! But as a modern dealer, saving time can’t be your sole focus. Reaching these customers online is key because over 90% of car buyers start their journey online, where they spend upwards of 17 hours researching their purchase.

Look for Tools to Engage Your Customers Online

People often feel uncomfortable at dealerships. When you get into the numbers, it’s not hard to see why: 61% feel like they’ve been taken advantage of when shopping at one.

According to the 2016 Beepi Consumer Automotive Index, Millennials and Gen-X customers especially dislike the experience: large percentages would rather do their taxes, clean their houses or wait in line at the DMV than enter into car negotiations at a dealership!

What does that mean for your dealership? You need to move online to capture the next generation of tech-savvy buyers.

Explore Which Parts of the Buying Process Can Move Online

As we said in last week’s article, car sales is changing before our eyes. It’s more about the experience than the price — and the experience is moving online.

Customers that are able to complete some deal-related activities online save up to 30 minutes, and 60% of those customers use that saved time to do more research about the car. Access to information is crucial to these buyers.

To go further into the numbers, Beepi found that:

• 54% of customers would love to be able to buy and sell a car without leaving home
• 42% would even be comfortable purchasing a car without a test drive if dealerships followed certain assurance policies.

More importantly, over 75% of car buyers are interested in taking more of the purchase experience on-line. They now visit only 1.6 dealerships when in past years they used to visit 5. What these facts tell us is that customers not only want information online, but they want a car buying and trade-in process that is digital and efficient.

After all, McKinsey has found that 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated, not price. And more customers will travel further for a great salesperson than will travel for a lower price.

With over 150 million used cars sold globally each year, it is more important than ever to deliver a superior connected experience to web-savvy car buyers.  Digital tools that seamlessly integrate with your online and offline car-buying options help create a competitive advantage and differentiate your dealership.

That’s how you’ll reach this growing segment of buyers — and keep them!

Want to have a conversation about web savvy car buyers? Find out how an Accu-Trade Instant Offer demo can help you engage these customers on your website by visiting Logan on LinkedIn or calling her at 506.874.7355. It’s easy to schedule an appointment with her on Calendly too!