Dealers Light on Website Service-Department Content

Auto dealership websites typically go heavy on vehicle sales, light on service-department offerings.

That should change, at least somewhat, says Denim Simkins, a regional fixed-operations director for Performance Auto Group with 11 dealerships in Ohio and five in Utah.

Since the start of this year, he’s worked on giving a greater website and search-engine presence to Performance’s service and parts operations.

“Fixed operations have not had enough online attention,” Simkins says at a recent DrivingSales Presidents Club conference session. “I realized I wasn’t doing enough (digitally) to drive (service) traffic.”

Sure, a dealer website might offer an occasional online oil-change coupon or a “click-here-for-service-department” button on the home page.

But front-end operations occupy most of the prime real estate on dealership websites. Similarly, most dealership search-engine optimization and marketing initiatives are devoted to selling cars rather than fixing them.

That could change as service-department profit margins continue to outpace those of new-vehicle sales.

“Fixed operations are going to become a main part of dealerships as we continue to see new-car profit margins deteriorate to almost nothing,” says Mark Rogers, a dealership management consultant for the National Automobile Dealers Assn.

Simkins recommends dealers reassess how the service and parts departments fit into overall digital marketing strategies. “Does your fixed operation have a presence online, or is it just present? There’s this huge opportunity to capture business.”

Americans spend about $310 billion to maintain their cars, and dealerships get less than a third of that business, he notes. The lion’s share goes to independent and chain repair shops, many of them master marketers online.

“Our competitors are cleaning up,” Simkins says, adding that U.S. consumers do 70 million repair-facility searches a month.

Consumers readily know dealerships fix cars, but most of them go elsewhere for that, partly because dealership “fixed operations haven’t had enough attention,” he says of lagging online efforts.

He recommends dealers review their digital operations with the following questions in mind:

Simkins emphasizes the need for mobile-optimized websites, particularly to attract young car owners. “Seventy-five percent of Millennials use mobile devices when researching service centers. That device is their co-pilot.”

It’s what young people use to get all sorts of information, from whether a dealership stocks a particular auto part to whether rain is forecasted. Simkin tells this one about pervasive youthful app use: “I asked my daughter what the weatherman said, and she said, ‘Who’s the weatherman?’” 

This may seem obvious, but he recommends keeping websites current to avoid the untimely offering of, say, winter car-care specials when spring flowers are blooming.

Why do most dealership websites go too light on service-department content? Most dealers came up through the car-selling ranks, so it’s tough getting them to focus more on fixed operations, says DrivingSales trainer Rob Henson.

He tells of a dealer who scratched his online chat service after discovering 80% of people using it were inquiring about fixed operations rather than vehicle sales.

“That’s a problem?” Henson says. Apparently, to some dealers it is “because it’s not driving customer traffic to variable operations.”

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