Brien Joyce
Vice President
EFG Companies
I admit it. I fell victim to Amazon Prime Day. However, I still stuck to my guns and completed my due diligence for every purchase. For me, that included researching the price on multiple sites, checking out customer reviews and ratings, and reading the small print on the product description.
I’m not alone in my habits. An Ernst & Young study showed that more than two-thirds of customers now spend less than 10 hours to research their vehicle purchase – down from 15 hours in 2016. This same study showed that consumers spend more time online researching a vehicle than any other online purchase!
In fact, a recent Cox Automotive study found that 43 percent of consumers want to apply for financing or pre-qualify for a loan online. Furthermore, the amount of time spent completing a car purchase is the primary complaint for consumers. Less than half of the car-buyers surveyed were satisfied with the length of the car buying process.
How frequently do your customers contact your financial institution to pre-qualify for an auto loan? Have you run the numbers on your conversion rates between website page views, completed applications, and actual loans finalized? How often do consumers “shop” your site for auto loan rates? If you don’t have the answers to these questions, it’s likely you are losing money on your digital footprint. Let’s look at some of the areas you should track and manage.