Video is an important element to any website in 2022. Especially for car dealerships looking to sell cars online, it’s essential to have information in the right place. Studies have shown that shoppers prefer to engage with dealerships off of the search results page compared to the vehicles details page. Your car dealership can increase engagement and incoming leads by adding a video button to the search results page when browsing for vehicles.

What are the Benefits of Vehicle Walk Around Videos on Your Website?

Videos are an essential part of any website where consumers are trying to learn and shop. Here are just some of the benefits of employing video on your car dealership website:

• Walk around Videos can help shoppers make buying decisions leading to increased sales.
• Videos engages the consumers more and results in increased time spent on site. 
• Walk around videos along with their accompanying text and photos provide the consumer with a better sense of the vehicle than just photos alone especially when they prefer to shop online. 
• Videos are ideal content to promote in most social media venues.

Most Car Dealerships Currently Aren’t Implementing Video on The Search Results Page

For years, dealerships have wanted car shoppers to go to the vehicles details page (VDP) on their websites. In fact, website providers would be incentivized for getting consumers to the VDP as they would measure how much traffic was being driven there.

A recent study conducted by Dealer-E-Process, who has over 2500 dealership websites, showed that this common website tactic actually does not align with consumer shopping behavior. Although numerous leaders in the automotive industry don’t implement video on the search results page, they SHOULD be based on new data. Here’s why…

How Can Video on the Search Results Page Increase Engagement?

When shopping for a car on a website, you typically are browsing through multiple listings of cars. Car shoppers need to click through to a vehicle details page for more information. However, recently, websites have allowed car shoppers to gather more detail from the search results page, so shoppers don’t have to click back and forth between pages when they want more information. This simplifies the shopping process while still providing shoppers with the information they need.

In fact, the study conducted by Dealer-E-Process showed that 64% of shoppers prefer to engage off the search results page compared to the vehicle details page. This resulted in increased time spent on website and increased conversions. Having the right information in the right place is key.

Dealerships should not incentivize website providers based on traffic sent to the vehicle details page, as engagement increases when you keep consumers on the search results page giving them access to the information they need to learn about the car.

Adding a video button on the search results page that allows the consumer to click for a lightbox to appear showing a walk around video of the vehicle is proven to increase engagement on the search results page. 

What is Driving This Major Change in Website Layout?

Consumer behavior is making dealerships rethink the strategic layout of their website. The data proves that consumers prefer browsing from the search results page rather than click in and out of the vehicle details page. Car dealerships need to tailor their strategies to the methods that consumers prefer, not what the traditional standard has been in the past. Shopping behaviors continue to evolve and its essential your car dealership can stay on top of new trends to convert car shoppers into car buyers.

LESA Can Help Implement Videos on the Search Results Page

LESA is the largest dealer video inventory provider and help dealerships nationwide implement video tools throughout their website. Adding simple video tools to your website can help empower consumers in making purchasing decisions without multiple trips to the dealership.

In fact, LESA analyzed Google Analytics data from car dealerships to evaluate the effectiveness of video on the car dealership websites to discover if it was helping car dealerships sell cars. The quick answer is YES, websites with video capabilities were increasing the website conversion rate drastically.