The other day I was in a dealership speaking with an owner.  He said to me "I have 315,000 VDPs" to which I responded "wow, that it is great".  He then said to me "however, VDPs do not cash checks, sales do".  I was so happy to hear that because here is someone that really gets it.  I am not saying that focusing on VDPs is not important.  In fact it is one of the most important things to look that.  I believe that internet managers need to focus on that very heavily to ensure that there are plenty of VDPs in order to convert them into real leads.  

The biggest concern is how should the leads be handled properly?  Is there a proper phone, email, and CRM process?  Are your people trained to sell the sizzle on the phone and build urgency in making that appointment?  Are you creatively working on your marketing (BDC) department to ensure that the leads are being handled with a proper response time?  This is the real concern that dealers have.  While all of the analytics and reports are important in measuring lead generation the need is still there to confirm how many leads came in, how many leads were connected with, how many connections became appointments, how many appointments came in, and how many sold.  At the end of the day it is the sale that cuts checks and pays the bills.  My advise is to prioritize what is important and place the main focus on what generates the revenue.  Everything else is just a statistic that can be tweaked on the backend.

As a matter of fact, when being concerned about the Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), automotive marketers need to ensure that not only is the information properly displayed and the images are properly displayed but also to make sure that the proper call to actions are simply to find (email lead submission, chat pop up, toll free number in large font).  This will assist in improving lead generation.

Again, "VDPs do not pay the bills, sales does".