Motoinsight
Motocommerce Showroom
Overview
Designing an online dealership discovery and shopping tool for dealers and customers. With Showroom, we aimed to create a product that appeals to consumers who are still in the ‘shopping’ phase of the car buying journey.
With the new Showroom feature, dealers are able to present information quickly to customers in the dealership and customers have full price transparency and easy access to information online.
Role
Lead Product Designer, Dealer Products
—
I was the sole designer, working with a team of 6 engineers and a product manager.
Length
August- December 2019
Motocommerce: the need for a digital retailing platform
Back in 2000, a car buyer would visit roughly five dealerships before purchasing a car. Today, that number drops to two. In the last two decades, we’ve seen how technology has shifted the way consumers shop. Customers are more likely to do research online before heading into the store to purchase a product. This has become true across all fronts including the automotive industry.
Motocommerce was built to allow dealers to have more of an online presence when it came to customers shopping for cars online. The product allows customers to be able to purchase cars directly on the dealership website, reducing a lot of the time spent within the store. It allowed customers to be able to build and price the car of their choice (new or used) online. They could also purchase accessories, get a trade-in amount, book a test drive, submit a credit application, and place a deposit all in the comfort of their own home. The idea was to take a long tedious process that was mainly done offline and put it online.
The challenges after the excitement
Dealer adoption was minimal at best. We found it difficult to get dealers to use our product.
We’d watch so many FullStory sessions and they were completely useless as dealers would log on and off as there were no quality leads.
Almost 90% of leads that came through the Dealer Dashboard were either fake or poor leads.
Dealers were annoyed they were wasting their time calling and emailing fake customers. This played into problem 1 as they were discouraged from using Motocommerce.
How we understood the problem
For us, it was important to take the data to understand the bigger issue and how we can help make the right changes to entice dealers to want to start using Motocommerce. Based on our conversations and data, we came up with two hypotheses on why dealers weren’t using Motocommerce:
Dealers are reluctant to change their process as they don’t see a problem with their current workflow.
Dealers would be more inclined to make MotoCommerce part of their workflow if they saw it could produce quality leads.
Dealership visit to the West
In order to better understand the problems and to validate our hypotheses, we spent a few days visiting some of our customers. Our goal was to keep an open mind and remove all prior knowledge on what we thought we knew about dealers and their processes. We prepared a list of general questions to ask but wanted to see their workflow and how Motocommerce played a part in it, if any.
Volkswagen Leavens
Motor City Chrysler
We made an effort to talk to different people in the dealerships including managers, dealers, and F&I managers to understand how we could better improve the Motocommerce platform to fit closer to their processes so they would be more entice to use it. Overall, it was a great experience and gave us some key insights into the dealer’s workflow.
The key findings
Everyone came out out of the trip excited about the next steps we could take. There were four major key findings that we determined from the trip:
Dealers would rather interact with customers in stores than cold call customers online
Motocommerce is not being used by dealers as they don’t feel like it’ll help them make sales
Dealers spend a large portion of their time talking and showing vehicles to customers.
Dealers wished there was a quick and easy way to share vehicle information with customers.
We realized that even though out hypotheses that we mapped out were true and accurate, they weren’t what we needed to focus on. Dealers did find Motocommerce unusable as it didn’t benefit them in any way. For them, they felt like they were wasting their time with fake leads and no real sales. Though, it was clear that was the problem, we saw opportunity in the other two findings that we discovered on our trip.
We noticed that across all the dealerships, the first impression and experience with the customers in the showroom was very important. Dealer workflows change across every dealerships but this was a common factor and an important one. Being able to show customers different vehicles they have and the differences for them was a major part in their workflow. From our previous research, we also realized that this was an important factor for customers too but for them, they did this at home.
The car buying journey
From our trip, research, surveys, and interviews with recent car buyer, we put together a customer’s car buying journey in order to better understand how we can design for our customers. We felt that if we designed for their users that they’ll be more enticed to want to use the platform as they would be more likely to receive quality leads which would lead them to sales.
Looking at the journey we put together, it was clear that Motocommerce solved the buying stage and made it easy for users to purchase a vehicle online but it didn’t take into account the shopping phase. How could we get customers to want to purchase a car through our Motocommerce if we didn’t target the first half of their car buying journey? It was clear to us that in order for us to provide dealers with quality leads, we needed to address the shopping phase in the platform.
Focusing in...
Everyone came out out of the trip excited about the next steps we could take. There were four major key findings that we determined from the trip:
Research
Consumers will do research on 3rd party websites and make decisions at home
How might we design a feature that provides customers with research when they land on a dealerships website?
Shopping
Customers want the ability to
compare the different trims and models
How might we design a feature that allows dealers to send customers home with information online?
We found that this phase was an opportunity for us to provide that crucial research and shopping experience that you can experience in the dealership but at home. If we focus in— our key findings from our dealership visits fit right in with two aspects of the car buying journey that Motocommerce wasn’t accomplishing with the platform. Our focus was to create a feature that would help customers with the research and shopping stages in their car buying journey.
Introducing Showroom...
Showroom is designed to target the shopping phase within the car buying journey. Using our research and data, we created Showroom to help provide transparency and easy access to information for customers but also provide dealers a way where they can share and present information with customers online.By designing an online first impression experience that mimics the experience one would receive in the showrooms of dealerships, we’re able to merge the gap between customers and dealers early on in the car buying journey.
The solution
Search Results Page
To target customers in the research stage, we created a way for customers and dealers to be able to easily search for vehicles online and in dealerships. This provides transparency for customers by allowing dealers to be able to show customers the same information in stores and online.
We focused on creating a seamless experience by building out the search experience with the same questions dealers ask when you walk into the dealership.
Trim Compare
For the shopping phase, we created a place where customers and dealers can compare trims and vehicles online and share them with each other. From our interviews and dealerships visits, we realized that the brochure is an huge part of the dealer workflow when presenting and comparing cars with customers.
Customers want to see everything in one view and want to be able to take home the brochure. The Showroom experience gives customers that same experience but online and allows dealers to communicate with their customers by providing the necessary information they need in store and online.
Impact on dealerships
Before we launched Showroom to all dealerships using Motocommerce, we did a soft launch with about 4 dealerships in order to test how Showroom would do and how we could better improve and onboard other dealerships. With the new addition of Showroom, we found that Motocommerce changed the way dealerships sell cars. Below are some quotes from dealerships who have used Motocommerce.
Increase closing ratio
“48% increase in closing sales since launch Motocommerce.”
— Windsor Hyundai
“Customers are more likely to buy from the same dealer again.”
— NewRoads GM
90 mins saved per deal
“Sales close faster and with less work needed by reps”
— Windsor Hyundai
Learnings and next steps
Don’t over complicate things
I kept on overthinking and questioning myself when it came to the filters. What do people care about? Do they buy new and used? How important is colour? I decided to take step back and realized that I was making this more complicated than it should be.
Cars are like people too
Like people, not all vehicle trims are alike. A huge chunk of our process was dedicated to understanding how vehicles are sold and the many different trims and packages one can have.
Not all information is important information
I had found myself running out of space when I was given more copy to add in a small space. It’s hard to say no, especially when it’s a “requirement” but I found it necessary say no in order to not compromise design.
What’s next
Showroom is nowhere near complete. With user testing and dealer feedback, we plan to make iterations to help ensure that Showroom fits the needs of both dealers and customers. We also have a few features in queue for future release to help better improve the car buying experience for both customers and dealers:
Trim Compare V2
Release a new iteration of trim compare for users to be able to compare used and new vehicles, not only trims on new vehicles.
My Garage
Allow users to be able to save vehicles to their “My Garage” to allow them to revisit Motocommerce.
Copyright© 2023 Jane Tran.