The retail car industry has been one of the last industries to fully embrace ecommerce, but that is no longer the case.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in many businesses that did not traditionally see themselves as ‘online car businesses’ having to embrace digital change – and quickly.

There are very few car dealerships that don’t offer some aspects of ecommerce and at the very least a hybrid solution.

We are starting to see (as happened with other industries) consumers and dealers becoming more comfortable with purchasing and selling a car online, or at least part of the transaction beginning online (e.g. researching or booking a car) – with the deal then finalised in the dealership.

This trend has increased because of covid-19 which had accelerated the move to ecommerce and we are seeing suppliers to the industry offering tools and resources free to help dealers make the transition to ecommerce.

Understanding consumer behaviour online is a key element for car dealers in reaching out to potential customers who are searching online.

To gain some insight into how the market currently sits let’s consider a simple search phrase that a potential customer would key into Google – ‘Buy a car online’.

‘Buy a car online’ is currently typed into Google approximately 12,000 times per month or 120,000 times per year in the UK.

At current prices, it costs approximately £3.50 to purchase a click for this phrase to your car dealer website from Google.

We will look at search volumes on mobile phones, in particular, as the mobile phone audience is by far the biggest audience by device for searching for cars.

With the top ten positions taking over 95% of those 12,000 searches – ranking high in search has never been more crucial to online success.