GS Marketing-ClickMotive Win Three Awards

In Spring 2012 Digital Dealer Website Excellence Awards

HOUSTON – GS Marketing and ClickMotive were named winners in three categories of the Spring 2012 Digital Dealer Website Excellence Awards, co-sponsored by Dealer Communications and Dataium, LLC.

The awards were established last spring by the co-sponsors to recognize automotive dealers, managers and their website providers for exceptional performance of the websites they design, host and support. Recognition is based upon independent, unbiased analytics of dealers’ websites performed by Dataium.

GS Marketing and ClickMotive, along with the other award winners, were recognized at the 12^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition, held April 3-5, in Orlando, Fla.

GS Marketing and ClickMotive received an award of excellence in the following categories:

• ·         Percent of Auto Shoppers Returning – mobile site for Frank Smith Toyota
• ·         Greatest Share of Leads among Website Visitors – for Nabors Toyota site
• ·         Leads per Page Views – for Sterling McCall Toyota site

“These awards are further testimony to the power of the GSM-ClickMotive partnership in producing results for our dealers” said Angie Sherrell, GSM President and CEO. “What’s especially noteworthy about these awards is that excellence wasn’t determined by potentially subjective judging or voting, but based solely on objective performance statistics.”

Overall, 10 awards of excellence were given out. The competition is held twice annually, with the winners announced at the spring and fall Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition.

Insights into Google Search

One of the most important tools available free to you Fusion Dealers is Google Analytics. It shows how many people visited your site; whether they are new or repeats; from where they are coming (well, their ISP, anyway); what pages they view; how long they stay on your site; etc.

One of the best pieces of information in Analytics is the list of keywords that people use to assist them in finding your website.  This list shows you what a customer typed into Google to be directed to your website – however, one of the shortcomings of Google Analytics is it does NOT show you the other keywords that customers typed into Google but your website did not appear on the results page – when maybe it should have.

For this purpose, Google developed Insights.  With this tool, you can simply type in a keyword, or a series of keywords, and Google will tell you how popular those terms are – whether the searcher ends up at your website or not. And – the service is free!

You can easily enter the terms that you would like to research and then see how popular they are – even in relation to each other. You can search the terms on the web articles, images, news stories, etc.  Then you can limit the area of the search to your state or metropolitan area.  Next you can choose the timeframe that you want to search – the past month, six months, year, or whatever.  Finally, you can limit the categories you want to search search (most of you will search autos & vehicles). 

For example, let’s say you wanted to add a landing page and banner to your website for your Service department and you need to know whether Oil Change, Brakes or Tires will be the most likely to drive more traffic.  You simply enter those terms, location, timeframe and category and, abracadabra, you see that the term ‘tires’ was, by far, the most searched term.  (see below)

 

(For more information of Good, Better, Best landing pages and Banners, ask a Fusion Ninja at GSMarketing Fusion Web Support Team; 866-428-9104).

        As you continually strive to make your website more relevant, increase traffic and sell more new and used cars and trucks, services, parts and accessories, Google Insights for Search can be an extremely powerful tool.

Google Analytics for Managers

Five key elements to Google Analytics reporting that you can review to know how your website is performing:

Visits (on the dashboard)

• ·         Look at the last 30 days and then compare them to the previous 30 days. *Note:  the days of the week don’t match up, but you can change the date ranges so that they do.
• ·         Are there any patterns each week?  (Mondays are high traffic days, etc.)
• ·         Did an email or other campaign drive a lot of traffic to your site?

Page Views (on the dashboard)

• ·         Are your page views up or down from the previous month?
• ·         If they are down, what can you do to increase them?
• ·         If they are up, do you know why?

Traffic Sources (on the dashboard)

• ·         How many visitors are finding you organically?
• ·         How many are typing your address in directly?
• ·         Is your Pay per Click campaign working?
• ·         What key words are visitors typing in to get to your site?
• ·         Do you need to market your web address in different ways?

Content by Title (main menu on left)

• ·         What are your most viewed pages?
• ·         What are your most viewed NEW pieces of inventory?
• ·         What are your most viewed USED pieces of inventory?
• ·         How do you track specific pages (custom pages)?

Mobile (drop down)

• ·         How do you find your mobile dashboard?
• ·         What does it tell you?
• ·         How has your mobile traffic changed in the last 30, 60, 90 days?
• ·         What are your mobile visitors most interested in?