It is widely accepted that Covid-19 has accelerated the trend towards online purchase across all sectors as retail outlets were forced to close, and consumers quickly adapted to the speed and security of obtaining goods through digital channels.
But there are several factors specific to the car industry that make building e-commerce capabilities particularly challenging. These include the high price of the product, its complexity, and the extensive customisations available to the buyer.
The intention of the study was to look at car purchase from the customer’s point of view and to assess the capability of each vehicle manufacturers’ website to provide the information and assistance they require as they progress along their purchase journey.
In all, we looked at the websites of 19 major car brands across the ‘Big 5’ European markets. The sites were assessed for the availability, visibility and quality of a set of features and functionality that we determined as critical to car purchase transactions.
In summary, the findings shocked us. The capabilities of car brands were mixed and there were no stand-out examples of car brands delivering a seamless, end-to-end ecommerce experience.
Click here to access the report and to learn which were the Top 5 performing brands in our survey.
(If your company is a participant in the eDataXchange project you can request a full copy of the report which contains more data and detailed analysis of brand performance across all of the ‘Big 5’ European markets. Please contact Nick White, Sophus3’s Sales Director at nick.white@sophus3.com.)
You can also watch Scott’s presentation of the reports findings to the Sophus3 Automotive Digital Summit 2021 here:
