carsnip_al

Some fair points being made. What I was trying to get across from the survey data is that for consumers searching for cars (not making actual online purchases) the current portals don't work for a large number of them. This means 30% of buyers won't know about the stock you have, even if it is advertised on the classified sites, unless they visit your forecourt. We want to enable everyone to search more easily and arrive on your website or forecourt further along the buying cycle. However conversely, as pointed out, they do buy cars and that's good news for the forecourts they do visit. Alastair CEO Carsnip.com p.s. If you are going to CDX - click here to meet the team.

Hi We commissioned the study so hopefully I can help. The sample size was more than 2,000 UK adults, who were polled in March by the independent market research company YouGov. The survey asked them whether they'd used 'classified-ad' type websites like Autotrader or Motors the last time they bought a car. 30% of people said they hadn't used a car search engine at all last time. This really surprised us and we published the results to let dealers know. There are two ways to look at this - one, as Dave Brown said, is that the results show the internet is not the holy grail. I bet if we asked most car dealers they'd agree with Jim and say that most of their customers combine internet research with 'in-person' visits for test drivers. You mentioned that the piece says 30% of all buyers didn't use the internet when actually they just didn't use Autotrader or Motors or the like. You're absolutely right, it's not all encompassing, but it leads to the second viewpoint; that current car search engines don't effectively serve today's car buyer well enough. They're either too complicated or not intuitive enough to help customers find the right car for them fast enough, so lots of people simply don't use them in the first place. That's what we believe. Hope that helps. Shout if you have any more questions. We will be publishing more findings from the survey over the next couple of months. Best, Alastair CEO Carsnip.com p.s. If you are going to CDX - click here to meet the team.