Tag: multimedia

Part II: Enhance Your Virtual Showroom with Multimedia and Measure it’s Effectiveness with LESA Stats Reports

Written on January 3, 2023. Posted in Uncategorized.

In Part I, we discussed the importance of having a great virtual showroom as online car shopping continues to soar in popularity. Static photos won’t be enough to engage online car shoppers, and a multimedia website experience continues to be dynamic and beneficial for car dealerships.

LESA’s overall stats portal helps offers a comprehensive view to how your vehicle videos are performing on your website. Part II of the LESA stats report has numerous other statistics that continue to prove the effectiveness of multimedia and give dealerships insight into viewer behavior.

Let’s take a look at the type of insights your dealership can get with our custom report. Below is a stats report from one LESA dealership, but we see similar patterns across our thousands of dealership analytics.

Part II : Multimedia Results in Higher Website Engagement

By Viewer

Completion Chart: How much of the video watched was completed before moving on to the next video or leaving the website. 0-24%, 25-49%, 50-74%, and 75+ %.

If a customer watched 75% of a vehicle video, one count would be added to the 75-100% column. Across our data from thousands of LESA dealerships, the completion chart is typically U-shaped with 0-24% being high, and 75%+ being high.

Viewer Makeup Chart: This chart represents the number of times a video was watched per unique viewer. If a unique viewer watched 4 videos they would be counted as a four-time viewer.

What does this mean? Very few people watch half the video. People either quickly determine they are not interested in the car, or they will watch the entire video. In this dealership, we see that slightly more than 20% of people watched 6 or more videos. This is very common across the board from the data we have analyzed from all of LESA dealerships. Videos are very engaging and can help consumers stay focused on your website

By Time Period

View Engagements by days of the week: The total number of Video View Engagements that occurred on each Monday – Sunday for that month of reporting. This may help car dealership understand which days they have the most engagement each week, prompting them to post new content on these days.

View Engagements by days of the month: The total number of Video View Engagements that occurred on each day of the month. If you see a spike, it could be due to a holiday such as July 4^th. Usually, there is a spike on the weekends when people have time to shop for cars. This is common and can help you tailor promotions around peak days and hours.

What Does This Mean? Spikes can happen due to holidays or weekends which helps car dealerships determine which days they should publish content and promotions.

Video Engagement By Vehicle Characteristics

Top 6 Vehicle Years: The top 6 Vehicle Years measured by view engagements. This should continue to trend upward over time as video continues to gain popularity. Our data continues to show that new vehicle videos are very popular! The data trending over time as shown that new vehicle videos are actually some of the most popular.

Top 6 Makes Viewed: The top 6 vehicle makes measured by views engagements. This can help car dealerships determine which cars are the most popular on their website.

Top 6 Models Viewed: The top 6 Models, and all other models shown as ‘Other’, measured as percentages on a pie chart. The totals are from by view engagements for that Model. This can help car dealerships determine which models are the most popular on their car dealership website.

What Does This Mean? It allows the dealership to do direct measurement of vehicles. For example, if the dealership has any doubt that showcasing new cars is necessary, the data will show you that new models are the most viewed (see below) and shooting new car videos is necessary. It can also help show which models were most viewed helping dealerships properly merchandise and stock cars that people want.

Stats example - viewers by vehicle characteristics

Top 6 Vehicles: The top 6 Year/Make/Model measured in view engagements. Also included is the ‘other’ category which includes the number of engagements for the rest of the year/make/ models outside of the top 6. This can help car dealerships gauge which vehicles were the most viewed and popular on their website which could signal which cars are in highest demand.

Top 6 Stock Numbers: The top 6 Stock Numbers measured in view engagements. Also included is the ‘other’ category which includes the number of engagements for the rest of the models outside of the top 6.

What Does This Mean?. Dealerships can clearly see if having vehicle videos helped certain cars sell faster compared to those, they did not feature video for (based on hundreds of reports from LESA dealerships- the answer is yes! It does help.)

By Interactivity

Spotlight Activity: Tracks the total number of times each spotlight category was hit. This can be helpful to car dealerships in understanding which features of the vehicle are most important to the car shoppers.

Ultra Spin

Ultra- Spin 360 Engagements- # of swipes tracked when a user is spinning through Ultra- Spin.

Time on Ultra-Spin 360- The total time users spent interacting with Ultra-Spin in the LESA video player on the dealership’s website(s), Cars.com, and anywhere else our LESA video player is interacted with, for that dealer.

What Does This Mean? Based on the data from a dealership below, there were over 10 hours of Ultra Spin views on their website. Not only are consumers engaging on video, but they are also spending a lot of time engaging with Ultra Spin. This highlights that multimedia is an important element of any successful website. It means that your dealership needs a multimedia experience with videos, photos and ultra-spin. They want to learn as much about the car in a multimedia experience.

The Bottom Line:

LESA stats report helps you track engagements and user behavior and measure which vehicles have more views, which models shoppers are more interested in, and which days/hours vehicles are more likely to sell. Stats help dealerships understand which vehicles the consumers are more drawn towards leading to more effective merchandising.

Most importantly, LESA stats portal shows that a multimedia experience is what helps engage consumers, which results in increased time on your dealership website. Video, photos, and ultra-spin are all important elements in helping consumers get a full sense of the vehicle they want to buy. The stats from LESA’s reports and across thousands of dealerships prove that multimedia is what gives your digital showroom a competitive advantage to selling vehicles online.

Get Started With Video Today

In the competitive automotive industry, your car dealership is falling behind if you don’t integrate multimedia throughout your website. Connect with a representative today to get started.

Enhance Your Virtual Showroom with Multimedia and Measure it’s Effectiveness with LESA Stats Reports

Written on December 9, 2022. Posted in News.

Historically, dealerships have spent top dollar to ensure they have great show rooms to showcase cars. As the car shopping environment continues to transform digitally, dealerships should now put a greater emphasis on ensuring they have a great virtual showroom. Many car dealerships neglect the digital show room by showing static photos, but a multimedia experience is necessary to appeal to the new generation of online shoppers. Your website is one of your greatest assets in 2022 and its essential to continually enhance and monitor performance

LESA online video statistics portal is helping car dealerships review their vehicle video website data to make better vehicle merchandising decisions and optimize their website. Additionally, LESA has thousands of dealerships with multimedia data which helps us analyze important consumer behavior and trends across the nation, helping give your dealership a competitive edge.

Let’s take a look at what the video statistics portal can offer your car dealership better understanding on how to help consumers that prefer visiting a digital showroom. Part I of this article will cover the overall video statics report, and Part II will break down specific details into what consumers are interested in and a deeper analysis of consumer behavior. Your dealership will benefit from understanding the impact multimedia has on your website.

Part I: Overall Video Statistics Report

The overall vehicle video statistics report offers a comprehensive view into how your vehicle videos are performing on your website. Let’s take a look at the dashboard and break down each part.

Total Video View Engagements: The total number of video view engagements from the dealerships walk around video traffic. This includes engagements from the dealerships website(s), AutoTrader, KBB, Cars.com, and others. For example, other engagements can come from the dealerships Facebook video inventory gallery, and views from a shared link of a full motion video.

Unique Video Viewers: The total number of unique video viewer IP addresses that accounted for watching at least one video. If more than one person from a single router IP address watch video, then only one unique viewer is counted for that routers IP address. For example, If two people from the same household watch videos of vehicles, they are treated as one unique video viewer for that routers IP address.

Total time on LESA Player: The total time spent on the LESA multimedia player on the dealerships website, including videos, photos, feature videos and 360 spin. This number gives a great representation of the impact multimedia has on your dealership website. This number is very important to monitor as the more time spent on your website, the more likely it is that people are interested in your vehicles. Dealerships can also compare this stat to similar metrics in Google Analytics prior to implementing multimedia to see the difference in engagement.

AutoTrader Engagements: The total number of view engagements from AutoTrader. This total is included in Total Video View Engagements.

cars.com Engagements: The total number of view engagements from Cars.com. This total is included in Total Video View Engagements.

KBB Engagements: The total number of view engagements from KBB. This total is included in Total Video View Engagements.

Vehicles with Video: The total number of both active and any sold vehicles shot with video within the specified month of reporting.

Total Vehicles Moved: The total number of vehicles in inventory that left the dealership.

For example, when a vehicle is sold it is counted as a vehicle moved.

Vehicles with Video Moved: The total number of vehicles in inventory that had video taken before they left the dealership.

Leads Received: The total number of how many times a customer filled out the “more information” form attached to the video. It’s important to keep in mind that leads from your website can come through many different ways, so the leads captured on the multimedia player are just a bonus to the numerous leads that come with having a video-centric website.

By Trends

Trends- Unique Video Viewers in last 12 months: A line graph displaying Unique Viewers that can span over the last 12 months. This helps a car dealership gauge how many new views the vehicle videos are bringing to the website.

Trends- Vehicles Moved in last 12 months: A line graph displaying the number of vehicles moved over a span of 12 months.

LESA has analyzed hundreds of dealership data, and has found there is a direct positive correlation between the video viewers and vehicles sold. The more viewers of videos results in an increase in vehicles moved.

By Technology

Engagement by Platform: The total View Engagements measured in a pie chart by Platform.

Mobile Phone, Desktop/Laptop, Tablet, are the platforms tracked. Any view engagements not traceable to a platform are listed as Other. This can help car dealerships understand the percentage of engagements that come from mobile devices. Websites may need to be specifically tailored to attract mobile users.

Websites may need to be specifically tailored to attract mobile users. Five years ago, traffic consisted from half desktop and half mobile. We have seen through analytics that mobile consists of 80%+ of visits. We highly recommend car dealerships to have a mobile friendly approach. Our LESA multimedia player is very mobile optimized and can easily accommodate for visitors shopping for cars on their phones.

Example of stats on how videos are viewed

How Is The Overall Overview Report Helpful?

This section allows you to see the impact that multimedia is having across your website and the dealer’s third-party car portal websites. You can gauge how many views, engagements and leads are being created from your LESA multimedia player. Additionally, you can keep track how many cars for sale currently have video, and how many cars with videos are selling.

We recommend that dealerships compare data from months prior to implementing multimedia via their Google Analytics Channel to see the power of multimedia. Based on the data LESA has seen from hundereds of dealerships, it will prove the effectiveness and power of creating an engaging and excellent digital showroom.

To be Continued

In Part II, we will break down the second part of the statitics report which will break down specific details into what consumers are interested in and a deeper analysis of consumer behavior.

Increase Your Reach on Social Media by Leveraging Video Content with Automation Tools

Written on October 5, 2022. Posted in News.

Car dealerships can utilize their website content to add various types of content to their social media pages. Having dynamic video content on social media is an excellent way to attract car shoppers. Especially for Instagram, video content has recently soared in popularity.

LESA has created new automation technology that easily allows car dealerships to post their video inventory to Facebook and Instagram. The tool allows you to schedule posts for any time which will automatically post to Facebook and Instagram. This can help save your car dealership time while reaching a larger audience and sharing your inventory with more people.

How to Leverage Your Website Content for Social Media

Not only can your dealership have video content on your website, but you can also leverage that content and use it for social media. Many car dealerships are hesitant to get involved with social media posting as it seems confusing and time consuming. However, LESA’s Facebook automation tool can allow you to easily populate content from your website across both Facebook and Instagram.

Although dealerships still utilize tools like 360 spin, 360 spin is not shareable content to social media. LESA walk around videos are the perfect content for both your car dealership website, and for your social media. If you don’t have video on your website and are utilizing photos or 360 spin, we recommend starting with LESA walk around videos.

Why Should Your Car Dealership Use Social Media?

It’s a no brainer that car dealerships should create a presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Simply having a presence on social media can increase traffic to your website, build trust, and improve brand awareness. Social media can be especially useful when trying to target a local audience.

In fact, research has shown that social media influences 71% of consumer buying decisions, which is another major reasons that car dealerships can’t miss out on the big opportunities Facebook and Instagram hold.

LESA Facebook Automation Software

LESA social media automation tool is helping car dealership leverage their vehicle video content and automatically post to Facebook and Instagram. The new tool has the ability to automatically post walk around video content that is on your website to the social platforms. Car dealerships have the ability to create custom filters, such as new cars, old cars, etc which help them choose which vehicle video content will be sent to social media. For example, if you only want to post new 2022 Honda Accords at 9am every day, the tool has the capability to do that.

Our Tool Is FREE For LESA Customers

Without having an automation tool like LESA’s, your car dealership would have to hire someone to help manage your social media pages, such as a marketing employee or relying on an ad agency. Our tool is currently FREE to car dealerships that utilize any of our LESA packages.

What Are the Benefits of Facebook Automation for Car Dealerships?

There are many benefits of using Facebook automation software for car dealerships. Especially dealerships that are

It can help you save time by automating repetitive tasks.
It can help you reach a larger audience by sharing your content with more people.
It can help you manage your Facebook page more effectively by saving time and allowing your team to comments and posts quickly.
It can increase your following as you leverage more dynamic and engaging content on your social media pages

Get Started With Social Media Automation

The team at LESA is ready to implement social media automation and share your website content today! Get started by contacting sales@lesautomotive.com

Increase Uniformity & Professionalism on Your Car Dealership Website With Custom Backgrounds

Written on July 21, 2022. Posted in News.

Online car shopping has grown tremendously in popularity since the pandemic started. Most car dealerships are able to equip their shoppers with the information they need on their website to make important purchasing decisions.

However, certain obstacles don’t always make it easy to showcase your cars online. Seasonal changes such as rain and snow can make it tough to showcase your inventory online. LESA is helping car dealerships create professional photo library that stand out compared to competition with custom backgrounds.

Why Do I Need Custom Backgrounds?

Not all car dealerships have the perfect staging area to shoot inventory photos and videos. Especially dealerships in the city environment aren’t able to take professional photos of their inventory to showcase online. In fact, numerous dealerships pay tens of thousands of dollars for a proper staging area. Custom backgrounds is a much more economical alternative to having a professional background.

Additionally, as mentioned above, seasonal obstacles such as rain or snow can create challenges while shooting vehicle inventory photos and videos. With cars selling as fast as they are, your dealership doesn’t have days to wait until the weather clears to put your cars online.

Custom backgrounds can help your website have a professional feel, which can also help build trust with potential car shoppers. Custom backgrounds can improve the car shopping experience on your website in numerous ways:

Shorten Time to Market: Don’t worry about exact vehicle placement when shooting your photos. Shoot as-is and leave the background to us.
Increase Uniformity: Bring consistency to your site for a clean, professional look. This is especially helpful to have consistency across your search results page.
Increase Brand Recognition: Make a lasting brand impression with every photo with an added logo.
Shift Focus: Take attention away from surrounding elements and let the viewer focus on what matters: your inventory
Maintain authenticity and stand out: So many car dealerships use images that look alike. Your dealership has the chance to stand out by creating custom backgrounds.

Two Types of Custom Backgrounds for Your Car Dealership Website

LESA offers two types of custom backgrounds for your car dealership website.

Option 1- Hybrid Background: A hybrid background has the ability to remove the background of the image while keeping the floor. This provides a consistent look and feel across your website to help car shoppers focus on the vehicles opposed to background distractions.

Option 2- Full Background Replacement: A full background replacement completely removes the car from the original environment and uses different floors and a different background image. To do this, the LESA team adds shadows and professional shading to ensure the car does not look fake in it’s new environment.

Custom Backgrounds: Make Your Dealership Website Stand Out

Having a great car dealership website is essential in today’s environment, as numerous car shoppers are pivoting from researching and buying cars online from traditional visits to the dealership. Custom backgrounds can make a huge difference, and ensure a professional look and feel across your entire website. Contact a LESA representative today.

How Multimedia is Helping Car Dealerships Sell Vehicles

Written on March 21, 2022. Posted in News.

What Is The LESA Multimedia Player?

LESA multimedia player takes on a custom and innovative approach to having multimedia on a car dealership website. The LESA player allows the dealership to have numerous different features for each vehicle, with little effort. The simple tool can help empower consumers to make purchasing decisions without numerous trips to the dealership.

We talk more in depth about the player in our previous blog post, “Having a Great Website Includes Multimedia.”

How Will the Multimedia Player Help Sell Cars?

LESA analyzed Google Analytics data from car dealerships to evaluate the effectiveness of the multimedia player to really discover if it was helping car dealerships sell cars. The quick answer is YES, video is absolutely helping car dealerships sell their inventory. There are four ways that video and multimedia is improving the effectiveness of your website:

Increasing session duration
Increasing pages/session
Increasing events/session
Increasing conversions

Let’s take a deeper look as to how and why video is helping car dealerships sell vehicles.

Increase Session Duration

We compared a user’s time spent on website when interacting with a multimedia player vs. not interacting with it. The results are astounding. A user that interacted with multimedia spent 3x the amount of time than a user that did not interact with video, increasing session duration by 300%.

In our sample data of a car dealership we analyzed, the average session duration for a user that interacted with multimedia was 10:35 compared to only 3:02 for users that did not interact with multimedia. We saw similar numbers across a dozen other dealerships.

Why does the multimedia player increase the time spent on the website so drastically? Multimedia provides an engaging and educational experience for car shoppers. It gives them the transparency and the information they need to successfully shop for a car online.

A good session duration across industry standard ranges anywhere from 2-3 minutes. As you may already know, there are a mountain of evidence that proves the more time a consumer spends on a website the more likely they’re likely to convert to a buyer.

Graph showing 275 increase of views over VDP without video

Increase Pages/ Session Duration

LESA also compared data of the average pages per session of a user that interacted with multimedia compared to a user that did not interact with video and found that video increased the number of pages viewed by 170% compared to no video. What does this mean? The dealership we observed showed that users that interacted with multimedia viewed almost 8 pages (7.92) compared to only 3.13 pages before leaving the website. This could be a huge difference for your dealership, meaning a user could potentially view 8 cars instead of 3 before leaving.

Why does the multimedia player increase pages/session? The information that video presents to car shoppers keeps them engaged and confident that they are truly getting a great preview of the car. It heightens their curiosity and results in them viewing more makes and models the dealership has to offer.

Graph showing 164% increase over VDPs without video

Increase Events/Session

An event is considered any activity that a user takes on your page. This could include button clicks, video plays, form submissions, looking at the description section of the vehicles, viewing the window sticker, scrolling down the page, and more.

The multimedia player also had a substantial impact on increasing events/session compared to a user experience without interacting with video. In our analysis, we found that users that interacted with video saw a 150% increase in events taken on the webpage compared to users that did not interact with video. The average number of events per session in the dealership observed was 30 compared to 12. This 2.5X increase could help your car dealership convert shoppers into buyers.

Why do videos increase events? Videos interactive and educational nature help keep users engaged on your website, resulting in a user wanting to see and explore more of the website. Empowering users to take action on your website is the goal, and videos can help users take meaningful options resulting in converting car shoppers into car buyers.

Graph showing 144% increase over VDPs without video

Increase Goal Conversion Rate

Finally, and most importantly, video is proven to increase goal conversion rate. Many dealerships have already set up goal conversions in Google Analytics. Goal conversions could include submitting a check availability form, engaging in chat, clicking on the phone number to call, and more. In order to track how many consumers are converting. We are looking at the same consumers who interacted with the multimedia player if they also converted through the goal conversion tracking. This allowed us to see there was a 400% increase conversion compared to consumers that did not interact with the multimedia player in the dealership we observed. The numbers were similar across over a dozen dealerships that were analyzed.

An industry standard conversion rate is between 2-4%, however, certain car dealerships using the LESA multimedia player with video on average are seeing a 14% conversion rate. This means that car shoppers really are turning into car buyers, and contacting car dealerships to take action.

Graph showing 97% increase over VDPs without video

Take Action: Improve Your Website So Car Shoppers Become Car Buyers

LESA encourages each car dealership to review their Google Analytics and compare the session duration, pages per session, events per session, and goal conversion rates to the rates with the multimedia player analytics we shared above. Multimedia can without a doubt improve your website, and convert car shoppers into car buyers.

The Bottom Line:

Using Google Analytics LESA proved that video is truly making an impact! Having a multimedia player such as the LESA multimedia can really help your car dealerships sell cars. It’s an easy and affordable way to convert car shoppers into car buyers.

LES Automotive Multimedia: How Do I Get started?

Reach out to a representative today at https://www.lesautomotive.com/contact/

We’ll help you setup a custom report in Google Analytics that you can use to compare your key GA analytics before and after adding video to your site.

Having A Great Website Includes Multimedia.

Written on March 7, 2022. Posted in News.

Car shopping habits have changed significantly as shoppers are spending less time at the dealership and more time online. In fact, the average car shopper visits just 1.2 dealerships before making a purchasing decision. What does this mean for car dealerships? They need a strong online presence with multimedia features to help sell their cars.

Along with enjoying increased engagement and shares that multimedia provides, there is one powerful reason for including multimedia on your website- it is helping dealerships sell cars. Multimedia increases the time spent on your website which is aiding consumers in purchasing decisions and leading to the purchase of cars.

As online car shopping continues to soar, car dealerships need to be aware of the important benefits multimedia provides. LESA is helping car dealerships integrate multimedia options onto their car dealership website very easily with their LESA multimedia player.

What Does Multimedia mean to LESA?

Photos have been popular one the internet since the 1990s. In 2022, it is time for car dealerships to elevate and innovate with multimedia. Multimedia combines text, graphics, audio, 360 spin and video that let the user navigate, interact, create, and communicate.

Why Does Your Car Dealership Need Multimedia?

1) Multimedia increases time spent on website: Studies conducted by LESA have shown that having a multimedia player on their website can increase time spent on website by 50%. Increasing time spent on website is directly correlated to increased conversions. Your dealership will increase its ability to sell vehicles online with a multimedia player.

2) Multimedia can boost SEO: Search engines notice multimedia content more than anything else since it has greater impact on overall content. This is why it is important to add alt text to all elements you upload. Additionally, it is important to ensure your video is being streamed from a content video network so the video can stream without hesitation and quickly boosting your SEO.

3) Multimedia is better for branding: Since people these days have become tremendously visual; video is one of the most popular multimedia types you can see everywhere. Without these channels like audio, video and supporting images it is difficult to build brand recognition. Make it simple: online brand building requires utilizing every multimedia asset available these days.

Using LESA to Integrate Multimedia Features On Your Car Dealership Website

Over the past few years Americans have shifted from content readers to content viewers.

LESA is partnering with car dealerships around the United States to integrate multimedia content during the car shopping experience. The LESA multimedia player allows car dealerships to display photos, video, 360 spin, and featured videos to help educate and give transparency into the vehicle they are shopping for.

Not only is online video consumption at an all time high, but video content is also proven to influence purchase decisions of consumers. The pandemic has accelerated this process as shoppers want to research, shop and buy cars online rather than going down to the dealership.

The transparency that video provides in the online car shopping experience is invaluable to consumers as it helps educate and influence purchasing decisions. Video mixed with other multimedia elements such as photos, audio and 360 spin is helping car dealerships convert shoppers into buyers.

What Does LESA Multimedia Player Include?

LESA player broken down with spotlight buttons, carfax, leads, chat, and feature videos

Vehicle Video

Car dealerships can easily record and upload a video to their website. The app allows you do easily add VoiceOver listing options specific to that vehicle, background music and more to enhance the videos to increase user engagement. The more time a viewer spends on a shopping page, the more likely they are to buy. People spend on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without. Our full-motion walk-around videos have an 80% completion ratio average for a 2-minute video.

Photos & 360 Spin

Although consumers prefer video, sometimes they want to browse through photos or 360 spin. These features along with video can help aid consumers in the car shopping experience.

Spotlight Feature

The vehicle videos have spotlight features so shoppers can easily view the features of the vehicles that matter most. Easily view the headlights, steering wheel, tires, navigation and more.

Featured Videos

Featured videos help aid consumers in the purchasing decisions necessary to online shop such as gaining a deeper look into the interior design, all-wheel drive, safety and driver assist technologies, and numerous other vehicle features.

CARFAX Integration

LESA’s multimedia player integrates with Carfax for those that have a Carfax subscription so shoppers can easily browse vehicle history reports to gain a better understanding of the car.

Contact Form & Chat Function

One of the main benefits of a multimedia player is getting online shoppers engaged. LESA’s multimedia player allows car shoppers to submit contact forms on vehicles they are interested in and even chat with the team at the car dealership in just minutes online.

The Bottom Line: Multimedia is Powerful

Engaging users via the power of multimedia allows site owners to interact with their visitors more. Car dealerships should consider adding a multimedia player to their car dealership website as photos may prove to be insufficient in 2022 and beyond.

In our next blog, we will discuss how video content increases engagement and time spent on website with samples from some LESA customers.