What's driving the automotive aftermarket online?

Thursday, April 26, 2012
What’s driving the automotive aftermarket online?

By Jarrod Scott
Category Manager - Auto

Tradingpost recently attended the Australia Automotive Aftermarket Conference (AAAA) - Harnessing Technology to Ensure a Sustainable Future. A common theme, relevant to many businesses, throughout the event was the need to embrace technology and the migration of bricks and mortar businesses online.

Through a number of presentations the emerging strength of businesses which support both an online and offline customer experience was highlighted. Those businesses are achieving ever-increasing results against pure online only businesses, driving greater customer satisfaction and complementing online research with in store purchasing.

There were some great tips that came out of the day that can help us all. These include:

  • Win trust and seller credibility using your brand. A huge factor in consumer confidence when browsing online is perceived trust and credibility. Promoting your brand and physical presence alongside your inventory with Tradingpost can help build this trust.
  • Think global but act local to reach your customers. Providing local and relevant information is crucial in fulfilling consumer convenience expectations and accessibility. Being able to support users 'on the go' means that mapping technology and driving an audience to your brand needs to be a core part of your mobile activity.
  • Provide comprehensive descriptions to be discovered in listings. Buyers are getting better at searching online and want to find what they are looking for as easily as possible. This means you need to provide regularly updated inventory descriptions, well formatted and informative descriptions and continual refinement to maintain relevance.
  • Content is king, and images are key. It is clear that having accurate and numerous images (at least 2-3) is a key element in sales success. Some specific tips on getting the most out of your listings:
    • Use sufficient lighting - bad lighting can detract from your item.
    • Set your camera to high resolution - for example 1024x768 pixels or larger.
    • Take photos from various angles

The breadth of seller motivations is large. Surprising for many retailers was the breadth of parts being researched and enquired about online - from basic parts through to advanced chips and performance parts. Many of these enquiries themselves generated further enquiries, and highlighted the emerging reality that online is the starting point for the majority of all user research.