Online deals rise while dealerships suffer
The commercial shift towards online is evident in the car buying market, with digital deals rising for three years in a row while traditional dealerships have seen a three per cent decline this year after suffering a 12% fall last year.
And, further, dealers might do well to tailor websites to women as new research has found that women are 71% more likely to order a car online than men. The research, carried out by online motor retail specialist BuyaCar, also found that women are significantly more likely to order a car online than at a traditional dealership.
This data may help to explain why the online motor retail market is continuing to grow even as traditional dealers face another year of falling sales. Last year the traditional market saw a sales downturn of 6.8% while online sales continued to grow for the third year running. To date, in 2019, the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ market is down again by almost three per cent while sales on BuyaCar.co.uk are up by 12%.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, women account for about 34% of all car purchases in the traditional dealer environment, despite forming around half of all showroom traffic. But at BuyaCar.co.uk just over 40% of car orders come from women even though almost three times as many men visit the site.
Austin Collins, managing director of BuyaCar.co.uk, said, ‘We have long been aware that our female customers are driving sales growth faster than men but this is the first time we have put a figure on how much more likely women are than men to place an order.
‘With women forming 28% of our website visitors but consistently accounting for 40% of our sales, it’s clear that women are generally the most purposeful and decisive visitors. It’s yet more evidence that offering the no-pressure transparency of an ‘Amazon-like’ car buying experience, complete with home delivery, is especially welcomed by the section of the population that consistently reports feeling less happy taking the traditional approach to buying cars.’
