In the automotive industry, eCommerce is vital to increasing sales and reaching customers across a variety of channels. With online shoppers now accounting for 25% of all car purchases in the US, it’s no surprise that Automotive Brands are turning to eCommerce to generate revenue and keep up with trends; however, this type of commerce poses its own set of challenges that Automotive Brands need to overcome to be successful.

In this post, we’ll explore some common problems faced by automotive brands when using eCommerce platforms and how they can be solved so you can avoid these pitfalls from happening on your site.

In addition, we also have compiled a list of best practices for optimizing an automotive brand’s website for conversion without breaking.

Before we begin with the challenges, you must note the full-fledged selling of cars online will take time, due to the long-term investment and other reasons. But if you consider the aftermarket parts sale, accessories, and other four-wheeler maintenance services, its market is big already. If you go by statistics, the online part sales for cars were marked at $148B in 2019 and are estimated to grow more than $160B by the end of 2022.

Let’s learn about the top challenges any eCommerce brand must deal with in the automotive industry, and how its peers have been working on them!

Ease of Ordering

The automotive industry is all about customizations. Hence there’s always a pressing issue of satisfying customers with their customization across a wide range of components. And how exactly can a merchant achieve it?

Linking and syncing web stores to their ERP system can help automate processes, reduce the margin of error, and further simplify it on both ends.

National Oak Distributors made it look easier. They had 4 websites running on the Magento platform; the Rave Digital team, their eCommerce development partner integrated National Oak’s ERP system with the Magento website to sync products, orders, and customer details.

To ease out the ordering process, the Rave team developed a decision cart module providing a completely customized checkout process, allowing customers to select products that will be shipped from their nearest warehouse location.

The customized cart module also offers customers the option to select multiple warehouses for order fulfillment when their closest has limited inventory levels. With the new decision cart module, customers can select their preferred shipping provider, backorder items, adjust quantities per warehouse, and much more!

One page/one step checkout is one functionality that can further help you deliver a quick and seamless payment process.

Seamless Product Search

Another major challenge for an eCommerce store in the online realm is to put the most simplified product search for its users. Narrowing the product catalog and dividing it into the right categories is one of the most significant challenges faced by the automotive industry.

Most merchants believe it is time-consuming, but it is no rocket science to add advanced search functionalities to any eCommerce website. With the right eCommerce development agency or expert, it will become easy for anyone.

Ace Autobody Supplies faced the same challenge for which they implemented the Advanced Search option on their website. If it is an eCommerce implementation, then in addition to searching the product catalog, static content, and blog; you must implement predictive/type ahead search, weight based/weighted search, etc. Making it way much easier for the user to find what they are looking for!

Not to mention, adding the eCommerce Wishlist feature to your store will help you assist your customers in saving their preferred items for future purchases.

Smooth Flow of Information

Online business is all about visuals, data, and packs of information; it is crucial to have their flow in place to deliver the right information to the online user. This sub-head does not just talk about the information about or on the product but also about the eCommerce store as a whole.

As a merchant, getting insights into your eCommerce sales, customer journey, and other verticals is important to scale business, right!

Having a system in place for ease of information exchange can do wonders in tackling this challenge.

To provide an advanced online shopping experience for users, Restomotive embraced Magento Commerce Cloud as the store platform. After re-platforming, the Rave Digital team integrated a database of 30,000 products.

Maintaining your store on a top-rated eCommerce platform lets you deliver meaningful commerce experiences. You can work on product recommendations, segmentation, personalization, order management, inventory management, and whatnot! These features can help you marry content with commerce to meet customer demands and deliver a smooth shopping experience.

Best practices for optimizing an automotive brand’s website

  • Smooth navigation: Automotive enthusiasts are mostly people with higher visual expectations; hence it is important to display them the content they are looking for without trouble. You can make sure you include proper CTAs (Call to Action) buttons, do product badging, include a search bar with autocompletes, and minimize the clutter.
  • Responsive Website: The loading speed of any website has already been declared as one of the most critical factors for the success of an eCommerce website. Without a second thought, it needs to be responsive, mobile-friendly, and fast. Avoid large-sized images and low-quality servers from making your website sluggish. Check out Volkswagen South Africa website, they have a fully responsive website.
  • Search Engine Optimization: up your game with search engine optimization tactics to feed the what and why of your consumers. Make sure you include high-performing keywords on webpage content, perform on-page SEO and create clear descriptions to convey your message.
  • Evident Offers: If you’re going to offer some perks, benefits, or discounts to your customers, ensure you deliver the offer directly to them. Share the discount information in the banners, sliders, or even popups. Presenting the users with a scratch card or coupon code can also help humanize their experience.

Conclusion

If you’re still wondering how eCommerce solutions might help companies in the automotive industry expand their consumer base and address age-old problems, check the case studies shared by Rave Digital on their website from the Automotive industry.