Automotive Digital Retail Ensures Seamless Car Buying

Automotive digital retail platforms make it easier for customers to buy cars online and in-store, while improving the efficiency of your sales workflows.

Beyond bringing inventory online, digital vehicle retailing empowers customers to complete as many transactions as they want, with seamless access to your in-store sales teams when they need it.

These platforms are also digitizing the in-store experience, driving simplicity, productivity, and transparency. More importantly, you can expect better customer experiences and higher dealer profits.

What is Automotive Digital Retail?

Digital Automotive Retailing is a technology solution that allows car shoppers to seamlessly track their buying journey between online and in-person interactions. It also equips you and your sales teams for better customer relationships and more efficient transactions.

Source:Upstart

By uniting the in-store and website customer experience into a single digital platform, automotive digital retail software creates an ideal buying journey for modern consumers. Here are some key aspects of a digital automotive retail tool:

Online Inventory Showcases Vehicle comparison and financing tools Lead capture and virtual communication tools Online Finance and Insurance (F&I) Menus Flexible credit calls and complete applications with real-time approvals Improved desking with real-time sales performance data

Digital retail is not about replacing your sales teams; it's there to enhance and facilitate their work by creating consistency and simplicity for every team member across the floor. It emphasizes the strengths of the traditional car buying process, while filling in the gaps of the omnichannel experience. When you embrace digital retail, you empower your sales teams to execute the entire transaction workflow from their tablet or desktop, and seamlessly continue the customer journey, no matter where it stopped online.

And when customers and dealers face inventory shortages, supply chain slowdowns, lockdowns, or other unforeseen economic times, adopting automotive digital retail helps dealerships thrive in any challenging environment.

By digitizing car sales, you can future-proof your business and remain a profit center while continuing to pivot to meet today's consumers where, when, and how they want to buy a car. In fact, digital retail is accelerating the long journey to digitization that began decades ago.

How has digital commerce evolved?

For a long time, dealership websites served more as digital billboards, contact forms, and simple classified ads than a true retail experience. Third-party sites have taken up the torch for vehicle discovery while OEMs have created online configurators. Eventually, dealership websites began to integrate payment calculators and trade-in value APIs.

But the online experience remained bumpy and customers still had to complete most transactions in-store, sometimes facing friction during the transition. More recently, digital automotive retailing has grown to incorporate an almost end-to-end process that allows a transaction to progress faster and more seamlessly. It has also become a helping hand for all the other technology in your showroom.

Where does automotive digital retail fit in the dealership technology stack?

The best automotive digital retail tools help your existing tech stack work better and fill in the gaps to help you create a true omnichannel experience.

Concession Software

Benefits of digital retail integrations

Dealership Management Software (DMS), Inventory Management Software and Desktop Software

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