As we approach the three day Memorial Day Weekend, companies across the country are fiercely promoting their sales hoping for an increase in cash flow. According to Wallethub.com, 41 percent of consumers say they are likely to take advantage of sales this coming weekend.
And Vistar Media, a geospatial technology company bridging the space between advertising ecosystems and consumer movement patterns, estimates 8/10 adults plan to spend an average of $486 over the weekend. In total that’s 74-million American shoppers spending a total of $36-billion dollars. That’s a 50 percent increase from 2016, where the average amount of money spent was only $320 per person.
So what does that mean for your dealership?
According to semi-new startup Drive Motors, Memorial Day in 2017 was the largest day for online car sales in May with dealers selling 28 percent more vehicles than any other day of the month. They also sold nearly two cars every hour. This year those numbers are predicted to grow.
Drive Motors estimates dealers who use e-commerce as apart of their daily operations will see a 33 percent bump in sales over Memorial Day Weekend. Along with that 33 percent jump, they predict more than two cars will be sold every hour. BUT this data only applies to those dealers who offer incentives and embrace the ease and convenience of online checkout for cars.
Founded in 2015 and based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Drive Motors specializes in creating a native and transparent online car shopping experience for dealerships across the country.
CEO of Drive Motors
CEO of the company, Aaron Krane, says since 2015 they have seen an increase in online sales for dealerships over Memorial Day Weekend, “We … are sitting on three years of data … which means we now have enough history and enough scale to be able to make these data observations.”
When it comes to new versus used car sales this weekend, each car type will see an increase in sales. However, according to Krane, the sales will follow the same national ratio we see now which is about two used cars sold for every one new car sold, “We used to predict that new car dealers would be the main cohort but we have been proven wrong. It seems to be fairly evenly split amongst used cars and new cars and that includes independent used car dealers but also used cars at franchised new car dealerships.”
It is important to note that these sales increase will likely only occur when dealerships offer an online buying experience. Although online retail in the automotive sector is fairly new, Krane says you’re behind the times if you haven’t hopped aboard the e-commerce train yet, “We all agree there is a growing cohort of buyers that want this… I hope more dealerships adopt an online ordering channel in their existing websites and I hope that dealers focus on their websites as a place of doing business.”
To improve your online retailing, Krane has this tip, “online retail is very complex there are lot of different functions that the phrase ‘Online Check-out For Cars’ actually entails. it’s much more complex to build than it is to say. And so its a design challenge it still has to feel native to the existing retailers website it still has to be feature complete and gain the trust of the buyer.”