Harley-Davidson dealerships ranked highest in the 2020 Pied Piper PSI® Internet Lead Effectiveness® (ILE®) Industry Study, while Indian dealerships took second. Designed to answer the question, “What happens when motorcycle or UTV customers visit a dealer website and inquire about a vehicle? The 2020 study came out at the start of the COVID-19 closures. “The whole coronavirus issue has ‘supercharged’ the importance of dealer response to online customers,” says study author and Pied Piper founder Fran O’Hagan. “Many dealership facilities have been closed, but every dealership website has been open for business.” Or they should have been!
“We have found that in most cases it’s just “out of sight out of mind.” Website customers are invisible. It’s also pretty straightforward to improve, simply by showing the dealers what their online customers are really experiencing,” notes O’Hagan.
Powersports dealer web-response performance has improved, and some dealerships now do a great job with their online customers. (30% of Harley dealers now achieve excellent ILE scores of 70+; that’s double Harley’s percentage from last year, and well above the industry). But… it’s still far too common for dealers to ignore their web customers. 4 out of 10 UTV customers today will still be waiting for a personal reply 24 hours after contacting a dealership online.
Lastly, Dealerspike reports that while Powersports/OPE/Ag dealer web-leads cratered mid-March, they have rebounded and are now well above last year’s level. Customers are very much still shopping for, and buying, UTVs, motorcycles and other products; they’re just reaching out to dealers online.