A good website can give your dealership a major competitive edge over other dealers. Your website is an opportunity to make a great first impression with customers and capture leads from interested buyers.

By following the tips in this guide, you can set up your website for success.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

It’s likely that more than 50% of visitors to your website are on a mobile device. Yet, many websites are poorly optimised for mobile.

You should test your website on different mobile devices - both Android and iPhone. Also test on smaller and larger devices. Make sure everything fits on the page correctly and all buttons and menus function correctly.

If you have Google Analytics installed on your websites, you can get a good insight into the mobile user experience. By visiting the Audience > Mobile > Overview in your Analytics, you will be able to see a breakdown of mobile vs desktop traffic.

Here, you will be able to see the percentage of traffic coming to your site from mobile/desktop/tablet. It will be important to look at the bounce rate and average session duration for each device.

If your bounce rate is a lot higher on mobile and the average session duration is considerably lower, it’s likely a sign that you need to improve your mobile website experience.

Include Finance Calculators

Knowing that many of your customers will be looking to purchase a car through a financing agreement, you will want to have finance calculators available on your site.

Yes, it’s true that customers can go to other websites to use a finance calculator. But it’s much better if you can keep them on your own website.

To make this easier, we have created a free finance calculator that can be easily embedded on any page on your website. You can learn more about the benefits of having a loan calculator on your website here.

Increase Trust

Car buyers want to buy from a dealership they can trust. A good website will go a long way to establishing an impression of trustworthiness. But a bad website can diminish customer’s trust in your business.

A well designed, modern website will help to develop trust. People will form their first impression of your business largely based on the design on your website if they have never interacted with you before. One study found that when visiting websites, 94% of the first impression is based on design.

If your website looks like it was built in 2004, you will quickly lose trust. And it will be hard to keep visitors on your website.

Including customer testimonials on your website will also help to develop trust. People want to know that others have had a good experience dealing with your business. Making these testimonials clearly visible on your site and also including photos of the people leaving the reviews is recommended.

Links to your social media channels can either help or hurt in building trust. If you have an actively managed Facebook account for your dealership with recent content, it’s good to link to this from your website.

But if your Facebook page hasn’t been updated in two years, then it might be better to leave this out of your website.

Optimise For Search Engines

Nearly every person looking to buy a car in 2021 is going to search on Google for something related to their car search.

They might be searching for terms like…

  • Car dealers near me
  • Best used car dealers Brisbane
  • Used Honda CR-V Melbourne

The dealerships that appear at the top of the search results are best positioned to win the business from these buyers. If your website is nowhere to be found when people are searching for terms like these, you’re going to miss a lot of business.

Luckily, there is a lot you can do on your website to get you to the top of the search results on Google and other search engines. This is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

There are many factors that influence where your website ranks on a search engine. This includes:

  • Content
  • Website speed
  • Keywords used in your websites
  • Other sites linking to yours
  • Structure of your website

A page 1 ranking on Google for relevant search terms could be worth thousands to your dealership every year.

You can learn more about how to do this in our SEO Guide For Dealerships.

Make It Easy To Submit An Enquiry

The main goal of your website should be to capture leads. You want to either collect the user’s name and phone number or get them to call you.

The easier you make it for a user to submit an enquiry, the more likely they will do it. To make it easy for the user, your enquiry forms should be prominently featured on key pages of your site.

On your enquiry forms, try to keep the number of fields to a minimum. Collect the essential information like name, email, phone number on the form and then get other information you need over the phone.

Your dealership phone number should be clearly visible throughout your website. On mobile devices, the phone number should be clickable so it’s easy for users to call you.

Special Offer For Dealerships

Cartopia currently has a special offer for car dealerships in Australia. You can get a free website and social media consultation with our digital team. We will review your website and social media and provide recommendations on how you can improve your online visibility to generate more leads.

This offer is limited to 50 dealers only. Dealers must be listed on Cartopia to be eligible. Call us on 1300 696 392 or submit your details here to claim this offer or find out how you can be listed on Cartopia.

Find out how you can get your vehicles listed on Cartopia by calling us on 1300 696 392 or submit your details on this form


For a great deal on financing your new purchase, contact Australia's best reviewed finance broker on 1300 Credit (1300 273 348) today or visit CreditOne.com.au

Jordan Ballard

Jordan Ballard

Automotive Content Editor

Jordan is a car finance and automotive industry specialist at Only Cars. With over 20 years of experience with frontline and management roles in sales, finance and other areas, Jordan has an incredible understanding of the automotive industry. As Automotive Content Editor, Jordan loves sharing his passion for cars with the Only Cars audience.