There was a 105% YoY increase in page views landing on the new Dealerships search page, with individual dealership pages seeing a 13.35% YoY increase in page views.
There was also a 99% reduction of Google Maps and Geocoding API usage which reduced our monthly fees.
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Client
Lookers Motor Group
Background
Lookers has a number of dealerships to search for as well as services sometimes only offered in certain locations. Dealerships also have vehicles for sale at their sites where users can filter by.
BRIEF + GOALS
We wanted to improve Lookers' Dealerships Search page to reduce their spends with Google Maps and Geocoding APIs. This costs the company every time the map was loaded which was 100% of the traffic on Desktop as it loaded on landing (they did not use the Maps tool on Mobile at the time), and those searching for their postcode.
We also wanted to increase traffic to each dealership's contact pages to achieve a number of things such as reduce calls that were being made to the general contact centres as opposed to the dealerships directly. There were also other improvements we looked out for to make the page more useful such as giving the user a quick link to open directions and display number of vehicles available at the dealership that they could view online.
Research
First I acquired benchmark data of our current dealership search page. This included page views and yearly costs.
I then observed heatmaps and recordings to understand how users were interacting with the page, and did a competitor analysis to understand how other automotive retailers display their locations.
It was identified we could hide the embedded map behind a toggle, so then our Maps and Geocoding API costs would be minimised, and we can utilise our own database of dealerships locations against postcode input.
I gathered feedback from a panel of users on Lyssna. More users (65%) preferred a grid pictorial view of the dealerships, referencing reasons such as 'maps lag', and 'needing to interact more with the map'. However, some users still preferred a maps view as they said they'd be able to quickly see nearby dealerships better.
Screenshot of some of the quantitative and competitor analysis conducted
Testing
At the time, Lookers did not have AB split test capability. So we developed the new version based on research and feedback.
Implementation
First, we changed the navigation - instead of the 'Contact Us' with the envelope icon, we changed it to 'Our Dealerships' with a location pin icon. There was already another separate contact page for users looking to make complaints or comments.
The next step was to change the page visually completely, hiding the map behind a toggle on Desktop, introducing visuals of each dealership, as well as bringing out quick summaries such as the dealership's phone number, and number of vehicles available at that dealership that the user could view. I added a 'tel' function to the phone numbers so on Mobile, the user can just tap it to ring the relevant dealership.
results
Page views to the main dealership search page increased by an average of 105% YoY.
The toggle Maps view on Desktop (which utilises the Google Maps and Geocoding API) resulted on average of only 1% of the total clicks on the page. As a reminder, previously, 100% of the Desktop traffic would trigger a cost as they would view the map by default. Now, only 1% of the traffic appeared to be viewing the map. This greatly reduced the costs.
Individual dealerships' contact pages increased by 13.35% YoY.
See the Before and After below.
Before changes
