Establish and Monitor Your Online Presence with the Dealer Digital Evaluation

The internet has revolutionized marketing to the point that your online presence and reputation are just as important as your storefront. With 94% of customers going online to shop and conduct research, ensuring your digital presence is secure is vital to short- and long-term profitability.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone. We want to help with the Dealer Digital Evaluation (DDE). 

The DDE is an important Nissan initiative and a tool that can help you take your online presence to the next level. It provides a suite of features to help identify areas of opportunity through the Dealer Digital Evaluation and is backed by 3 Birds Academy, a resource library filled with guides on how to cultivate a positive online presence for your dealership. Even better, each report comes with a store-specific action plan (the "Next Steps" page of your report) so you know exactly where to start making improvements.

The DDE provides the insight and action plan necessary for Nissan dealerships to always present themselves in the best light possible online. It also tracks dealership performance in four key areas: Google SERP, Website Experience, Reputation Management, and Social Media. Improvements in these areas increase customer access to information about your dealership, aid in online discovery, and increase the likelihood of conversion through the dealer's website.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERP):

Search Engines are the top sources for dealership discovery online and are often the first places that customers go to start their research journey for buying or servicing their vehicle. This section of the evaluation looks at the dealer's presence and position in organic search results for branded keywords such as the dealership name. Higher funnel search terms such as "Nissan Sentra [City]" or "Nissan Service [City]" give you further insight on how your dealership informs potential new customers from search results. These simulated searches give insight into what customers in your market are seeing on Google when they begin looking for a dealership to do business with.

Search results can be impacted by efforts in the other three quadrants of the evaluation, whether through SEO efforts on your dealership website, improving star ratings on review sites, or maintaining a consistent presence on social channels.

Reputation Management:

Review sites provide business information and traffic flow back to the dealership. They give customers one of the first impressions regarding how they will be treated when they come to you to buy or service their vehicle. For this reason, it's important for dealers to start by claiming and having access to their profiles on key reputation sites. From there, providing accurate business details such as contact information and hours of operation should be a top priority. Once a firm foundation is established, the Digital Evaluation looks for dealers to be regularly generating and responding to customer reviews. This helps your dealership stay in tune with their current customers and provide a window into the experience that prospective customers can expect.

Social Media:

Much like reputation, the social quadrant looks at how the dealership presents themselves on key social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Again, accurate and consistent business information is reviewed as a basis for a fully optimized profile. From there, the frequency and presentation of content, along with customer engagement is reviewed to ensure dealers are making efforts to humanize the dealership and foster community, ultimately leading to lead generation opportunities.

Website Experience:

As the name of the quadrant implies, this section of the DDE is designed to analyze the customer's experience on the dealership website. This piece of online real estate is the central conversion point that all other quadrants of the evaluation point back to. As such, when the customer arrives on the dealer site, we want to ensure that the information or engagement opportunity they are looking for is ready and waiting for them. Some customers will arrive at your site earlier in the research arc looking for model information, while others are ready to come to the dealership and just want to make a service appointment. Whatever the case may be, the Website Experience quadrant will identify if there are gaps in your site's content or if you're missing a conversion tool that customers are looking for. Along the way, we'll also highlight areas where things don't function quite as they should and bring those to your attention as well.

The snapshot of your digital presence that the Dealer Digital Evaluation provides can be a powerful tool to help unlock the potential of all of your online properties. Log in today to see where you stand!