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SHOWROOM floor traffic across Australia is increasing with data that tracks walk-ins at dealerships showing that unique visitors in Australian dealerships have risen by nearly 10 per cent in the last quarter compared with the same quarter in 2016.

The data is sourced by tracking mobile phones as customers drive past a dealership, walk past, enter the forecourt or enter the showroom.

Developed by Tony Loxton for his customer tracking system called Blix Traffic, the service is proving invaluable for dealers in measuring responses to advertising and promotions, as well as monitoring the effectiveness of dealerships in greeting and engaging walk-in customers and converting them into buyers.

The system is also used by a wide range of retailers in fields other that the car industry.

The technology is similar to that used by online map and traffic services to identify traffic flow or traffic jams by monitoring whether mobile phones are moving between receiving masts or are stationary.

Blix Traffic uses special WiFi receivers placed within dealerships. The technology picks up the unique ID signal that emanates from each mobile phone. As the mobile phone signature of each mobile does not change, the system can identify the same phone* (but not the identity of the customer).

This means that Blix Traffic dealer customers now have a powerful tool to give them information on showroom activity that has often previously been denied.

Dealerships are notorious for failing to get an accurate handle on walk-ins, not only because of poor discipline, but also because sales staff are rewarded on their conversions of walk-ins to sales and therefore there is an incentive to under-report walk-ins to boost their conversion rate and bonus.

This has a detrimental effect on measuring the results of marketing and sales promotions.

Mr Loxton told GoAutoNews Premium dealership managers and owners are “flying blind”.

The above sample report shows activity across all dealerships in the one group where managers can see the weaker performers (high bounce rates and low time in dealership – lower left) versus the top performers (low bounce rate and high average time in dealerships – upper right) The size of the circles indicates the traffic generated by the dealership. The chart shows that the highlighted dealership (in red) generates amongst the highest levels traffic in the entire group (5120 visits) but loses 45 per cent of them in less than five minutes!

The Blix Traffic system tracks:

Walk-by traffic – the number of people walking past the dealership or walking onto the forecourt. The system can be set to monitor drive-by traffic as well although most customers turn that feature off after they have a handle on the number.

Unique visitors – measures each individual customer that comes to the dealership (carrying the same mobile phone).

Bounce rate – this is a crucial measure as it shows how many people have left the premises within five minutes of arriving. Some dealerships have been shown to lose almost 50 per cent of their customers within five minutes of arriving whereas others are able to reduce that leakage to just 25 per cent.

Mr Loxton said that high bounce rates in dealerships are an indication of staffing issues. It could be that the showroom is understaffed during key times or staff are poorly trained and not greeting customers well.

Time in dealership – this is a fundamental number because the matching of Blix data with dealer margins is showing that the dealers who have the highest visitor duration are building the largest gross profits into their sales. Top-performing dealerships aim for an average time in dealership of more than 35 minutes and good dealers achieve an average of 40 minutes.

Repeat visits – returning customers and how long it is between visits. A low score here indicates staff struggle to engage buyers and that sales staff are not following up with customers who have taken the trouble to come to the showroom a first time.

Cross-shopping – as the dealer take-up for Blix expands, dealers will be able to discover with increasing accuracy how many buyers who left their dealership went on to other dealers. Scores in this area can show that a dealer is losing more opportunities than it is gaining from surrounding dealerships.

Mr Loxton said dealer customers can access all these numbers live within the Blix system at any time and can even see the number of customers within the dealership at any moment in time.

Dealer groups and OEMs using the system across their entire network can actually view live maps showing current live customer numbers in their dealerships compared with an hour ago for example or a week ago or a month ago and so on.

Mr Loxton said that the Blix Traffic measuring tool tells a powerful story about matching staff rosters to real showroom activity and exposes poor techniques in engaging buyers. Dealers should aim for bounce rates of less than 30 per cent.

* The system cannot identify individuals and cannot put a real name to a particular phone.

By John Mellor

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