Online marketplace Autotrader is preparing to expand its Buying Signals product to give dealerships earlier and more detailed insight into buyer intent before a potential customer even makes a formal enquiry.
The business reports that the platform has sent its dealership customers more than one million enquiries with Buying Signals since the tool launched late last year, helping them identify and prioritise buyers who are most likely to convert.
Buying Signals generates high-intent flags to leads generated through either Autotrader’s portal or through lead management systems using an AP, drawing on behavioural data gleaned through Deal Builder journeys and consumer sign-ins to give retailers greater visibility of where a buyer is in their purchase journey.
Today, the tool helps retailers identify buyers with a higher likelihood of conversion by showing whether a customer is local to the dealership, whether they have saved the vehicle and other preferences based on user activity.
“We have very high confidence in being able to identify those buyers, and we can see that leads from high-intent buyers convert at a much higher rate than other leads on Autotrader,” said Karolina Edwards-Smajda, chief product officer at Autotrader.
Pre-enquiry signals
The next stage of development will focus on what Autotrader describes as “pre-enquiry” buying signals, which would allow dealerships to see high-intent engagement before a lead is submitted.
Speaking at Autotrader’s latest media briefing, Edwards-Smajda said: “We are not yet able to tell a retailer whether there is real interest before someone makes an enquiry. That is what pre-enquiry Buying Signals will be able to do.”
Edwards-Smajda added that the development would help dealerships make earlier decisions around pricing, stocking and lead management, particularly where customers may be carrying out significant research online before visiting a dealership.
Feedback shaping roadmap
The development of Buying Signals forms part of Autotrader’s product roadmap, which is being shaped by feedback from its customer advisory groups.
The groups, which launched in April, bring together 25 franchise and independent retailers, creating a direct link between dealers and Autotrader’s senior leadership team.
Edwards-Smajda said Autotrader had always worked closely with retailers, but that the new advisory groups had created a more formal structure for deeper collaboration on product design, prioritisation and communication.
“That is not new, but the newly created groups allow us to work differently. They give us the opportunity to go into more depth to better understand retailers’ real-life challenges and needs.”
The groups were created following critical retailer feedback during the rollout of its Deal Builder product.
“The focus is really on thinking through how we design products, how we prioritise the right things, getting early input into our thinking and feedback on how we go to market and communicate,” Edwards-Smajda said.
Autotrader said it has already made changes as a result of the groups’ feedback, including offering a Reservation Request option, onboarding and retailer communications.
Reservation Requests allow serious buyers to signal intent while giving dealers more flexibility over how they manage leads and Edwards-Smajda said this the change was made to ensure Autotrader’s new tools fit with retailers’ existing processes, rather than forcing operational change.
“We have looked at alternatives based on feedback from retailers to make sure they do not have to change their whole process to work with Autotrader information,” she said.
“We are trying to work with them in a way that fits their existing setup, while still giving them opportunities to get eyes on highly engaged buyers.”
Autotrader has also changed the onboarding process for some tools, giving dealerships more opportunity to understand the purpose of new products, ask questions and assess how they fit within their businesses.
“Not every solution will work for every retailer, but the feedback is giving us much richer insight into the journey we are on,” she said.
Data and AI strategy
Buying Signals sits within Autotrader’s wider strategy to use data, AI and consumer behaviour insight to improve both the buyer journey and retailer tools.
Autotrader cited its AI-powered Co-Driver listing tools as having already saved the industry more than 20 years of manual administration time.
Edwards-Smajda said Autotrader’s investment in cloud infrastructure, vehicle data and AI was creating the foundation for more intelligent products across the platform and that its product roadmap will also feature refinements to its Price Indicator by the end of the year, designed to give dealerships more flexibility while supporting data-led pricing decisions.
“We are really interested in data, not just what we observe from the platform, but also the data we acquire and how we marry that with consumer behaviour and other sources from across the industry,” she said.
The company is also testing AI-powered search methods that allows consumers to use natural language when looking for vehicles, with Autotrader matching those requests to relevant results.
Edwards-Smajda said this had the potential to reshape the consumer journey and provide better intelligence for retailers. “There is a huge opportunity to make search much more convenient for consumers and help them get the right answers,” she said.