7 Best Practices to Drive Success with Automotive eCommerce

Automotive businesses have been swiftly adopting an omnichannel approach in recent years, allowing customers to navigate between brick-and-mortar establishments and digital platforms for their purchases. This strategic shift reflects the industry's acknowledgment of evolving consumer preferences and the need to adapt to a rapidly changing market landscape.

eCommerce has emerged has a big enabler in driving this change. For example, Ford have revamped their eCommerce websites and amplified their presence on social media platforms, emphasizing user-friendliness and leveraging digital advertising to maximize reach and engagement.

However, the automotive businesses face a unique set of obstacles owing to the nature of their industry and products like a large number of SKUs, the difficulty of finding the right product/ part, and ensuring prompt delivery of at times huge, expensive parts.

If you run or plan to operate an automotive eCommerce store, follow the best practices explained below to avoid common challenges and pain points

1. Choose the right eCommerce technology

Investing in the right technology is paramount to drive eCommerce success. Today’s eCommerce solutions should come out of the box with the features and flexibility that meet your industry-specific needs.

For example, automotive brands need a platform that will provide fast and intuitive product search functionality to ensure that customers can easily find the automotive parts or accessories they need. 

Consider the story of a family-owned business that specializes in manufacturing steering, brakes, and suspension components for classic cars and trucks across North America. 

To simplify product search and discovery, this business leveraged the information in their Product Information Management (PIM) system to implement a robust make-model-year search functionality in their eCommerce store. This improved the shopping experience, improved conversions, and reduced returns by enabling customers to easily find products meeting their specific vehicle specifications.

Pro Tip: In addition to Year-Make-Model Search, include filters for brand, price, category, and other attributes to enable customers to quickly refine their search results based on their preferences and requirements, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction and increased sales.

2. Personalize your site for your customers

Understand the needs, goals, and behaviour patterns of your customers and offer products and services catering to different personas.

Based on your findings, tailor your products and services to meet the specific needs of each persona. This might involve offering different product features, pricing options, or service packages. 

Consider WAI Global, a leading player in the aftermarket industry specializing in automotive, heavy-duty, and power sports parts. WAI Global faced significant challenges in delivering personalized customer experiences to their customers across diverse regions and customer segments.