Shop local vs. e-commerce?
The world of e-commerce has unquestionably made store owners realize that they need an online presence, but it cannot replace the power that local businesses have to offer one-on-one expertise and a personal touch. In fact, we recently wrote about a five-step method for creating a great in-store shopping experience that e-commerce simply can’t replicate. Even setting aside your service advantage for a moment, you likely profit more from your service and installation work than you do from sales margin alone. It seems clear, then, that e-commerce and local traffic are both incredibly important. It’s not shop local vs. e-commerce. It’s shop local WITH e-commerce. The key is having a strategy that blends the two in a way that creates better results than either could achieve alone.
Customers used to go to the Yellow Pages. Now they go to Google.
So how do you leverage your website to help drive in-store traffic? According to this recent study by Statista, Google dominates online searches with a staggering 85% of the market share. But how exactly does Google help potential customers find your business?
SEO, aka search engine optimization, is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Many services promise to take you to the top of Google’s search results via SEO—that is, associating your website with certain words and phrases that people are searching for on Google. The problem is that most of these services don’t understand the automotive aftermarket, so they don’t know which specific terms to associate with your shop. Their generic strategies don’t capture the specific products, brands, categories, and part numbers that are so important to reaching consumers looking for truck accessories or performance parts. Your website must include content relevant to, and optimized for, the people you want to find you!
What keywords are your customers searching for?
Our industry research indicates that aftermarket customers who are ready to buy use very specific keywords. They’re searching for targeted terms like step bars or bumpers—not general terms like truck accessories. If they have a good idea of what they’re looking for, they might also throw in a brand name (e.g., “Fab Fours bumpers near me”) or even a part number if they’ve drilled down to exactly what they want.
So, where do you start?
Aftermarket Websites® was designed with exactly this sort of data structure in mind. We use product data from more than 120 supporting brands and over 300 non-supporting brands and structure it in a way that is optimal for Google to find. We’ve even created our own custom categorization to give your customers a better online browsing experience before they visit your store in person. They’ll be able to tell you exactly what they want—down to the exact part number—before they ever walk through your door.
We describe Aftermarket Websites® as “Built BY the industry, FOR the industry,” and we truly mean that. This platform was designed with one goal: to get your local shop found by local customers searching online. And we do that better than any one-size-fits-all service could ever hope to. People in your neighborhood are looking for aftermarket accessories. Our targeted SEO helps them find you. If you’d like to speak with us regarding your website’s SEO performance, please to reach out to us. We’d love to talk to you!
