Auto parts sellers have a unique advantage over other industries. While millions of people enjoy working on their car or truck as a hobby, hundreds of millions rely on a vehicle to get to work, school, the grocery store, and literally anywhere else they want or have to go. Automobiles are woven into the fabric of American culture and are a daily necessity for households from coast to coast.
US online automotive parts sales are expected to reach $12 billion in 2019 and $19 billion by 2022, according to Hedges and Company. If you are selling aftermarket parts or involved in selling automotive parts online, it’s important to give your customers the best online shopping experience to convert browsers into customers.
Make it easy to find the right part
When a new potential customer lands on your website, it’s important to make it as easy as possible to find what they want. Online visitors shouldn’t have to struggle to find a list of parts for their vehicle or that specific part they’ve been hunting for. However they want to shop, your website should let them do it.
Focus on your website’s navigation, search capabilities, and add useful features like breadcrumbs to help quickly move around the site and find what they need. Just like gum, candy, and beverages in the checkout lanes of grocery stores, putting something people want right in front of them at the right moment can boost your overall sales and keep customers focused on high-margin products.
Accept every major payment method
Have you ever been at a checkout counter and gone through the disappointment of having your card turned away? Don’t put your customers through the same frustrating experience. In the modern era, everyone expects to be able to pay with any major credit or debit card brand. If your business wants to offer other payment options, that’s great. But make sure you accept at least the four major US credit brands.
If you were visiting a bustling marketplace filled with restaurants and stalls and saw a sign that said “cash only,” you might walk to the next stall. Online finding a replacement is even easier. With the power of Google, the marketplace can be very competitive. Making it very easy for your customers to pay gives your website a competitive advantage, even with international sales.
Offer no-cost installment payments
The vast majority of households in the United States live paycheck to paycheck. If you are in an industry where a purchase easily reaches into the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, giving customers the ability to pay over time could be the tipping point that leads to a sale. Utilizing Splitit, you can offer installment payments at no cost to the customer. This innovative financing option is sure to thrill new and returning customers.
For example, in addition to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and PayPal, NFC Performance offers its customers the ability to pay with Splitit. Financing through Splitit utilizes the credit card your customers already have to secure a virtual “line of credit” for the sale. The customer will see a hold on their account for the full purchase price but won’t pay any extra. They can split their total bill into low, affordable monthly payments. Customers choose their own payoff timeframe to get more control over the monthly bill. As the merchant, there is no risk involved and you are always paid on time.
Try out your website to find customer pain points
Something that far too few business owners neglect is trying out their own website. If you have not done it in a while, search for a car part you might want and see how the experience goes. Try your own checkout process to find anything that is unintuitive or doesn’t work as expected.
To get even better information, sit down with a prospective customer and watch they do the checkout process without chiming in. If you see them get stuck somewhere, even if it makes sense to you, it’s a problem with your website. In some industries, the customer is never wrong. When it comes to navigating your website, the same rules apply. Make it so easy to use that a child can do it!
Remove barriers to making the purchase
Potential customers likely show up to your website every day without making a purchase. If your number one goal is to sell automotive parts online, you should remove every barrier that stands between the customer and the part.
You can solve website issues through research and incremental improvement. Financial issues can be solved by accepting a variety of payment methods and making purchases more affordable through monthly installment payments with Splitit. When you keep focused on the end-to-end customer experience, you are taking the right steps to help your business thrive.