We’re evolving the Auto Trader search experience.
Summary
Auto Trader are advancing the search experience to meet the evolving needs of consumers in an increasingly complex marketplace.
Principles of the changes include greater consistency, accessibility and conversion
Changes will be data driven and rigorously tested to prove effectiveness before being scaled to include the whole audience
The aim is to deliver a slicker experience helping the consumer find what they’re looking for faster.
Why are we evolving our search?
More than 11 million users turn to Auto Trader each month to browse a range of vehicles in a rapidly evolving marketplace. This traffic generates more than 18 million searches each day, and our search experience plays a pivotal role in connecting buyers to their next vehicle. So it’s vital that we continue to invest in refining that experience to meet the changing needs and expectations of consumers.
While consumers might typically buy a car once every few years, their expectations of marketplaces are set by the digital experiences they encounter every day, and therefore the way that consumers search, browse and engage with content online is always advancing, bringing with it new norms.
Plus, it’s not just consumer expectations that are changing . The vehicles that we list and merchandise are changing too, introducing new requirements for our search experience and product pages. Electric cars are a great example of this, requiring new data points and new filters to help consumers navigate what is already a complex journey. Part of our role is to simplify this journey, making it more accessible for all users, not just those with more advanced knowledge or experience.
What do we expect to change?
1. Delivering a consistent search experience
Over time, as we’ve looked to optimise our search experience for mobile, app and web our search experience has diverged across platforms. That means that if you run a search today on mobile web, the search results will look different to how they look on desktop or in our app.
In order to deliver a more accessible and consistent brand experience it’s important that search is made consistent across different platforms. You can expect to see gradual tweaks to the filtering and search card features as we work towards platform parity. This will also provide more consistency in how we report on your search performance and market demand.
2. Flexibility to meet a range of consumer needs
Our search experience today requires a fair base level knowledge of the brands and products that consumers are searching for. With both factors changing so rapidly it’s becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to keep pace with the market.
To make this easier to navigate we’d like to create a more flexible search experience, one that can cater to consumers who know what they want and to those that would benefit from some help.
We’re confident there’s an opportunity to use data to do this, taking learnings from browsing activity to create a more intelligent, personalised search experience. We expect this to create new opportunities to appeal to consumers who otherwise may not have considered comparable vehicles.
3. Optimising the search experience
Ultimately, making improvements to our search for consumers should provide a slicker experience and help us to retain our share of audience, with the intention of driving positive outcomes for our retail partners.
This means that we’ll be optimising towards deals, with the consumer taking fewer steps between making their initial search and buying their next vehicle, creating confident consumers that are closer to making a purchase decision.
These changes should work towards driving a positive impact at the top of the funnel (audience) and bottom of the funnel (engaged connections) but may impact the interactions in-between those stages (search appearances and ad views).
How will this benefit me as a retailer?
At Auto Trader we’re committed to our investment in technology, so that we can maintain the best search experience that keeps buyers coming back to your adverts. Part of that includes making our platform easier to navigate, generating a broader audience of engaged buyers, regardless of their experience or knowledge of the products they are browsing for.
Once buyers are in search, we want to move them towards a purchase decision faster, optimising the journey for deals over advert views or enquiries. All of this means we’re bringing more buyers to your adverts with a higher purchase intent when they arrive.
How can we be confident in the changes we make?
As with any changes we make on platform, decisions will be informed by data and made with a view of consumer preference and browsing observations. They’re also rigorously tested against old designs, so that by the time they are live to our whole audience, we can be completely confident that they deliver the additional value they’re designed to.