The Misunderstanding About Web Site Visits And Autoquake
Saturday, 19. March 2011
As I reported before anyone else Autoquake are now in administration and the administrators are trying to find buyers. One of the selling points, as has been widely reported is the number of visits made to their website, believed to be around 5.5 million last year. I have to stay that statistic is absolutely meaningless because if it meat that the company was successful why has it just collapsed? It’s a bit like saying you could put any shop in the middle of a high street which attracts lots of ‘traffic’ and it will be successful. Let’s say you were to open a taxidermy shop in the middle of the high street. You might have a lot of people having a look at what is on display but the chances are very few will buy. In fact if you were in the middle of a city you would probably fail within a month given the high overheads etc. However, if you had your shop in the country with adverts in such magazines as Country Life and in pet magazines you would probably get thousands of people travelling miles to come to you for your services.
You see good marketing is not down to visitors to your website, after all the 5.5 million visitors to Autoquake resulted in just 1,000 cars per month being sold. It’s all down to targeting. You would be better off with 5,000 visitors a month coming to your website and 50% buying a car. This will be seen when my new businesses are launched we will be better targeted. Again sad that they have gone but Autoquake simply didn’t understand used car buyers or, as it turns out, marketing! By Graham Hill
Related articles
- Online Used Car Reseller Autoquake In Administration (thebestcarfinanceblog.co.uk)
Johnny Focus Says:
Exactly right.
The whole problem with AQ was that – of all the millions of people who visited the site – almost nobody bought a car. By the way, I think their total sales were 5,000 cars per year, which means that exactly 0.1 % of visitors went on to purchase! Yes – zero point one percent.
This is so hopelessly bad that it raises massive questions about what on earth the management were doing, and why on earth the investors went on ploughing millions into what was obviously a failure from the start, and where exactly the money went.
By the way, a colleague of mine is a lecturer in business modelling, and he plans to use the AQ fiasco as a case study in “if it can be screwed up, it will be.”
Says:
Thank you for your comments, sad situation but one that could have been avoided. Unfortunately some of the most basic principles were ignored. First of all if you are to sell something you must have something to sell. It seems very little time was spent nurturing the suppliers, the leasing companies and far too much time was spent on creating a pretty website. The costs were totally out of control, huge directors salaries and from what I can make out about 140 staff. I’m sure that your colleague will have a field day with this one. I have been a consultant to Tesco Cars in the part takeover of Carsite, the originator of this model but with some important differences to the AQ model. Good luck Jonny, hope you find employment if you haven’t already. Graham H