Used cars or Car brands, Trade Me or Car dealers? How Kiwis shop for cars today

In a consumer survey conducted by FIRST, it revealed that most Kiwis go to online car sales aggregators such as Trade Me or Autotrader when considering purchasing a car. Other places that they go to are the physical dealerships of car dealers, online search engines and websites of known car dealers. Additionally, the most important factors when considering to purchase a car are price and offers followed by the reputation and trustworthiness of the car provider. These consumer preferences point directly to the need for car providers to be highly visible online and provide a good website user experience to potential buyers. 

FIRST, an award-winning team of digital strategy experts who have helped over 300 companies across 100 industries achieve success online, has just released a new industry report showing how visible used cars and car brand providers are within Google’s search engine. By utilising their bespoke metric called RBR (Rankings Based Reach) FIRST revealed that in the used cars category, Trade Me currently takes the lead in natural search rankings. While in the car brands category, Toyota is the most visible site in the cars market in the Google search engine results compared to its major competitors. 

Search trend data show that there was a significant uplift for the search term 'cheap cars' among Kiwis since December 2013. Its search volume has been increasing in the following years. This represents a big opportunity for natural search optimisation. FIRST also found out that majority of car websites have very low organic Rankings Based Reach (RBR) scores.  Popular search phrases are missing from most sites and in most cases very little is being done with organic search.

Find out more by downloading for FREE the Used Cars and Car Brands Online Industry Report.