DealerChatMarketShare.com
Facts Only
Automotive Dealer Chat Market Share March 2012
Every quarter we measure the adoption of automotive dealer chat. The Q1 data shows that over 20% of dealer websites now have chat software, as shown in the graph below.
The adoption “curve” is fairly linear at this point, showing strong and consistent growth. Whether there is an “inflection point” at which adoption accelerates dramatically, as is typical with many technologies, remains to be seen. We continue believing that such an inflection point is inevitable given consumer adoption of chat in general, and the ever-increasing inclusion of chat by major 3rd party automotive websites and OEM websites. Dealers have not blazed the path in terms of deploying chat on their own websites, but they aren’t stupid either and, we believe, will follow the consumers and 3rd party websites.
There were no notable changes this month in chat vendor market share, as shown in the graph below.
Automotive Dealer Chat Market Share February 2012
February results are in and we’re including more vendors in our rankings this month.
The vendors gaining automotive dealer chat market share included Contact At Once!, whose overall lead continues to widen, and Outsell, who bounced back slightly after losing share for ten straight months.
Market share losers in February included Activengage and Dealer.com.
Our market share pie graph, below, consistently shows the top six vendors. We recently received several requests for showing a longer list. Our crawler tracks over 60 dealer chat vendors, so we’ve included in this post the ordered list of vendors whose market share ranked seventh through fourteenth. We stopped at fourteenth because the vendors below that ranking have less than 1% market share each.
| 7.) Dealer eProcess |
| 8.) BoldChat |
| 9.) SmartChat |
| 10.) LivePerson |
| 11.) Reynolds Web Solutions |
| 12.) ProspectVision/ProspectEngage |
| 13.) WebSiteAlive |
| 14.) WhosOn |
Many thanks to the dealers and chat vendors who have submitted dealer website URL’s to our crawler in order to enhance the quality of our results.
Chat vendors – please verify your profile, then submit the URLs of your customer’s websites to ensure they are counted next month.
Automotive Dealer Chat Market Share January 2012
The January measurements of automotive dealer chat market share are now available. Both Contact At Once! and ActivEngage saw slight increases in market share, while Outsell and Dealer.com saw slight decreases, but none of those changes were enough to affect the relative rankings.
Dealer Chat Market Share December 2011
Happy New Year!
The year 2011 was certainly a great one for dealer chat. Adoption of dealer chat software grew 26% and was accelerating as the year ended, with 19.4% of US auto dealer websites utilizing chat software.
As we look back on 2011, we see several drivers behind the accelerating adoption of dealer live chat software. And so, in typical end-of-year blogging fashion, we present our top 3 list:
- Autotrader.com’s inclusion of chat in advertising packages. Following on the heels of Cars.com, CarsDirect.com, and others, Autotrader.com announced in February 2011 that they were including chat in their “connection bundle” that also included Facebook and Twitter links. As the market leader, Autotrader.com is capable of influencing the entire automotive industry and did just that when they embraced chat.
- Adoption by several OEM’s, including Acura.com, Chrysler.com, and Kia.com. Manufacturers are investing heavily in their own websites and, like 3rd party website providers, are seeking to connect more site visitors with dealers by utilizing live chat software.
- Dealer success stories. Dealer chat vendors are increasingly publishing written and video success stories about dealers who’ve improved website conversion by 20-100%. The auto dealers not yet using live chat software are paying attention.
