SANTA MONICA, Calif. -

Edmunds.com has already begun “experimenting” with a used-car iteration of its Price Promise program and plans further expansion in this area next year, along with launching a Lease Promise product at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention & Expo in January.

Edmunds president and chief operating officer Seth Berkowitz was speaking along with Eugene Park, vice president of products, during a press conference Thursday announcing the company’s new website and strategic shift.

Edmunds is rolling out a new website design later this month aiming to “better serve the car shoppers who have become accustomed to the engaging flow of popular shopping sites like Amazon,” according to the company.  

Beyond just updating the site, Edmunds’ strategy is to shift from being an information research site to become “an automotive shopping site that better serves car shopper needs identified in the company's detailed research.”

“In studying our consumers, we believe they’re asking us for one major thing,” Berkowitz said during the call, “which is to make the car-buying process itself easier.

“In the past we’ve offered this comprehensive catalogue of automotive information, but we never took it upon ourselves to actually make the car-buying itself easier, which is viewed to be the largest pain point by our customers.”

Another factor Berkowitz explained to be critical in Edmunds' strategy was to utilize the established trust consumers have in Edmunds.com — citing its own studies and the 2013 Online Customer Review Study from Maritz Research that puts Edmunds.com in the top five of most trusted cites — and utilize it to build greater trust between consumers and dealers.

All of this essentially is how the site came to derive its core mission of making the car-shopping process easier.

Edmunds also found through its 2013 Car Shopping Trends Report is that receiving an actual price for a car is the greatest unmet consumer need. And this is where Price Promise comes into play.

During the presentation, Berkowitz honed in on Price Promise — which was launched earlier this year at NADA — and its role in the revamped website and strategy for Edmunds.

And it has room to expand to the used market as well as within leasing.

“We believe so strongly in the concept of Price Promise and the results that we’ve seen that we’ve decided to do a couple of things. One is to make that our product suite for the future, and to tick off other consumer pain points at the top of the list and solve them through our Promise suite,” Berkowitz said.

“Coming in the next number of months, and what we’re planning for the next National (Auto) Dealers Association (Convention & Expo) is a product called Lease Promise, which essentially is going to give people actual leases that they could receive on cars,” he added.

“And ultimately, the Promise suite will round itself out through used cars, both with respect to the actual purchase of them and trade in, as well. But that will be over the course of 2014.”

When asked more details about what the used products, in particular, will entail, Berkowitz had this to say: “We’re thinking about — and are experimenting already with a few dealerships in a pilot mode — a product which makes similar kinds of guarantees to consumers, and we may sweeten it beyond price guarantees to figure out some kind of assurance type product.

“We’re in early pilot mode on it, but the notion would be to figure out those things which consumers are most concerned about in buying the used car and see whether, in conjunction with our partners, we could develop a set of assurances that would make them more comfortable, which we could offer exclusively through Edmunds.”

Joe Overby can be reached at joverby@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.