BURLINGTON, Vt. -

Dealer.com’s Alex Snyder uses the term “visibility” often when he describes what store managers want out of their online presence and how dealer approaches and processes have shifted since he first started as the Internet manager at his family’s dealership back in the mid-1990s.

Now as the senior director of product design at Dealer.com, Snyder offered perspective on how the online element of dealership management is evolving and what principals can do both in the short-term and beyond to make their stores better on the Web.

First, however, Snyder rewound back to 1996, a time when he was thrust into the thick of the Internet’s automotive infancy as part of his family’s dealership group, the Checkered Flag Auto Group based in southern Virginia.

“When Internet managers were really starting to come up in the dealerships, the bulk of us were simply the guy who could use a computer, Snyder said. “There really wasn’t anything special about us. We didn’t have any good skill sets other than we could type and knew how to click on things on a screen. That was really the prequalification for Internet managers.”

Snyder also offered his assessment of what sales managers considered potential buyers who approached the store online instead of in typical “up” fashion on a Saturday afternoon as store buzzed with customers.

“The sales managers who really are the crux of car deals, sat at a tower or a sat in a glass office, and they only managed what they could actually see,” Snyder said. “What they couldn’t see were ‘Internutters,’ these weird Internet customers who wanted a price quote and all of this weird stuff that no one had ever asked for.

“They didn’t pay those people a lot of attention. They sort of acted like they didn’t exist. They didn’t want to deal with them because they were ‘more difficult,’” he continued.

“What’s happened over the years is that more customers have shifted to digital media and websites to communicate with dealers through chat and stuff of that nature. It’s forcing managers to have to look at this audience because they stopped driving on the lot unprepared,” Snyder went on to say.

Nowadays, Snyder believes buyers barely visit two dealerships before making a purchase because these consumers are doing so much communication and research online. Using industry vernacular, he explained how the shift is being done — stating that a dealership’s website is now its showroom and the lot itself is the store’s CRM.

No matter how much evolution has been accomplished — features such as chat windows on a dealership’s home page — Snyder pointed out how dealerships are still struggling to convey a consistent message to potential buyers.

“The content and the method have two different expectations. Consumers have one, dealers have another,” Snyder said. “The consumer is being engineered for e-commerce behaviors. We’re very used to having this instant gratification when buying something by interacting with a website. We buy now and we get it now almost always.

“When they go car shopping that’s not the experience,” he continued. “A consumer says, ‘I’d like to buy this car, know what the price is and what my trade is worth.’ The dealer turns around a lot of the time and the consumer is receiving an email or phone call saying, ‘Hey I’m David. Come ask for me when you come in.’

“That’s not going over so well. There needs to be a shift in the dealership culture how to understand that the consumer is now in control. The dealer no longer is. It’s a sad statement a lot of dealers don’t want to hear,” Snyder went on to say.

So what can dealers do right away to correct the problem? Snyder recommended that managers review email messages traded between salespeople and consumers.

He said it doesn’t have to be every single one; just a sampling on a regular basis. It’s what can improve the “visibility” of a store’s branding both through its website and what’s communicated to potential buyers.

“It’s amazing what kind of insight comes out of that. It’s black-and-white and it’s immediate. You don’t have to read many, just a handful a day. It’s pretty amazing what will happen from there and the eye-opening it does,” Snyder said.

While reading emails might help immediately, Snyder offered insight in how a dealership can improve its “visibility” beyond a potential “up” arriving in a salesperson’s inbox.

“Long term requires a more combined strategy moving forward with a consistent single message across all mediums and channels that the dealership is touching,” Snyder said.

“Not just advertising; written communication between the consumer and dealership, email, text message, oral communication, what’s said on the showroom floor, in the service and parts department, over the phone. Successful dealers have synergized messages with the overall brand he is trying to convey to the marketplace.”

Since joining Dealer.com back in 2010, Snyder said he and his team have been working feverishly with dealers nationwide, gathering feedback and implementing solutions that can help with “visibility” and more. Much of what Snyder’s team has been developing was set to be revealed this weekend during the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention & Expo in Orlando, Fla.

“Dealer.com is connecting four this year, bringing advertising, websites, CRM and inventory together, making it intuitive to use each of them from one product to another, garnering insights into how these things work together,” Snyder said.

He added the solution will help stores to solve, “How does your inventory affect the number of customers who show up at the showroom? How does this display ad you’re running across the internet effect your inventory and the kind of leads and phone calls you get, and floor ups you get into the building?”

Nick Zulovich can be reached at nzulovich@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.