Toyota Turns Up the Heat in Online Battle With Chevrolet

Toyota (TM) is closing on General Motors' (GM) Chevrolet as the top brand in the U.S. automotive market. Can Toyota’s web site be contributing to their success? Based on Compete’s Website Engagement Study, the answer is yes.

A look at traffic shows that Toyota was consistently ahead of Chevrolet in the number of people visiting its site until the October Malibu launch. The heavy marketing push for Malibu drove traffic increases of 30% and more. Chevrolet.com exceeded 2 million unique visitors for three months in a row, until January, when Toyota reversed a downtrend and again surpassed Chevy.

What does this mean?
People visiting the Chevrolet site are 37% less likely to visit one of the four key online shopping tools than the Toyota site visitors.

Why is that important?
Compete data shows that those who purchased a vehicle were twice as likely to use a shopping tool on an OEM site.

What is causing the difference?
In a complex industry like automobiles there are a myriad of forces at work that contribute to the online behavior of consumers researching and shopping for cars. Some of the suspects are: the source of traffic, overall marketing efforts, website construction and navigation, consumer targeting, and of course the brand and product preferences of consumers.

Comments

[ARS]

Yea, but if you look at all the GM brands combined they are getting over 5 times the hits that Toyota gets! And guess what all the Ford brands get almost 4 times the hits if you don't include Jag & Land Rover the that are being sold and almost 6 times if these 2 brands are included! Even little old Crysler brands get 2.5 times as many hits. Also there are several other foreign brands that get more hits so what does any of this mean? I'm tired of the American press constantly make unfair comparisions between American and foreign manufactures!!!