The automotive industry is not the first that comes to mind when thinking about online retailers and DTC e-commerce. But it’s certainly one of the industries that has benefited from the ecomm boom and there are many reasons that’s growing quickly. The automotive e-commerce market was valued at $100.14 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $343.13 billion by 2032.
From automotive parts, accessories, and aftermarket/OEM suppliers there is a wide variety of who and what falls into this niche. The detailed and often highly specific nature of the products sold here make online shops an obvious choice. Not to mention the range in price points from lower cost things like mats or covers to big-ticket items like mufflers or exhaust systems.
With all that in mind it’s clear that there are some main strategies that these retailers can implement for effective onsite messaging and conversion optimization. Let’s check out some industry-wide benchmarks for context:
These stats are a high-level overview that show a large increase in both time on site and conversion rate for visitors engaged by a Justuno promotion. But let’s take this a step further. What’s the best performing strategy for e-commerce auto retailers?
Building on the momentum that the last few years have brought to all e-commerce retailers, these auto shops can use thoughtful, personalized touchpoints to really stand out.
Let’s dive into some ways to make the customer journey even better through strategic promotional strategies and personalized messaging:
Lead Capture
1. Two-Step Lead Capture
Two-step lead capture is pretty much the standard these days, and for good reason. It immediately doubles the number of channels you can connect with a subscriber on, providing the ability to pick which one is best for each touchpoint. Traditionally, two-step lead captures start with email on the first screen followed by the SMS opt-in on the second.
Make sure to stay compliant by making the SMS field optional and containing the proper opt-in language. It’s also a good idea to always include a tab so that if someone opts-in to email but isn’t quite ready to sign up for texts yet can easily go do that after having a chance to browse a while.
2. Lead Capture With Preferences
Collect zero-party data from your lead captures using Justuno’s ask a question feature. Having this data enables personalization from the very first interaction that can power more relevant campaigns and robust recommendations later on. Auto retailers can carry products for a wide variety of needs, makes/models, etc. Let your visitors tell you which they’re into/need so you can more effectively position products, weaving a powerful story.
These additional data points will be fed into your email/SMS service provider’s platform as well to create segments based on their activities to trigger different campaigns, measure lifetime value, etc.
3. Lead Capture + Giveaway
If your profit margins don’t allow you to provide a discount in exchange for joining your newsletter list, then a giveaway might be an effective alternative. Many automotive sites carry big-ticket items like stereos, tires, engine components, etc.,making it difficult to run discounts.
Giveaways can get a ton of organic shares and high-quality leads for rapid list growth. Not to mention, it’s a great way to maintain profit margins, provide genuine value to subscribers, and show off your top products.
4. Free Gift/Branded Swag
A powerful motivator for consumers can be branded swag or accessories, especially if you’ve built a loyal, dedicated community around your brand. Not only does it reinforce their awareness and connection to the brand, but it’s free marketing out in the world and can easily be added to a shoppers cart with just a CTA click on your pop-ups.
Swag that would be most likely to appeal to gear heads could be: reusable water bottles, coolers, cleaning supplies, garage decals, weatherproofing, and so much more. The stronger your branding, the stronger impact this type of incentive will have on your conversion rate and order values! If the power lies more in the brands that you’re selling than your own, that works here too like BMW hats or Mercedes towels.
5. Gamification
This is great for the auto industry as the engaged conversion rate for spin-to-wins is 14.63%. There’s a lot to be said about the gamification aspect when it comes to engaging visitors and adding a more involved approach to your onsite opt-ins. These can be super custom as well to really drive home branding and make a memorable first impression.
6. Pre Orders or Out Of Stock Sign-Ups
If you’re wanting to build buzz before a big product drop, you can collect subscribers with a “pre orders” type lead capture to have them get early access to your latest and greatest, Alternatively, if you’ve been experiencing supply chain issues like so many other retailers, you can collect out-of-stock sign-ups for them to be alerted once it’s available again. . We suggest using faster channels like SMS or push notifications here since this high-intent segment will want to purchase quickly before you sell out again.
Product Recommendations
Automotive is a vast vertical spanning many different niches and, within each, a variety of specialized equipment. This can make it hard for visitors to find what they’re looking for, decide between different options, and ultimately lead to people abandoning their search altogether. Enter personalized product recommendations, a great way to strategically direct traffic based on their segment, behavior, indicated interests, etc., to help them find exactly what they’re looking for even when they may not know what that is.
Justuno’s intelligent product recommendations can be used anywhere on your website; here are just a few of the placements your auto site might use:
7. Home Page
Place your best sellers right on the homepage to drive new traffic to your highest-converting product pages. This maximizes your chances for a same-session sale and drives faster product adoption.
8. Product Description Page
Place recommendations in-page to show them related complementary items like floor mats on the same page as seat covers, for example, to complete their order. Alternatively, you could upsell substitute items, like the more premium protection items, laser-cut edges, etc., based on the product they’re currently browsing.
If you’re selling something where product education is a key part of choosing the right option, for example, auto parts. But don’t want to clutter up your PDPs? Use a clickable element to open up a pop-up with the necessary information. Feature the comparison between the two products (for those with multiple options, use your purchase data to find those most often compared), and make sure to include a buy now button to add their preferred model to the cart.
9. In-Cart
Either on the cart page or in the cart slide-out, you can place a product recommendation for bottom-of-the-funnel activation. Upsell in-cart for warranties on big-ticket items like mufflers or stereos. You’ll make shoppers feel more confident in their purchase, boosting conversion rates and order values. Or cross-sell complementary items to what they’ve added to their cart, like trunk organizers when they added seat covers.
10. Add-To-Cart
Once a visitor has added something to their cart, you can fire a center pop-up with a recommendation carousel of items to add directly to their cart with a click. This can be a cross-sell of complementary products to raise order values or a free gift to drive conversions.
11. Blog
Content marketing can be a key component of your automotive store if you have a advice/hobby/restoration/etc. aspect to your business. This content can help you build a community around your store and position you as the go-to place for their questions.
Cars and garages can be a social hub—whether with friends or family, making the products they use while doing them become a part of that. Leverage your blog into more than simply a storytelling component using an in-page carousel of products featured in your article. This makes it easy for the reader to add them to their cart immediately, no need to go looking for them, and eliminates the possibility of browse abandonment altogether!
Exit Offers/Cart Abandoners
12. Exit Offer: Product Finder (AKA Quiz)
An exit offer is triggered when a visitor goes to leave your website but has nothing in their cart. This is a great opportunity to present them with a product finder quiz instead of a discount or other incentive.
As we said above, the wide variety of parts and products to choose from in the auto goods space can make it hard to know exactly what you should get. That’s why a product finder quiz guides visitors to the product best suited for their needs, creating a personalized brand experience and decreasing the likelihood of returns.Product finder quizzes work better here than a discount since it’s education these shoppers are looking for rather than an offer.
13. Exit Offer: BNPL
As we stated cart parts can get expensive fast, so if you’re offering any kind of BNPL service, make sure to prominently display this at various stages on your website. If a consumer goes to abandon a cart over a certain $-threshold, fire an exit offer reminding them, they can buy today and pay over time. This works for products and services alike, with the ability to pay off slowly an expensive part over the months leading up to it or simply purchase a high-end product without breaking the bank.
Don’t wait until it’s too late to let visitors know you have BNPL options; make sure to include that information on the checkout page or even the home page via a non-intrusive design like a banner, so they’re fully aware of their options.
Payment channels have turned into conversion funnels themselves, and having them can be the difference between making a sale and losing out on a customer. Even if you’re not wanting to leverage BNPL, one-click checkouts like ShopPay, AmazonPay, or Paypal make checkout easier for customers and can streamline your BOFU.
14. Exit Offer: Reviews
We’ve discussed the power of social proof already, but an incredibly effective way to build trust in hesitant shoppers for auto purchases is reviews. Especially for expensive purchases like a catalytic converter or vintage spark plug where getting it right the first time matters.
When a visitor goes to leave, trigger an exit offer featuring a review of whatever they were browsing. The example below from one of our customers is a great example of social proof + personalization with the reviews featured being specific to the make/model the visitor is looking at:
15. Exit Offer: Free Gift
This kind of strategy of a gift with purchase is great for auto sites. The item/gift can be explicitly listed or kept a mystery for more of a fun, exciting campaign. The example below was a great example of this letting shoppers pick their preferred color of decal.
This strategy is even more effective if the gift is something you can’t purchase on its own, making it a truly buy now, or it’s gone FOMO situation.
16. Cart Abandoner: Returns Policy/Satisfaction Guarantee
If you’re selling bigger ticket items, there will likely be some hesitation from shoppers before they pull the trigger. Returns can be a major concern because if the item is big or heavy it can cost a lot of money for them to get it wrong. If you offer a satisfaction guarantee or generous returns policy, this is the ideal time to promote it—these visitors were interested enough to add products to their cart but weren’t quite ready to convert yet.
The guarantee is perfect for this audience; reinforcing the no-risk aspect of their purchase removes barriers to driving same-session purchases without reducing profit margins. Match up with a timer for maximum FOMO—auto retailers using timers in their Justuno pop-ups averaged an 18.04% engagement rate and converted 17.78% of those shoppers!
17. Returning Cart Abandoner
Even if your efforts don’t work out and they abandon their cart anyway, there’s still your email/SMS flows to drive them back. Make sure to complement these efforts with a returning cart abandoner pop-up when they come back to your website with a reminder of what they left in their cart, a CTA to directly checkout and maybe additional incentives/info to seal the deal.
Other Ideas
18. Announcement Banner
This isn’t a particularly ground breaking strategy we know but it’s effective and can be good to use for when you’re running sitewide sales or deals. These banners are also a great way to communicate general information or simply show every visitor to your website the specific item(s) you want to push.
19. Free Shipping Threshold
For those who can’t offer free shipping to all, there’s a dynamic cart-value threshold banner. For those who only offer free shipping above a certain amount, display the exact dollar amount needed for a shopper to qualify for free shipping.
This dynamically updates based on current cart value providing automated, 1:1 communication with a sales focus. With this messaging, you can prompt your shoppers to continue to browse items and use the free shipping incentive to increase average order value!
This idea doesn’t have to be restricted to just free shipping either or a banner design either, you can make any incentive gated behind a threshold for improved AOV!
20. Loyalty Programs
If a shopper checks out but wasn’t signed into your loyalty program—show them a promotion encouraging them to sign-up to earn something on today’s order. This could be double points, free gifts, etc., and promote more brand loyalty through the possibility of earning rewards. Double down on turning customers into advocates by rewarding referrals (and making them easy), content creation, etc. The more you can build out convenience and perks for customers, the more value your store has for them, and makes your site a no-brainer for their auto needs.
The auto industry is big and only getting bigger as consumers have shifted their shopping behaviors and picked up new hobbies.
There’s a lot of market share up for grabs and sites can differentiate themselves by offering a better customer experience that connects 1:1 with shoppers. These strategies are just a few of the potential ways you can use Justuno to build a deeper connection with your customers.
Justuno is the leading conversion optimization platform for brands when it comes to personalized, scalable onsite messaging. Try us out with a free 14-day trial or schedule a demo to see how Justuno can take your automotive store to the next level.
