Do more at home. Save time at the dealership.
Hyundai Express Shopping.
A car shopping tool to help buyers complete more of the process at home, and save time when visiting the dealership.
Hyundai Express Shopping is a variation of the Motocommerce platform. The Hyundai version of Motocommerce would look to connect buyers with local dealerships to complete the purchase in-store, but would allow people to start and finish a trade in, a credit application and a vehicle configuration before getting to the store.
Allowing people to complete these steps at home shaved hours off the car buying process.
Problem
The car buying process is a long one. Shoppers can spend weeks determining which car is right for them, then spend days completing their final purchase. Between test drives, negotiating a trade in value, configuring payment options, applying for credit and waiting for approval, there is a lot of back and forth between car buyers and the dealerships who sell to them.
As neccessary as all of these steps are, there was an opportunity to help speed up the process, and the Hyundai version of Motocommerce would look to do that.
Understanding the people involved, who our true targets were and the nuanced differences between them.
Car Shopper:
- Still in the research phase of the journey
- 3-6 months away from making a purchase.
- Unwilling to speak to a salesperson.
- Has already begun thinking of his next vehicle and has a couple
of brands and models in mind.
Car Buyer:
- Needs to complete a purchase soon.
- She is well passed the research stage and knows
what her budget can afford her.
- She has decided what make and model she wants,
but can still be pursuaded to change her mind.
- If she can get to a price she is happy with, she will
complete the purchase.
Solution:
Create online tools to help facilitate parts of this long journey. For Hyundai, their dealership network would be a key partner in making the program a success. We still wanted to drive customers to their stores, but also wanted to bring them valuable customers who were ready to buy and were well passed the browsing stage. To uncover this segment of consumers there were key stages of commitment that we would have to uncover from our customer users in order to qualify them as a buyer.
1 - A saved vehicle
2 - A trade in opportunity
3 - An application for Credit.
To qualify a good lead one of the three should be present, but having all of them would equal to a “buyer” and would show dealers just how valuable the customers coming from our portal were.
Build and Price
“I like picking the different colour options. Customizing the car is the fun part.”
Our customer research uncovered that configuring a car is one of the more enjoyable parts of the car buying journey. This is the part of the process that involves some excitement and lets people explore the possibilities for their coming purchase.
One of the key modules for Motocommerce is a build and price component that would allow users to configure and save a vehicle, then connect them with their local dealership who could fufill the saved order.
Instead of sitting with a salesperson to build out their next purchase, the build and price module helps users explore and play with the idea of their next vehicle, on their own terms and at their leisure. Allowing them to save the configurations to their account also gave the dealership an idea of how serious this person was about making a future purchase.
Trade In
Getting a trade in valued is one of the longer processes of the car buying journey because it usually includes more than just the sales person. Trade in managers have to spend time doing a thorough inspection of a vehicle before extending an offer. We created a trade in tool that could help customers shave off a lot of this time spent waiting around.
With a mobile trade in tool we allowed customers to send photographs of their vehicle directly to the trade in managers so they could get early estimates on how much their trade in was worth. This made the time at the dealership more about confirming details, rather than a full on inspection.
Applying for Credit
Allowing people to fill out their credit application from home would also cut down a significant portion of the time spent in store. With a comprehensive credit application built into Hyundai Express, we allowed users to send their credit information ahead of time, letting them know if they were approved almost instantly.
Going from this…
…To this
Modernizing many of the old ways wasnt always easy, but it was a needed step in the evolution of the process.
Results
Hyundai Express would go on to be a key part of Hyundai Canada’s 2017 marketing strategy. The portal was unveiled by Hyundai Canada’s CEO at pressers and Autoshows across the country, outlining its importance in their next phase of doing business.
“Hyundai Express will make the buying process faster, more transparent and less painful, but there will be a Hyundai dealer on the other side who will be accommodating the pricing. What features will we see with Hyundai Express? Customers will be able to configure and build car, get credit preapproved and get a value on their trade-in, though assessing the used car requires an interface.”
Project contributors:
Design Lead: Allan De Los Angeles
Designers: Min Kim, Matt Griffin, Iuliia Kostiuk, Inkyung Choi
Product management: Jakob Brofeldt, Eva Bennet
Product Owner: Sean Coulson
Development: Motocommerce Engineering team