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See What Digital Retailing
Is Actually Worth

Enter your numbers for both processes and compare them side by side — dollars per hour, cost per transaction, and net gross per deal.

Digital Retailing vs. Traditional

Enter your numbers for both processes to see the efficiency and gross impact per deal.

Digital Retailing Process

Average time to complete a sale with digital retailing
Average front and back gross
Headcount running this process
Pay plus benefits
Average monthly volume

Traditional Sales Process

Average time to complete a traditional sale
Average front and back gross
Headcount running this process
Pay plus benefits
Average monthly volume

Digital Retailing Doesn't Have a Lead Problem. It Has a Tracking Problem.

The most common complaint about digital retailing is that it doesn't produce leads. We went looking for the shoppers who used a dealer's digital retailing tool and never submitted through it — the ones the tool gets no credit for. They convert at nearly twice the rate of everyone else on the site.

What the Non-Converters Actually Do

We isolated 449 users at one franchise dealership who opened a digital retailing page but never fired the confirm-availability event, then compared them against the 11,000 site users who never touched the tool at all:

84% higher conversion rate — 3.79% vs 2.06%, on leads submitted somewhere other than the digital retailing tool

inside__icon-illustr-29.5% higher9.5% higher graphic

5.7x more time on site — 5m49s of engaged time versus 1m01s, across 2.8x more pages per session

inside__icon-illustr-523.8% increase23.8% increase

2.2x over-index on organic search — 60% of this cohort arrived through organic, against 28% of everyone else

inside__icon-illustr-1012.3% improvementinside__icon-illustr-912.3% improvement

Why Your Digital Retailing Numbers Look Worse Than They Are

The leads exist. The attribution doesn't.

A shopper builds a deal, doesn't finish, then calls the store or fills out a contact form two days later. The DR tool gets no credit and shows up in the monthly review as a line item with almost no leads next to it. The behavior it drove landed in a different bucket.

Tool engagement is an intent signal, not just a conversion path

These shoppers returned more often, went deeper, and stayed nearly six times longer per visit. Whether the tool created that intent or simply attracted it, opening a payment calculator is one of the strongest signals on the site — and most stores do nothing with it.

It changes which channels look like they're working

Organic search fed this cohort at 2.2x its baseline share and Google Business Profile at 2.8x, while paid search ran at 0.34x and display at 0.09x. Judge channels only on last-click DR leads and you will systematically underrate the traffic that actually produces engaged buyers.

The Cohort, Side by Side

Digital retailing users who never submitted through the tool, against site users who never opened it
Performance Score Icon

Engaged Time per Session

Time actively spent on the site, not just tabs left open. The single widest gap between the two groups.

COHORT COMPARISON

GROUP
RESULT
Used DR tool
5m 49s
Never opened it
1m 01s
Difference
5.7x
Cumulative Layout Shift Icon

Pages per Session

How far into inventory a shopper goes in a single visit. Depth of browsing tracks closely with how far along they are.

COHORT COMPARISON

GROUP
RESULT
Used DR tool
6.2
Never opened it
2.2
Difference
2.8x
Largest Contentful Paint Icon

Sessions per User

Return visits. Shoppers who touched the tool came back roughly twice, where the rest mostly came once and left.

COHORT COMPARISON

GROUP
RESULT
Used DR tool
2.13
Never opened it
1.27
Difference
1.7x
First Contentful Paint Icon

Conversion Rate

Leads submitted anywhere on the site. For this cohort that means everywhere except the digital retailing tool they declined to finish.

COHORT COMPARISON

GROUP
RESULT
Used DR tool
3.79%
Never opened it
2.06%
Difference
1.8x

Want This Cohort Built for Your Store?

We can run the same analysis against your own analytics and show you where your digital retailing engagement is actually landing.
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