Why Has It Taken This Long to Be Able to Buy a Car Online?

There’s a simple answer that tells us why it’s taken so long to be able to buy a car online but it might surprise you.

Dealerships didn’t have to offer this feature. While that sounds a little like laziness on the part of many dealers, it’s not. Adding more processes, integrating the inventory, and investing in eCommerce all take time and money. If a dealer isn’t required to or doesn’t see the benefits of offering a new process, they will not bring that new process to customers.

What Caused the Sudden Change

Some dealers and their digital marketing teams were experimenting with the idea of selling cars online before the coronavirus pandemic. Online used car companies began to pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, which caused many dealers to analyze the benefits of selling cars this way. The pandemic created a contactless world in which many car dealers needed to adjust and find ways to sell their vehicles. This was the push over the edge required for many to spend the money to put online sales and support processes in place. This means selling cars online and offering delivery solutions, virtual test drives, and video support for customers and sales personnel to meet.

What are the Benefits of Buying a Car Online?

Comfort During the Process

When you want to buy a car online, you get to start the process from the comfort of your home. This means you can browse through vehicles offered by many dealers to find the model, mileage, condition, and price you want. Before you ever leave your house to go to the dealership, you’ll know what you want to buy and how much it should be. This gives you a huge advantage over walking blindly into a dealer showroom where you’re limited to the inventory offered by that dealer.

Take the Stress Away

Once you’re in a car dealership, you feel that you need to leave with a new or used vehicle. This may be an internal pressure, but dealers count on it once you’re at their location. Buying online allows you to avoid the stress of this feeling. You don’t have to sign a contract, you don’t have to contact the dealership unless you want to, and you don’t have to buy what they have in stock. You get to control the shopping experience and won’t have that overwhelming feeling that you must drive away in a new or used model.

Narrow Your Selection

The process used to buy a car online allows you to find exactly what you want to drive. With access to every dealership inventory in your area, you’ll see various models that could meet your needs. Once you get to this point, you can easily narrow the search and find the brand, build, model year, and price you want to pay. If specific features that make sense for you and your family, it’s easier to find these features online than at a local dealership.

Your Schedule Matters

Eventually, you might need to head to the dealership to finalize the paperwork for your new car, but that doesn’t have to happen until the end. You can spend your time the way you want when you shop online. This is easily one of the greatest benefits of this process. You won’t need to give up hours of your workday to shop for your next ride; you can complete this process whenever you desire and see the vehicles you’re looking for when you’ve got time, not when you don’t.

Some Sites Allow Easy Pricing

Using a car listing website, not the dealer site, can help you find the best pricing for the car, truck, or SUV you want to buy. Some of these sites are free to use and make it easy for you to buy a car online without haggling over price. These sites bring multiple models to your search results to give you the options you need. You can select the model that has the best price and fits your driving needs the way you want from this list. Once done, you’ll contact the dealer through the car listing website to close the deal.

Are There Any Negatives to Buying a Car Online?

Complete Online Sales Take Away the Physical Aspect

If you complete the buying process online and never visit a dealership, you won’t take the car for a test drive. This can be an important part of the sales process because it allows you to feel the vehicle. Some dealerships offer at-home test drives. This is a situation where they will bring the car to you and allow you to take it out for a drive with the salesperson. An at-home test drive could be a much better alternative to never driving the car you want to buy.

Restrictive Pricing and Lending Options

Unfortunately, when you buy a car online, you often forgo the opportunity to negotiate the price and select the lender you desire. Some dealers have one lender signed up for all online sales, but if you visit the dealership, you’ll find other financing options that might fit your needs much better. If you’re not concerned about haggling the price but want to have financing options, you’ll want to secure your financing before completing the online buying process.

Most of Your Car Buying Experience Should be Done Online

The car sales process is much different from what our parents and grandparents experienced. Today, you can shop for every aspect of a vehicle from the comfort of your home. In some cases, you can complete the entire process at home, but that might not be advisable. It’s still a good idea to test drive your vehicle and review various financing options before committing to the sale. These two items make visiting the dealership an important part of the process, but nearly everything else is available online.

Are you going to buy your next car online, or will you visit your local dealership?