What CarMax and Carvana Can Teach Franchised Dealers

Can franchised new car dealers learn something from how CarMax and Carvana are built?

Every few months, we shop these sites ourselves, clicking through their CTAs (calls to action), submitting leads, and watching what happens next. What follows is a steady stream of well-executed drip marketing via SMS and email, all designed to bring us back to re-engage and eventually purchase.

So what can CarMax and Carvana actually teach franchised dealers about converting website visitors?

Quite a bit, it turns out, since both platforms take a strikingly different approach to CTAs compared to most dealership sites we review. Take a look at the screenshot below.

On CarMax's SRP (search results page), there's exactly one conversion action: Get Pre-Qualified. The only other option is clicking the vehicle photo to reach the VDP (vehicle detail page). That's the entire CTA stack, just one choice. On the VDP itself, there's a single primary CTA: Get Started.

Now compare that to a typical dealership VDP, which often includes: Check Availability, Get ePrice, Schedule a Test Drive, Apply for Financing, Payment Options, Value My Trade, Chat with Us, View Window Sticker, Call Now, and Text Us.

That's a lot of choices.

We've run CTA audits and split tests across dealer groups, and reducing the number of CTAs on a page almost always increases conversions. There's a well-known UX (user experience) principle called the Paradox of Choice: the more options you present, the harder it becomes for someone to choose any of them. Dealers often keep adding CTAs assuming more doorways means more leads. In practice, it frequently means the opposite, fewer leads and lower conversion rates overall.

Our benchmark for a healthy dealer website conversion rate is around 2%. Stores stuck at 1% or below almost always share the same issue: an overloaded VDP, cluttered with buttons in multiple colors and shapes that end up looking more like a ransom note than a clean call to action.

For context, our conversion rate formula is straightforward: conversions (calls, forms, chats) divided by sessions. Conversions are the numerator, sessions are the denominator.

One important caveat: low conversion rates aren't always a landing page problem. If a website is pulling in large volumes of low-quality paid traffic that rarely converts, that traffic alone can drag the overall average down.

CarMax and Carvana didn't arrive at their minimalist designs by accident. Both companies run entire teams dedicated to A/B testing and studying user behavior, all optimized around one single goal: getting the visitor to take the next step. Not ten choices, just one. There's no reason not to take advantage of the research they've already done.