What you need to know about selling auto parts online

Imagine that you run a brick-and-mortar shop located on the side of a busy highway. You’re advertising on billboards, running special promotions and doing everything you can to create interest. But traffic is sparse, and you’re wondering how you’ll ever get noticed.

With e-commerce, many automotive parts and accessories sellers are finding themselves in a similar scenario, and with similar questions: How do buyers find me and learn that I’m selling what they want?

If you develop a comprehensive strategy that focuses on increasing your product visibility, the e-commerce world can be your next key revenue stream. Retailers that stay on top of industry trends and adapt to changes can build a thriving business that puts their online revenue in the fast lane.

Are you in a scenario where you’re looking to improve your online business? Let’s take a look at best e-commerce practices for parts and accessories retailers that want to accelerate their revenue.

Fitment/compatibility/application

Determining which vehicles your products are compatible with is the first step to improving your e-commerce performance. The next step: including accurate data to instill confidence that your product is compatible with the buyer’s vehicle. Additionally, indicating that a part fits more than one vehicle reduces the number of product listings you need to create, pay for and manage.

Some marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay and Newegg, encourage buyers to add their vehicle information to their accounts so that only applicable products are displayed. These “virtual garages” allow consumers to create a tailored shopping experience for their vehicles. Buyers can still find products that fit specific vehicles when they use each marketplace’s year/make/model search options.

Once you’ve optimized your fitment information, you’re ready to shift your sales into gear by selling on online third-party marketplaces. Each marketplace offers ways for you to indicate the fitment of your parts — which we’ll cover next.

eBay

eBay Motors is the original online marketplace for parts and accessories. In fact, as of Q2 2014, eBay reported that more than 392 million parts and accessories transactions occurred on the eBay Motors marketplace since its launch.

The first order of business on eBay is to communicate fitment information by sending the brand and manufacturer part number (MPN) to eBay. Then, eBay uses its extensive fitment catalog to provide compatibility data (as well as item specifics, stock photos and other product information). Or, you can submit fitment information manually, since not all categories of parts and accessories have fitment matches in eBay’s catalog.

eBay sets limitations on the number of compatibilities that can be associated with your part. The key is to ensure you’re within those limitations to avoid issues with eBay’s duplicate listing policy. You’ll also need to pull up eBay’s Master Vehicle List, which defines how to refer to certain vehicle makes and models to ensure a fitment match.

Amazon

Following eBay’s success in the space, Amazon quickly caught on and launched its own automotive category. Amazon consolidates all sellers of the same product on one product detail page, allowing buyers to easily compare prices, policies, shipping speeds and seller feedback when making a decision.

Amazon uses its Part Finder database to determine the fitment applications for a part or accessory by matching the brand and MPN. Part Finder will also cross-reference the part with the selected vehicle from the buyer’s garage or search values to validate compatibility.

Beyond Part Finder, you’ll also need to meet the selling recommendations Amazon provides. Similar to on eBay, data quality and account standing are paramount to getting your products seen.

Other online marketplaces

Although eBay and Amazon are the e-commerce behemoths, several additional marketplaces are growing in the parts and accessories sector:

• Sears: Sears has been a longtime destination for automotive needs, especially because many of its brick-and-mortar stores have auto centers. This winter, Sears is set to offer customers an option to search parts by year, make and model, and customers will be able to save vehicles to their buyer profiles.

• Newegg: Originally an online destination for consumer electronics, automotive and powersports has become a popular category on the marketplace. Newegg has an auto configurator that allows consumers to choose a year, make and model to filter parts and accessories.

• Rakuten.com Shopping: Although still growing, Rakuten.com Shopping’s Motors category is currently open to selected automotive sellers. It doesn’t have fitment data, so there’s not an option for consumers to filter products like on other marketplaces.

Digital marketing for automotive

Now that you’ve set up shop on marketplaces, it’s time to drive traffic to your website so buyers come directly to you to make their purchases. Like recruiting customers to a store on the side of the highway, getting visitors to your site can be difficult. For that reason, a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is essential for engaging with customers and fueling your website growth.

A couple of pointers to make your digital marketing strategy successful:

• Get your website in top shape: Don’t spend money on a website that won’t convert shoppers to buyers.

• Use Google’s shopping campaigns: Shopping campaigns help ensure that your products are front and center on the search results page with eye-catching product listing ads that link back to your website.

• Get a 360-view of buyer behavior: Use analytics to track where your web visitors are coming from to understand what digital marketing channels create the best ROI for you.

• Manage your digital marketing bids with the goal in mind: Have a target number for your total ad spend and monitor your performance for each bid.

• Take advantage of product feeds: Comparison shopping engines are a great destination for product feeds and can open up sources of additional revenue.

There are plenty of online destinations for parts and accessories sellers that want to maximize their share of the consumer wallet. By fine-tuning your online strategy to get your products in front of as many consumers as possible, you’ll be on your way to taking your performance to the next level.

Editor’s note: Rachel Miller is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at ChannelAdvisor, where she leads a team of passionate, product experts who want to connect retailers with solutions, knowledge and ideas to help them take their business to the next level. With more than 13 years of industry experience and more than six years of experience leading training and implementation teams at ChannelAdvisor, she has rich knowledge of ChannelAdvisor customers and products, as well as key players in e-commerce. Rachel enjoys helping retailers solve problems, grow their businesses and identify new opportunities to help them be more successful.

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