NASHVILLE, Tenn. -

In addition to a bevy of other findings it uncovered, an independent study conducted by Dataium and commissioned by Carfax took a look at the online paths taken by shoppers who visited an online portal, the Carfax website and a dealer website during the car-shopping process.

According to the white paper published by Dataium, the order of website visits for these consumers breaks down like this:

•    30.8 percent visited the portal first, then Carfax, then the dealership site.
•    25.8 percent went dealer site, portal, Carfax.
•    19.8 percent visited the portal first, then followed with the dealer site and then the Carfax site.
•    9.8 percent went in this order: dealer site, Carfax, portal.
•    8.6 percent went Carfax, portal, dealer site.
•    5.9 percent visited Carfax, then the dealer site then the portal.

One nugget that Dataium gleaned from these statistics was this: more than 55 percent of these shoppers (again, people visiting a portal, the Carfax site and a dealer site) either visited the Carfax site first or second.

Among shoppers only visiting a portal and a Carfax site, 30 percent went to Carfax first. Among those only visiting a dealer site and Carfax, more than 43 percent went to Carfax first.

Moving along, one of the biggest findings that Dataium emphasized in its announcement of the study was that when a dealer website features Carfax Vehicle History Reports the online shopper:

•    Stays on the site 1.6 times as long
•     Is five times more likely to submit a lead
•    Is twice as likely to look at cars

To gather these statistics, Dataium analyzed visitor behavior throughout its auto website network from May through July.

“In our study, when Carfax Reports were provided online, there was a significant increase in visitor engagement,” said Joe Burns, director of business intelligence at Dataium. “Visitors spent more time on site, viewed more pages on average, and were more likely to submit a lead to the dealer.”

Offering the dealer perspective,Bennett Boothe, digital sales and marketing director at Moreland Auto Group in Colorado, said: “Most of our customers start shopping online, so building their confidence in us and our cars on the Internet is critical.

“We noticed the cars we listed with a Carfax Report were getting more traffic and more sales. Now we make sure a Carfax Report is included with all our cars. It’s a big key to our online success,” Boothe added.

Carfax vice president Bill Eager added: “Our partnership with dealers goes well beyond providing vehicle history information. We help give online shoppers more confidence to become on-the-lot buyers.”

The white paper can be downloaded at www.dataium.com/case_studies/11.2013_CARFAX_White_Paper.pdf.

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