CarGurus said Wednesday it has launched a new digital retail platform where consumers can begin setting up their vehicle transaction from a dealer’s CarGurus listing page, with expanded market reach capabilities designed to help dealers compete with national online auto retailers.

In a news release, the company said CarGurus Digital Deal, “brings greater efficiency and flexibility to both dealers and consumers, with dealers able to seamlessly integrate and customize their digital retail offerings with the CarGurus platform and consumers able to start their purchase from home.”

Through Digital Deal, a consumer can “build a personalized, near penny-perfect deal” on a dealer’s CarGurus listing page, with the transaction being completed in the dealership.

The service is now available for CarGurus-paying dealers.

“CarGurus Digital Deal offers dealerships of all sizes a new high-conversion sales channel that efficiently drives shoppers into stores and allows dealers to maintain their finance and insurance profits,” CarGurus executive vice president of digital retail Brad Rosenfeld said in a news release.

“Our Digital Retail platform continues to offer top-notch and flexible solutions for dealers and shoppers both locally and nationwide, and the initial results that dealerships have seen from Digital Deal are truly exciting. We look forward to building on these partnerships with our dealer community as we continue to offer them the best solutions for their businesses.”

Digital Deal follows a 12-month pilot called CarGurus Convert that began in April 2021. The new platform builds on the consumer desire to complete more of the process online, even if they ultimately end up finalizing the deal in store, Rosenfeld told Auto Remarketing.

In discussing the differences between Digital Deal and Convert, Rosenfeld compares the consumer journey to traveling on a highway. Compared to the pilot program, Digital Deal allows the consumer to go further along that route online.

“I think there's a lot to be said with empowering the consumer with the flexibility to do as much or as little of that process online, as suits them and as suits our dealer partners,” Rosenfeld said.

The Convert pilot program and those that pre-dated it took the consumer about 20% of the way online. With Digital Deal, it’s about 80%, he said.

“As you think about the research and the pre-qualification process, and now with Digital Deal, this really puts a much more complete deal-building process with much more of that deal-jacket, if you will, able to be completely done, customized to whatever dealer rooftop the customer is working with, online,” Rosenfeld said.  

“So, in that case, in this way, the consumer can maybe get say, 80% of the way online, by doing everything from getting their hard-pull credit check, building a custom, deal-specific with that rooftop, again, around their F&I products, to get to the point where they can then walk into the dealership and be able to have a pretty near penny-perfect deal, efficient and ready to close with that dealer,” Rosenfeld said.

“On one hand, it's helping the dealer get a really purchase-intent customer … much further through the process,” he said. “But also, it allows that customer that flexibility. If they want to do 10% online, we can enable (that), and if they want to do much more of that (online), we also now have that capability as well.” 

Dealers will be able to leverage the 31 million unique average monthly U.S. consumer visitors to CarGurus, and tap into a digital platform unique to their own stores that includes F&I products, lenders and a host of other services within their listings page.

For instance, through Digital Deal, dealers will be able to integrate finance functionality, F&I protection products, appointment setting, delivery scheduling and an optional $500 reservation deposit.

There is also an “Area Boost” service integrated into Digital Deal that enables dealers to expand their selling radius and compete with online retailers selling nationally.

“With Area Boost, dealers that have that capability or are willing to offer delivery, they can ensure that their listings are seen outside of their local radius,” Rosenfeld said.

A dealer might be in Nashville, for example, but with Area Boost, a shopper four states away would still be able to see their listing, he added.

“And within Digital Deal during that checkout process, for those dealerships that have enabled that flag that, ‘yes, we do offer this logistical service, and we want to service our listings to out of market shoppers,’ customers can choose to flag to the dealer that they want to schedule delivery and set a time for that and start to work through that process right then and there,” Rosenfeld said.

Granted, the digital retail space is a crowded one. Not only are there national online retailers like Carvana, Vroom and Shift, but also a bevy of companies enabling digital retailing as a service for dealerships.

So, where does CarGurus see its offering standing out?

Rosenfeld said, for one, the term “digital retail” is often “all-encompassing” one that acts as an umbrella of everything from the Amazon model to a pre-qualifying a lead.

“And so, I think when we think about digital retail, it is really about empowering that flexibility for dealers to be able to sell online to offline without any kind of geographical boundaries,” he said.

For CarGurus, one of their value propositions is that they're able to take advantage of website traffic, as tens of millions of monthly visitors go to the site and view dealer listings, Rosenfeld said.

“And then by enabling that flexibility for customers and all that data that we see from how customers are choosing to shop, we can then ensure that the digital deals that are going to dealers are efficient and effective as possible, to enable them really to sell more inventory and compete with the online players, especially,” Rosenfeld said.

“Having that amount of CarGurus traffic, as well as building out solutions that are really customized for individual rooftops, will ultimately create a really seamless and frankly best in class consumer experience shopping, but also will, at the end of the day, enable dealers to just sell more cars more effectively and with more flexibility.”