Most auto dealerships have already realized that when their car dealer website takes too long to load, a lot of web users will click off and find what they are looking for on a different car dealership’s website.
Just in case the potential loss in sales hasn’t been incentive enough to ensure your dealer site loads quickly, Matt Cutts of Google has announced that Google is going to start taking the load time of a website as a factor in their search engine rankings algorithm, beginning sometime in 2010.
Aim for your each page to load in less than 10 seconds, maximum–the quicker the better. This means you may have to limit the amount of flash you use on your site (flash also doesn’t rank as well in search engines), keep big files like images, auto-play videos, and sounds to a minimum, and use a car dealer website provider that builds fast loading sites.
The longer your site takes to load, the more web visitors will click off, the more conversions you will miss out on, and ultimately, the less cars your dealership will sell. And starting soon, the lower you could rank in Google.