SEMA 2024: Where Websites Are Falling Behind
With the automotive industry steadily shifting towards online sales, brands that prioritize their digital presence have an excellent opportunity to lead.
The SEMA show in Las Vegas never fails to impress with its showcase of innovation, incredible cars, and industry excellence. With the automotive industry steadily shifting towards online sales, brands that prioritize their digital presence have an excellent opportunity to lead. In this post, I’ll share some additional observations about the landscape of SEMA exhibitors as a whole and highlight a standout brand that exemplifies what an effective online shopping experience should look like.
While there are a few brands that have their eCommerce strategies dialed up, the majority that I reviewed were lacking quite a few basics. For example:
- No eCommerce Capability: While most sites let you purchase online, there are still quite a few that don’t have that capability.
- Weak Collection and Product Detail Pages: These are crucial pages, and they were often underwhelming with minimal information or poor layout.
- Product Photography: Product photos were not crisp and lacked the feeling of being professionally done.
- Missing B2B Functionality: B2B sign up forms and functionality were absent on most sites.
- LinkedIn Presence: Quite a few exhibitors haven’t taken the time to create a company LinkedIn, which is particularly low-hanging fruit if you are serious about eCommerce.
The automotive and parts space has a lot of room to grow to improve their eCommerce experience. However, in all fairness, Shopify also needed to level up their game until recently with improved B2B features (more info in the next Shopify Editions set to be released in January of 2025).
Exhibitor Spotlight: CarTech, Inc.
- Product Photography. Check out the below example; the manuals really stand out and the shading give them a subtle 3D look that pops.
- Nod to Old School. There is a PDF catalog available for download. Now, that sounds old school (and, it is), but myself and a lot of people prefer to read physical books/print outs as opposed to everything online. Additionally, I love the noise when you turn the page of each catalog – sounds like you are reading a book.
- Shopify Design. CarTech’s Shopify theme is clean and easy to navigate. You can search by car and trucks and find all the manuals they have to offer.
CarTech is a good example of how to create an effective eCommerce experience. It also helps that they have powerful product photos and used white space on the site to make certain elements take focus. This is a great model for many SEMA brands looking to stand out!
–Chad Fisher, Founder & CEO @ Ambaum
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