Inside our First Customer Advisory Group: What we Heard and What’s Next
This week we held our first official Customer Advisory Group, bringing together 25 retailers for a full day at our Autotrader office in Manchester.
The session was designed to create space for open, honest conversations – and to ensure retailer feedback directly shapes what we do next.
Top 5 Challenges
Throughout the day, we captured a range of challenges that retailers are facing, both within the wider industry and on the Autotrader platform. These were:
Retailers highlighted the need for our pricing insights to be more relevant for their local area, so they are easier to action.
We’re trying hard to create a consistent experience for buyers on Autotrader, however retailers told us they are finding it harder to stand out because of this - other than just price. They want more opportunity to stand out and showcase the value and services they offer.
Dealers need clearer, more transparent reporting to fully trust lead quality and attribution. Because the customer journey spans multiple touch points, it’s hard for them to identify exactly what source is driving the most leads.
Retailers want a smoother day-to-day experience using our platform, removing the small friction points that slow them down. Things like improvement to lead notifications and improved messaging tools so they can easily communicate with consumers.
Dealers want to keep working towards a more transparent, balanced partnership that works both ways. One with clearer communication, and a commercial model that gives them more flexibility and control over their Autotrader subscription.
Digging Deeper
When we held our listening sessions in December, there were a few key areas that kept coming up from retailers, so we gave members of the advisory group the opportunity to input into how we’re developing these areas.
Those were:
Price Indicator -
We ran an interactive session with members of the group and product teams to explore improvements, including:
Visual design
How Price Indicators are calculated
Better ways to highlight value-driving features like prep standards.
Communications –
An interactive session to understand what channels dealers would like us to use when communicating important updates, to ensure they don’t miss important information that could impact them.
We also explored what works and what doesn’t with our current communications, and anything that’s missing that they would like to see across our marketing channels.
Portal –
A session to understand what metrics are missing for customers and identifying those that are most important for you to run your dealerships.
This was to help support the development of some new enhanced reporting in Portal.
“It was a pleasure to spend the day with the Customer Advisory Group for our very first session at our new Manchester office.
It was encouraging to hear that many retailers had a very strong Q1 and remain optimistic as we move into Q2.
Our discussions highlighted several themes shaping the months ahead, including the impact of the conflict in the Middle East, stock availability, and rising interest rates—challenges that will be familiar across the sector. Reassuringly, most retailers have not yet seen significant disruption, and in some cases have experienced increased demand, particularly in EV sales as a result.
We’re very grateful to all members of the group for taking the time to join us, share valuable feedback and contribute directly into our product and development priorities - it’s great that you can represent the broader industry and the challenges and opportunities they are facing. We look forward to meeting up again in June.“
Nathan Coe, CEO, Autotrader
Changes we’ve already made
You can keep track of all the product developments currently being prioritised as a result of the advisory group and other retailer feedback here.