Month: September 2019

Penetration Chart with Bokeh

I have been honing my charting skills lately, because Bokeh is so amazing, and looking for practical applications (outside my stock trading hobby).  Here’s one I found recently.  This chart explores the timeless question, “are product sales off because the dealer isn’t supportive, or are vehicle sales off, too?”

I am thinking of protection products, but the same question could be asked of finance contracts or, indeed, anywhere you need to consider “penetration.”  That is, the percentage of vehicle sales that are also sales of your product.

Are product sales off because the dealer isn’t supportive, or are vehicle sales off, too?

In this chart, we consider year over year change in contracts relative to the change in vehicle sales for a collection of dealers.  Bubble size indicates the size of each dealership in sales volume.  We’ll get to bubble color in a minute.  Also, note the horizontal and vertical zero lines.

The dealers in the lower left quadrant have an excuse.  Riverside, for example, is down 30% in product sales.  When you call them, though, they’ll counter that they’re having a bad year.  Volume is also down, albeit only 11%.

The dealers in the lower right quadrant have no such excuse.  Downtown, for example, is also off 30% but on much improved vehicle sales.  So, we can infer that penetration has declined, and color them a darker shade of red.  Similarly, although contracts are up at National, they should be up more considering the good year they’re having.  So, orange.

O’Malley is green because, while contracts are off a bit, vehicle sales are worse.  O’Malley is doing the right thing and ramping up products to compensate for weak sales.  What the chart shows on the X and Y axes is straightforward enough, but it shrewdly assigns colors according to the change in penetration.

Bokeh is the visualization library Python programmers use instead of R or Matplotlib.  The color scheme here comes from running its red, yellow, green “linear color mapper” diagonally across the chart from lower right to upper left.  Dealers where penetration is unchanged from last year are yellow, like College and Bellevue.

Moto Commerce Digital Retail

Moto Insight has uploaded a complete demo of their digital storefront, Moto Commerce.  This shows confidence that they’re not worried about being copied, or being anatomized by some smart-aleck software consultant.  Here’s how Moto handles the six key functions:

  • Choose a vehicle – Including accessories.  I write a lot about the importance of protection products, but accessories are important too, especially for certain brands like Honda and Subaru.  Everything is shown at MSRP but, because the site is customized for each dealer, I imagine there is some flexibility.
  • Price the vehicle – Including incentives.  No idea whose data service they’re using for this.  I usually recommend Market Scan, but it is possible to roll your own.  Rodo recently developed their own incentives engine.  I tried to coach one of my clients on this, but they wouldn’t do it.
  • Price protection products – Including digital content.  Not clear how finance term is linked to protection term.  Customer could choose, say, 36 months of GAP on a 72-month deal.
  • Value the trade – They use Trade Pending, which I mentioned here, but they also offer a condition quiz with the ability to upload photos.  This is very strong because it allows the Used Car manager to bid on the vehicle during the online experience.
  • Structure the deal – The calculator is always running and continuously updates the monthly payment.  This is one approach to the nonlinear workflow problem, but it also means the customer is looking at an inaccurate payment throughout most of the shopping tasks.
  • Organize financing – Here, again, it’s hard to have confidence in the payment until we’ve processed a credit app.  The demo shows the customer choosing term and rate, as if his credit tier is already known.  Moto pushes to Route One and Dealertrack, but it should also pull.

Overall, Moto is a solid online shopping experience.  It does not literally sell the car, in the sense of doing the paperwork, but it does produce a complete, deliverable deal.  Next, the customer can reserve the vehicle, save the deal, and make an appointment.

The in-store version of Moto uses the same pages, making a seamless “omnichannel” experience for the customer.  This means it’s a potential replacement for your desking and menu systems.  Customers can also begin the process in-store, and take the deal home.

I’ll close with Andrew’s hook from the video.  Imagine your dealership offers this experience, and the other guy has only a lead form.  Which do you think the customer would rather work with?