As an established AM100 Motor Group, Pentagon prides itself on enhancing and adding value to the customer experience wherever possible.

Along with many other Groups, we see our web presence and our overall web strategy as key to the ongoing success and growth of our business. Many of our new and used car sales start out as leads and interest generated by our website.

Since integrating the Codeweavers ‘YourCarLoan’ and ‘YourCarMotorInsurance’ interactive web services into our site earlier in 2008 the effect on our business has been both measurable and extremely positive. When browsing our web stock, the customers are very happy to construct their own finance and insurance deal in the comfort of their own home. They have demonstrated that they like the functionality and interactivity that the site now brings, and are prepared to spend increased amounts of time on the site to construct the deal that reflects their own budget and their personal circumstances.

We demonstrate not only standard HP functionality but also residual value finance products. We believe that the addition of these products has helped us to re-assert Dealer point-of-sale motor finance as a viable option for the consumer by bringing to their attention the ways that they can fund their vehicle through Pentagon without having to go to a money supermarket site. In the same way they can find their own motor insurance quote quickly and easily via a shortened question set – again all integrated into our group used car stock.

We have seen a genuine upturn in incremental finance cases – customers that would probably have found their car loan through a money comparison site or some other internet lender. It is probably no coincidence that the majority of these incremental finance cases are residual value products such as PCP. Our site now provides a presentation of residual value products every time a consumer views a vehicle – thus raising the importance of the different ways in which a vehicle can be funded.

The average time that the customer spends on our site (the ‘stickiness’ of the site) has also increased. We have measured this independently and have found that in just three months our national ‘Hitwise’ rating in this area has moved just one of our sites, Pentagon Vauxhall, from 90th to 35th. We believe that YourCarLoan has played a major part in assisting us here.

In summary, we have experienced customers that have not just found our site and located vehicles they are interested in. Many of them have then gone on to construct their own finance packages, then either submit their complete finance proposal securely and directly to Pentagon or contact us directly for more details. We are also seeing these deals being paid out and delivered. In essence, we have captured these people earlier in the buying process and are seeing additional profit as a result.

The YourCarLoan service has helped to crystallise the focus on our web strategy – and as a business we will be increasing our marketing budget for the internet by 40% in 2009.