ONLINE RESERVATIONS

Making it easy for you and your customers

Thank you for partnering with us during the beta phase to help develop this essential component of digital retailing. On this page, you’ll find key information, help, news and updates.

We’d recommend bookmarking the page and sharing with anyone in your team who might handle a reservation.

The why, the what and how

Too many potential buyers are left frustrated and disappointed when the vehicle they’ve spent hours researching is no longer available. With online reservations, buyers can secure the vehicle, to make that disappointment a thing of the past. And because its always live, you’ll get buyers with high purchase intent and secure sales, even when your dealership is closed. Download this guide to see a step by step guide on what it looks like and how it works.

Download the overview

3 important things we expect from YOU

For this to be effective for you and for us, we need to ask these three essential requirements.

  1. Keep your stock up to date

    It’s vital that advertised vehicles are genuinely available so that buyers are not disappointed. If a car is sold, please mark them as ‘Sold’ in Portal.

  2. Respond quickly

    Buyers who pay a reservation fee have very high purchase intent and don’t expect to wait. We’re seeing great conversion rates when retailers respond within 30 minutes.

  3. Give us your feedback

    Let us know of any feedback you have so we can build more power for you into the service.

News and updates

LATEST: Many of you have told us that the £199 deposit fee seems too high. So, we’re about to change it from £199 to £99 to test the impact it has on consumer engagement and conversion. We’ll let you know when the test has gone live.

Leave us feedback

Click here to leave us any feedback about the online reservations service.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. This can be accessed in Account -> Connected accounts. The user will need to have the Online Reservations admin permission. This is provided as part of being onboarded to the product.

Yes. There is one connected account / bank account per dealership

No. A vehicle can only be reserved once. Once it is reserved, other consumers will no longer be able to reserve the vehicle.

Auto Trader has informed the consumer that the reservation will be held for 5 days and that the retailer can cancel if they haven’t heard from them after this 5 day window. Beyond that, all reservations will auto expire after 21 days.

For the purpose of the pilot, the reservation function will only be displayed on your Auto Trader adverts.

No. For consistency we will be setting a reservation amount of £99 for all participating retailers.

For any support, please reach out to your Account Manager.