BMW dealers ranked highest in the 2019 Pied Piper PSI Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking Study, which answers the question, “What happens when customers visit a dealer website and inquire about a vehicle?”

Acura dealers were ranked second, followed by Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.

New for 2019 was an update to ILE scoring, which increased weighting for the content of a dealership response. As a result, the industry average ILE score declined to 52 from 57. ILE scores ranged from zero to 100, with 15 percent of dealerships nationwide scoring above 80, demonstrating an effective website-response process. However, 34 percent of dealerships scored below 40, struggling to respond effectively to today’s website customers.

Pied Piper submitted customer inquiries through the individual websites of 9,264 dealerships, asking a question about a vehicle in inventory, and providing a customer name, email address and local telephone number. Pied Piper then evaluated how the dealerships responded by email, telephone and text message over the next 24 hours.

Twenty different measurements generated a dealership’s PSI-ILE score.