2026 Automotive Dealer Benchmarks Report

For the eighth year, Foureyes analyzed dealer website data to identify industry benchmarks, so you can compare your dealership’s performance and see what it takes to stay competitive.

Written By
Matt Inda
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For the eighth year, Foureyes analyzed dealer website data to identify industry benchmarks, so you can compare your dealership’s performance and see what it takes to stay competitive. 

This isn't just any report. We've analyzed more than one billion dealer website visits, and more than 30 million units of inventory, to expose the uncomfortable truth about where leads come from, where the process gets tripped up, and areas to keep an eye out for. 

Want to know if your dealership is leaving money on the table? These benchmarks dive into trends and pain points from the past year with real dealership data. 

The Analysis

Foureyes tracked, analyzed, and aggregated data – more data than ever before –  from January 2025 - December 2025, which included: 

  • 1.4 billion dealer website visits 
  • ~32 million unique pieces of inventory 
  • 22,900+ automotive dealership websites (including group sites) 

To provide clear benchmarks, this report filters out website activity from bots, solicitors, job seekers, service customers, and other non-sales leads that dealers nationwide received.

Mishandled Opportunities

The best intentions and mapped out sales processes still result in leads getting lost in the shuffle - whether they’re not logged to CRMs, there's a delay in follow-up, or they got skipped over. The impact of “mishandled” leads can’t be understated. 

42.7% of qualified leads were mishandled.

This mishandled figure dropped by a small margin – 0.5% year-over-year. Website calls and forms actually performed better overall -- the modest improvements overall in mishandled leads were driven by a whopping 3% jump in mishandled chat leads.  

Unlogged Opportunities

15.2% of those qualified leads were never logged to the CRM.

For the sixth year in a row, this trend has grown consistently: 10.6% in 2020, 11.7% in 2021, 12.4% in 2022, 13.1% in 2023, 14.1% in 2024, and 15.2% in 2025. 

The waiting is the hardest part

When shoppers did connect with a dealership, they were on hold for ~73 seconds - more than a minute - though this is down slightly from last year. 

Lead Follow-Up 

Though still higher than ideal, 62.8% of sales leads didn’t hear back from a salesperson within 24 hours of returning to a dealer’s site.

*Note: Qualified lead must have already submitted a form, chat, or website call before returning to site.

According to Foureyes data, this is the biggest shift (a decrease) for years in this stat -- as it’s been hovering around 65% for the past five years.

Time to Close

Among sales leads that end up buying from dealers, 61.2% close within just three days of their initial website inquiry (form, chat, or call), up from 60% last year, and the fourth year in a row this stat has improved. 

With that said, that still means 38.8% of sales leads close after 3 days, leaving real money on the table. 

Lead Attribution

Calls continued to generate the most total leads, but once again, forms resulted in the highest percentage of pipeline and actual buyers. 

Note: 11.7% of all sales leads ended up buying -- the majority of which came via website form submissions. This saw a nice uptick from last year’s 10.2%. 

Sales Leads by Channel

Paid channels were the highest proportion of total sales leads, and for the first year, also the highest rate of leads that eventually bought. 

Organic, email, referral, and direct leads also decreased in their efficacy year-over-year. 

Keeping this in mind, the chart below reflects last year’s trends, and can help with decision making on your marketing dollars. 

The assistant you didn't know you needed (or could have)

We published this report every year to surface goals, gaps, and opportunties for your dealership, but also to show what kind of data insights are possible when you connect your data infrastructure into a single foundation. Need help following up with leads long-term? Want to connect your CRM, DMS, website, inventory, phone, and vendor data?

Get in touch here to learn how.

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