SRP buttons convert more shoppers. Here's the data.

Sometimes, conversion rate optimization is complex, incremental, and requires detailed A/B testing. Other times, however, it is as simple as making the buttons bigger, appear with greater frequency, and provide something that the user finds valuable.

We analyzed performance across a broad set of Motive dealerships over a multi-month period to answer a question that keeps coming up: do SRP action buttons actually move the needle on conversions?

Short answer: yes. Dealers with SRP buttons enabled show a 66% higher form lead rate and an 89% higher check availability + pre-qualification rate. Both results are statistically significant. And they achieve this without other lead types.

What we measured

We looked at dealership performance over a multi-month period and compared outcomes between sites with SRP buttons enabled vs. not enabled. We focused on conversion rates across common actions like check availability, pre-qualification, trade-in, deal builder, phone calls, test drive, and general contact form submissions.

To keep the comparison apples-to-apples, we controlled for differences in traffic volume and dealership mix so that a handful of very high-traffic sites didn’t dominate the results.

The overall picture

The median conversion rate for dealers with SRP buttons is 4.7%. Without them, it's 3.5%. The distribution tells the story clearly: SRP-enabled dealers cluster higher, and the gap widens at the top end. Dealers converting above 10% are overwhelmingly in the SRP-enabled group.

In Figure 1, on the left chart, notice the density flip at the transition from below-to-above median conversion rate. Below ~4-5%, the orange (without SRP buttons) dominates. Above it, blue (with SRP buttons) dominates. We believe that this should be interpreted as a phase transition. SRP buttons may be a prerequisite to maximizing conversion rate, if this is your goal.

Breaking it down by action type

Not all conversion types respond equally. Two action types show clear, statistically significant lift. The rest trend positive but are not conclusive yet.

Check availability showed the clearest lift. This is the single strongest signal in the dataset. It makes intuitive sense: giving shoppers a direct action on the search results page (SRP) removes a click from the funnel. Instead of navigating to the vehicle detail page (VDP) first, they can act immediately.

Qualify / pre-qual also showed statistically significant lift. Pre-qualification is high-intent: shoppers clicking this are serious. SRP buttons appear to surface that intent earlier.

Trade-in trends positive but wasn’t conclusive in this read. The direction is consistent with everything else, but we want more time and broader adoption to call it.

Phone calls are the most interesting. They trend positive, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant here.

Contact form, test drive, and deal builder trend positive but are harder to interpret due to uneven adoption and variance across stores.

What shoppers actually click

Before interpreting the conversion data, it helps to see what SRP buttons shoppers actually use. Over the study window, VDP click-throughs account for the largest share of SRP button clicks. Check availability is next, followed by payment estimate.

The takeaway: shoppers use SRP buttons primarily to navigate deeper (VDP) and to take lead-generating actions (check availability, estimate). The buttons aren't just decorative. They're functioning as a second conversion surface layered on top of your inventory listings.

The phone call question

One early concern was that SRP buttons might cannibalize phone leads by shifting shoppers toward digital forms. The data says otherwise.

When you look at the phone-to-form lead split, we saw a small shift toward forms — but not a meaningful reduction in phone leads.

This is the critical finding for any dealer worried about losing phone calls. The non-phone conversion rate (forms only) is 2.00% with SRP buttons vs. 1.20% without, and that gap is statistically significant (p = 0.003). SRP buttons generate net-new form leads. They don't steal from the phone.

This is the critical finding for any dealer worried about losing phone calls: SRP buttons generate net-new form leads without materially reducing phone volume.

Traffic tier breakdown

Conversion rates naturally decline as traffic increases. To control for this, we compared dealers within the same size tier.

The strongest signal comes from mid-traffic dealers, where SRP-enabled dealers meaningfully outperform those without.

Small dealers show more variance and mixed results, which we treat as directional only.

Large and very large dealers trend positive for SRP buttons, but we’d like more data before making strong claims at the highest traffic tiers.

The bottom line

For a typical Motive dealer, SRP buttons are associated with meaningfully more form leads per month — without reducing phone leads.

The highest-engagement dealers see the biggest returns. Top quartile SRP engagement corresponds to a 10.2% conversion rate: three times the bottom quartile.

Combining check availability and pre-qualification alone, SRP-enabled dealers see an 89% higher median rate. Form leads overall are 66% higher.

The funnel

Across SRP-enabled dealers over the study window, the raw funnel shows a consistent pattern: SRP CTA clicks create a meaningful parallel conversion path, and a substantial portion of those clicks lead into lead-form experiences.

That SRP click rate is the unlock. It creates a parallel conversion path that didn't exist before.

The caveat

This is observational data, not a controlled experiment. We can say dealers with SRP buttons convert more shoppers. We cannot say, with certainty, that SRP buttons caused the increase. It's possible that dealerships tech-savvy enough to enable SRP buttons also have better sites in general: cleaner inventory, faster pages, stronger merchandising.

The sample size is large enough (286 dealers) to dampen most selection bias, and the dealer-weighted methodology controls for traffic volume. But the gold standard would be an A/B test: take a handful of dealers, randomize SRP buttons on and off over 60 days, and measure the difference directly. That's on the roadmap.

The takeaway

If you're a Motive dealer and you haven't turned on SRP buttons, the data says you should. 66% more form leads. 89% more check availability and pre-qual submissions. No reduction in phone calls. The lift is real, it's consistent, and it compounds.