Burlington, Vt. Dealer.com, a provider of online marketing solutions for the automotive industry, announced the addition of Vehicle Showroom for automotive dealer Websites; a marketing solution that features CarFlix Virtual Test Drive videos, a video gallery for dealers’ inventory, and an online research center designed to keep car shoppers on dealer Websites longer. In a recent dealer study involving nearly 10,000 Internet shoppers, Dealer.com video tools were shown to increase lead submissions by as much as 87 percent.

Vehicle Showroom is a set of pages within a dealer’s Website that includes the same research tools that a car shopper would find on a manufacturer site, helping keep customers on the dealer site longer. Within every showroom, CarFlix Virtual Test Drive videos are featured, with customized content for each vehicle model.

“Dealers are realizing very quickly that they must compete on the Web with third-party sites for customers and this multimedia platform allows them to do so at little cost,” said Dean Evans, chief marketing officer of Dealer.com. “As fast as video is exploding on the Internet, in less than a year, if a dealership does not have video on its Website, most consumers will think of it as outdated as a black and white television.”

Fifty-nine percent of auto dealers say they plan to use Internet video on their own Websites during the next 12 months, up from the current 33 percent, according to a new study by The Kelsey Group, a provider of research, data and strategic analysis on local media, small-business advertising, mobile and vertical market advertising.