Car retailers’ efforts to drive sales through digital sales processes designed to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 delivered a 10% increase in new car orders last month.

Data released by lead management specialist Dealerweb indicated that the recent growth of the used car market had shown signs of a plateau during October, efforts to leverage online sales had delivered strong results.

New car order take rose 10.5% on the same month last year as Cap HPI reported that the used car market delivered a small decline of 2.1% on October 2019.

Cap HPI head of valuations, Derren Martin, reported last week that "wholesale prices fell across the board", with city car and supermini prices falling by 2.9% (£150) and 2.5% (£200) at three years of age.

James Hill, managing director of Dealerweb, said: “The strength of the new car market continues to grow, and the sector can take some comfort that dealers are much better prepared to trade digitally than back in March.

“With orders for new cars up in double digits last month we hope it positions them well for the coming weeks.”

Dealers will be relying heavily on their online tools and the provision of click and collect and home delivery sales processes following news of England’s ‘Lockdown 2’ at the weekend.

Dealerweb said that it had seen dealer enquiries increase by 4.7% for new cars and decline 1.3% for used cars in October, with digital channels continuing to gain momentum.

Average sale prices increased by 11.4% for new vehicles to £34,013 and 9.2% for used cars to £19,817, it said.

Dealerweb has introduced a raft of digital tools to help dealers trade digitally including a fully digital remote selling customer sales journey and FCA compliant e-signature function.

The study examined data from 800 dealers across the UK.