carsales equips car buyers with a number of different sort options including Featured, Price (High to Low), Price (Low to High), Kms (High to Low), Kms (Low to High), Last Updated, Distance from me and more, that rerank a buyer’s search results in their desired order.

When it comes to searching for New and Used stock types, the popularity of different sort options follows the distinct differences between the two stock types.

Unsurprisingly, used searches are more focused on factors such as kilometres, year and last updated, while new searches are filtered to a greater degree on options Price (Low to High) and Price (High to Low).

Sorting preference differs greatly by make

Buyer ‘sort’ behaviour begins to show more significant difference across the popular makes by search on carsales, and in particular, when segmenting prestige makes and mainstream makes.

Whether it’s the lure of the badge, realising a dream or the perception of driving a better car, there’s no doubt that Australian buyers are keen to assess their ability of becoming a prestige car owner by sorting search results by price.

Buyers searching for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Land Rover, Porsche and Lexus models sorted by the Price (Low to High) option 33% of the time, as compared to those searching for models from mainstream makes, which used this option only 25.9% of the time.

Buyers searching for models from prestige makes also had a greater tendency to sort search results by Price (High to Low) and Year Made (High to Low).

Audi was the make that had the most buyers sorting by Price (Low to High), followed closely by BMW, while Porsche buyers were the most likely to use the Price (High to Low) option.

Prestige buyers are also considerably less inclined to sort by Distance from me, suggesting a greater inclination to travel for the right car.

Vintage Porsches in vogue?

Of particular note, Porsche buyers are significantly more likely to use the Year Made (Low to High) option, likely spurred by demand for classic 911 models which are appreciating in value. Year Made (Low to High) filtering on Porsche search results was almost double the next highest make.