AutoTrader Rebrands - What do you think?

[JessicaRuth]

AutoTrader has dropped the .com in an effort to show its mobile friendliness.



"Our new brand positioning is about an experience – less about the platform,” said John Kovac, senior vice president of marketing for Cox Automotive, parent of Autotrader, Atlanta, GA. “We are looking at how consumers engage with Autotrader more holistically.

“The drop of the .com reinforces that,” he said. “Our experience transcends the desktop and translates perfectly across devices.”

BTW - their website is not responsive (do you think that's on purpose?)

 

[ed.brooks]

I think almost everything at ATC is on purpose

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'm not sure if I'm down with the design of the new Logo - but okay. The font..meh. Like most changes...they take time to grow on ya.

ATC nor Cars.com have adaptive or responsive sites BUT both offer a mobile experience. Both offer mobile apps. I typically prefer the app experience over a mobile website, if and when the app is designed correctly and offers the same data, options and information found on the full website.

At least Autotrader (AT) is recognizing the importance of mobile.

 

[ispekhov]

Curious to see what they put into the meaning of experience

 

[ed.brooks]

In the recent Deloitte study, "The New Digital Divide" (digital habits, but not auto shopping focused) here is one GREAT observation on Customer Experience -
We see customers...

Using “screens” (desktop, mobile, tablet) very differently throughout their path to purchase.​

We see retailers...

Creating sameness across “screens” by emphasizing functionality such as responsive design and failing to recognize these individual interactions as part of a larger journey toward the path to purchase​

Bridging the digital divide...

Customers want a shopping experience that “connects the dots” along their path to purchase. Viewed as discrete interactions across screens, these interactions are meaningless. Viewed as a holistic customer experience, these interactions become powerful predictors of preference and purchase intent.​

 

[craigh]

ATC nor Cars.com have adaptive or responsive sites

Offering a mobile site is usually a form of adaptive design - hardly ever do they redesign a separate application.
In most cases they just have separate stylesheets, javascript and view modifiers that make the mobile site work, but it's typically powered by the exact same back-end, just pointed to a mobile domain because that used to have mobile SEO benefits.
http://m.cars.com/#search

 

[ispekhov]

Guys, there are two things - responsive design (with several breakpoints) that allows to scale a page from web to mobile and native apps. That's it.

 

[craigh]

Guys, there are two things - responsive design (with several breakpoints) that allows to scale a page from web to mobile and native apps. That's it.

Native app != Mobile Website

 

[ispekhov]

Native app != Mobile Website

Native app is one thing. Mobile site is another. Mobile sites are useless as they require separate maintenance. It makes much more sense to just make your site responsive.

 

[craigh]

Native app is one thing. Mobile site is another. Mobile sites are useless as they require separate maintenance. It makes much more sense to just make your site responsive.

Read through the forums. Many debates on the subject.
That said, that's just factually inaccurate. The whole idea of adaptive design is that it adapts the parts that need to be adapted to mobile, but the content itself and various other key pieces can often be used on both platforms. I only run 150 websites, so I have a much smaller sample size than the Dealer.com guys and other vendors, but I can tell you that responsive in dealer sites (as an example) has been poor so far with very few exceptions to that.

Can responsive be done properly? Yes.
Can it be done properly while still giving the Internet Lead Manager access to the CMS to add his own content? Getting tougher.

I understand your view of responsive and I agree in many ways, but adaptive gives us far more control over the experience.
Numerous studies (again, linked elsewhere in these forums) have shown that shoppers are using desktops and mobile devices in very different ways to interact with the dealership, so why not giving them a better experience on each device, tailored to what they're doing?

Obviously the catch here is that you could do an extremely well done responsive site that removes non-mobile content based on screen size, etc - it's all possible, but I think that level of customization makes the website far too difficult to manage.