Dealership Mobile Website - Who are you using?

[Jeff Kershner]

Mobile is HOT! Many of us have seen huge increases in our dealership visits from mobile devices in the last 12-18 months.

...with 4G right around the corner, it's only going to become even more demanding.

I can't image a dealership website vendor NOT offering a mobile solution at this point. Few website vendors charge extra for mobile sites while many do not.

But who has the best mobile website solution??

DealerRefresh members - who hosts your dealership mobile website and what you like most or least about it?

*You can either share a link OR upload screen shots of your dealerships mobile website.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'll get this started...

We use DealerOn for our dealership websites and our mobile sites. We've placed a lot of focus while making several upgrades and additions over the last few months to our mobile sites. Just ask the crew over at DealerOn - we usually have a call once a week around our mobile sites.

I took time to get a few screen shots of our mobile sites...



The homepage - quick and easy nav. Random banner from the homepage gets displayed on the mobile homepage. NICE!

Click to call phone numbers.

*I hope to have the ability soon to have different numbers for our mobile sites for some additional tracking



One click to inventory with 5 results - nice and fast too!
Search results right to inventory with continued filter search



Search result page for specific inventory while showcasing CarFax 1 Owner icon with link to the CarFax report AND small video icon




The Mobile VDP - where it all "can" happen. Again, vehicle information, CarFax and Video links/icons.



I wanted our videos on our mobile sites. DealerOn and UnityWorks worked together on this project and got it done. Knowing the iPhone and BlackBerry refuse to allow flash - UnityWorks came up with a solution. When you click on the video icon, it determines what format the phone/mobile device is capable of. If no Flash is supported, it renders the video on YouTube.

*With UnityWorks having the ability to determine the mobile browser and rendering the YouTube video ALSO works very nice on the iPad. Nothing worse than visiting a site on an iPad and NOT being allowed to view the video due to it being in flash.



More photos on the VDP

*Working towards a separate image viewer to allow swiping through the images - traditional mobile style



My websites host the PureCar Value reports, so if course I wanted these our mobile sites to have this feature as well. Kudos to PureCars and DealerOn for working together to get this done for me.

*The full PureCar Value Report also looks good on mobile.



The forum. And DealerOn has made sure you know it's a forum with it's green outline.



The basic Google map integration - directions link out to Google but I would like to keep this in-site. We'll work on this.


We still have some features to work on like better showcase of new and used car specials. More importantly Service Specials / Mobile Coupons.

We have the DealerOn supplied schedule service form but we will be launching our AutoRevenue Mobile Service Scheduler over the next week. This allows the consumer to schedule in real time their service appointment.

Working on getting our DealerRater reviews either on the VDP (like our website sites) or part of the homepage quick navigation.

Overall I'm very please with the direction our mobile sites are going.

Who's next??

 

[Chris Cachor]

Hey Jeff,

Looks great. In terms of mobile visitors, how do you account for the various screen sizes? When you say mobile, does this work on every phone or are these sites optimized for high-end phones like iPhone/Android? I see the examples from an iPod Touch, so just curious. Also, are the mobile and desktop pages separate "versions"? I would imagine creating promotions for several websites including mobile versions to be tedious. Good to hear the mobile traffic increasing, though!

 

[JamesKovacs]

Jeff,

Care to share any results? Leads/Traffic/Conversion?

James

 

[Bill Simmons]

Our mobile sites are provided by VinSolutions, who is also our dealer group website provider. Here are some screenshots from our mobile homepage and website:



Pretty decent looking page with easy to understand navigation tabs. My problem with it is that I am a stand alone offsite used car dealership and do not have new car inventory. Although the name of my store is at the top, and the toll free number is to my store, this mobile site actually displays inventory for all 6 Haley Auto Group stores. It gets more confusing for a customer for instance if they click on the "maps and directions" tab, they see screenshot #2 which lists more of our groups stores. My goal obviously would be to keep them "onsite" at just my store, so there is some leakage here.

Also notice that there is not a link for anything related to fixed operations. I really feel that if we had a service tab, to display coupons or to give the customer the option to schedule an appointment that we could get some mileage out of that. Jeff, I noticed on your homepage screenshot a tab for your service department. Thoughts? Do your analytics show that people are using the mobile site for service? I asked for a feature request a few months ago with Vin to have the "new car" tab removed and replaced with a service tab and have had no response.

The best part of our mobile site is the VDP. It displays well, has a great list of all of the features on the car. On this particular car, if you click the link that says "view 30 photos" it takes you to the 4th screenshot where you either "swipe" the photos or use the button in the right hand corner to navigate through the pictures. Although I did not show a screenshot, there is a click to call and email button at the bottom of the VDP.

According to Google Analytics, I am getting around 300 +/- visitors per month from mobile devices. I would grade our site a 5 on a scale of 10. Could be a lot better, but better than nothing. I look forward to hearing feedback that you guys would like to share.

Thanks

Bill

 

[mattwatson81]

Bill, we can easily change the menu for you to remove new cars and add a link to service. Contact website support to have them do that. We can also create a different style for the whole site and add your logos and stuff to it. I think you have our default mobile site skin and menu that has never been changed.

 

[yagoparamo]

Jeff,

Do you think that the increase of traffic comes from smart phones or the recent increase in tablets?

For example, I used to use a PC around the house (I have 3 full PCs and 2 laptops at home) and now I installed IPADS with docking stations in places I didnt have a PC like the library for example and I find myself using that more often. When I use an IPAD I prefer the regular site instead of the mobile site.

Does the IPAD register as a mobile user then when I click regular website it does not?

So besides my first question something to think about is; it looks like these mobile sites are built for smart phones when perhaps more and more customers are coming from tablet devices that prefer the main site anyway?

 

[jimbell]

If you look in your google analytics, you can see what type of device is being used whether it be an iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry, etc. I am seeing HUGE numbers with the mobile devices and number are going up every month with the tablets and iPads being used as well.

 

[joe.pistell]

If you look in your google analytics, you can see what type of device is being used whether it be an iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry, etc. I am seeing HUGE numbers with the mobile devices and number are going up every month with the tablets and iPads being used as well.

I'm with your findings Jim.
Time on site and # of pages viewed is very strong here too. My %Repeat visitors is higher than my desktop site.... gulp... did I say "desktop site"?

woa... the earth moved over here.

 

[yagoparamo]

If you look in your google analytics, you can see what type of device is being used whether it be an iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry, etc. I am seeing HUGE numbers with the mobile devices and number are going up every month with the tablets and iPads being used as well.

jimbell,

but--are those users on IPAD counted as mobile when in reality are using ghe regular site?