A few years ago, mobile websites were considered one of the best ways to cater for mobile customers. However, that was before the arrival of Responsive Web Design, which adapts the website for all devices and screen sizes. This improved the user journey and reduced the amount of admin car dealers had to perform to keep the website up to date, and so mobile websites fell out of favour.
So, why is a mobile website a bad choice for you and your car buying customers?
1. Mobile websites have less functionality then responsive websites
Generally speaking, a mobile website is simpler and more basic than a standard website.
This means that you won’t be offering your customers the same convenient and useful functionality that your main website offers, which can reduce enquiries and stop you selling as many cars.
Logic says you want to offer functions and convenience whilst still looking good on mobile, which is where a well-executed responsive website comes into its own.
2. Mobile websites are less appealing than a responsive website
The reduced functionality a mobile website offers also tends to go hand in hand with it looking less appealing than a responsive dealer website that resizes all your car images, banners and content to look as good as possible on every screen.
Of course, this isn’t a rule of thumb, but even some of the biggest retail websites in the UK look dull and limited on their mobile version.
With so many dealerships and competitors out there, you don’t want to risk putting customers off.
3. 50% of dealer website traffic is now on a mobile devices
Our analysis of thousands of pieces of website data over more than 190 of our dealer websites shows that a big percentage of traffic is visiting your website on a mobile device such as a phone.
With this becoming more and more important you simply don’t want to be limited by the disadvantages of a mobile website. All of the points we are making in this post are suddenly increased in significance by the sheer volume of visitors they apply to.
4. You will have to update your offers and content twice if you have a mobile website
Maintaining the new and used car offers, not to mention all the static content pages, on your website every month and every quarter is a big and resource heavy job, as we are sure you are all aware.
On a mobile site you will have to do these updates twice – once on desktop, and once on mobile. Most dealers simply don’t have the resources or the inclination to put such a large and unnecessary drain on their marketing team, even with the support of an agency like Bluesky Interactive.
5. Return visitors will have trouble finding the same pages again
We know that car buyers will spend a number of weeks narrowing down their potential next car, and part of that will be returning to your website on a number of occasions, and on a number of devices.
They might visit your website on a mobile device when they walk past a dealership, but then return on a desktop whilst at work, finally revisiting to look at that perfect car on their iPad at home.
With a mobile website, the URL for each page is different to on a desktop site, and there often aren't all the same pages as on the main site. This makes it more difficult for dealers to re-navigate to pages they've visited previously. Painful!
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