Greystripe apparently surveyed over 850 people on it’s network between November last year and this February, on the topics of buying cars and mobile phones. According the release they issued today:

• 25% of iPhone and Android users plans to buy a car within 12 months
• 78% of thesse say they will use their mobile device for both searching and purchasing their car
• 15.6% intend to buy a new car, with another 10.4% looking at the used market

Dane Holewinski, director of marketing at Greystripe says “touch device users are a tech savvy consumer segment with plenty of income… Auto brands are aware of the attractiveness of this audience and have been one of the most aggressive industries when it comes to rich media mobile advertising that harnesses the power of touch.”

There have been a lot of links over the past few years between car makers and mobile apps. Greystripe claims that auto brands alone have increased their spending by 113% in Q1 2011 over the same period in 2010. Hyundai for example includes the Equus owner’s manual pre-loaded on an iPad when you purchase the automobile new.

While auto shoppers performing a purchase transaction with their local dealers via smartphones is not on the horizon, accommodating communications between dealers and buyers via smartphone devices and tablets is becoming increasingly important. Mobile phone apps are one way to accommodate this communication, and so too are mobile-friendly websites, and text messaging.

What Should Dealers Do?

From a marketing perspective, dealers must be considering the mobile experience in just about everything they do in advertising, be it by including text opts-in in radio and TV ads, or QR codes in printed ads display ads, or even more simple and conventional touch points such as mobile-friendly emails.

When you send out an email today, you must consider the fact that people receiving it are expected to click links in it, and so you want to make sure you know what the mobile experience will be like for them.

For instance, if your email includes a link to a page on your website, but your website is set to auto-detect mobile browsers, which often includes tablet browsers, then you want to make sure that the destination page on the mobile site is consistent with the destination page on your website. Of course of your website is not set to auto-detect a mobile platform like this then you want to make sure your website as a whole is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, the mobile experience for your customers, which is growing rapidly, is likely to cause issues.

This is but one example of how the marketing has changed and will continue to change in the coming age for auto dealers. As one who is responsible for marketing at your dealership, take the necessary measures now to identify where and how you can improve the mobile experience for your customers.

The premise behind this video is about how auto dealer websites consistently underwhelm visitors and what is required to change that. While preparing for the web cast we ran to record this, I found myself disagreeing with some of Brian’s position about car dealer websites.

“Not all dealer websites are inadequate,” I would argue. But Brian would kindly and firmly say, “yes they are”. “Some do a good job,” I would continue. “No they don’t,” he would say.

But now I agree with Brian. What literally just about every car dealer website lacks today is online work flow, which is a common characteristic of the big e-commerce sites out there such as Amazon.com and eBay. By online work flow, Hoecht means that there is no total online experience for visitors on a dealer site. You can’t actually shop like you can on true e-commerce sites.

Here is an example…
Today I was on Flavia.com ordering coffee. I logged in to my account, browsed the selection, placed items into my shopping cart, mistakenly moved some items from my shopping cart to my favorites list, then put them back into my shopping cart after I realized what I did. When I went to check out I didn’t like the idea of paying $9 shipping for one month supply of coffee so I added more to my cart to stretch that shipping expense out across more time. But my shipping only increased so I called to see why shipping was so expensive.

While the customer service rep on the phone was explaining that there is a per-item charge for shipping I had another call come in so I told the rep I had to go and would deal with this later. I closed my browser and took the other call. Then when I came back later in the day, everything was right where I had left it, e.g. in my shopping cart awaiting me to purchase.

Now this was a true shopping experience. Despite not buying the coffee on my first visit, the fact that I could return later and pick up where I left off was clutch. This is not something you can do on any car dealer website I know of.

So Brian is right. Dealer sites do underwhelm because you can’t do anything on them but get to the end of a cul de sac and then ask for assistance or more information. There is no true e-commerce on most auto dealer sites which typically want to “marry you on your first date.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you see the disconnect?

People aren’t going to your website to become a lead. They want information to help them make an informed buying decision on such an important purchase. Yet dealers often limit the information they display so that visitors must INQUIRE to get what they want.

In other industries, people can go online to shop for almost any product out there. They can do their research and make an informed decision, be it online or off. However, with auto shopping they can only go online and inquire with dealers to obtain the information they need to complete their purchase. Lack of pricing isn’t always the missing nugget here, but items such as vehicle equipment upgrades and accurate monthly payments by credit tier certainly aren’t part of very many structured processes on many dealer’s sites.

This week we are pleased to welcome Brian Hoecht from Ai-Dealer who about 5 years ago set out to change this with the auto industry’s first true shopping cart for car dealers. His shopping cart gives auto dealers the ability to share 100% of each vehicle’s information and pricing to customers that create a log in, thus pre-qualifying visitors for dealers while giving buyers what they want.

Hoecht wrote about this recently on DealerRefresh.com in his post about best uses of dealership websites. Hoecht will be our guest presenter in this week’s AC Spotlight series which begins at 2:00pm EST on Thursday May 6. In this webinar we will look at…

• What auto shoppers really want
• What your typical dealership website is willing to give
• What a true automotive online shopping experience offers
• Ways that dealers can foster trust online

To attend this free GoToWebinar simply click the Register Now button below and fill in the required information. You will receive your very own log in to the webinar. If you are not able to make the webinar but are interested in receiving information such as this from our site then you can sign up to receive email and text alerts each week when we host a new session. It’s free and you may cancel your subscription at any time. Additionally you can follow us on Twitter @blogproautomo where we announce these webinars as well.

The popular seminar, hosted by AutoUpLinkUSA of Philadelphia, is an Internet inventory marketing seminar for new and used auto dealership professionals.

The event brings auto dealership professionals together with some of the industry’s most well-known providers of leading-edge Internet inventory marketing tools.

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Time: 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Place: Radisson Hotel, Valley Forge, 1160 1st Avenue, King of Prussia, PA

This seminar is free, and breakfast will be served. Handout materials will be provided for all attendees.

Featured Speakers and topics Include:

AutoConversion: Bridging the gap between dealership and shoppers using blogs, email marketing and video

All Auto Network: Design and develop a website that generates excitement and results.

CARFAX: Vehicle History, Inventory Management, Online Marketing and maximizing your ROI using vehicle history from wholesale to retail.

Liquidus Video: Creating a complete automotive video marketing strategy

E-Auto Business: Best practices for dealerships to ensure that their CRM dollars are spent wisely

Registration closes October 9.

To register, simply download the registration form here or click the image below. Space is limited! Fax in your registration today!