10 February 2014

We’ve just completed the analysis of our annual Mobile Trends in Auto Retail survey. As the title suggests, it looks at trends in the mobile-device ready websites that retailers use as well as how leads from this area are handled. And there are surprising and also not-so surprising results.

It’s no surprise that enquiries coming from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, particularly for used cars, are rocketing.

But what, at least to me, is the biggest surprise is that despite this very obvious trend (and with it the amount of out-of-hours clicks) retailers are still not increasing the their out-of-hours coverage. This year’s figures show 63.4% of retailers only have an ‘opening hours’ response service for enquiries, virtually unchanged from last year’s 65.7%.

The other third of retailers have out-of-hours coverage and I can’t help think that, going on my own car buying experience, it’s this select few that must be winning additional business at the expense of those that keep daytime-only hours.

To me, it seems like madness not to be communicating with customers when customers are doing their shopping.

Without this facility in place customers are simply going to go elsewhere.

If you want to read the full analysis of the Mobile Trends in Auto Retail, it’s published in the February issue of Auto Retail Bulletin out later this week. And if you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign-up for a free trial here and we’ll send you a copy.

Tristan Young

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Tags: extended opening hours, Mobile Trends in Auto Retail, mobile-savvy, survey