Responsive Websites and Car Dealerships

As a car dealer, your dealership website probably isn’t often a top-of-mind concern. You may have an internet sales manager on staff — who probably also handles your social media, SEO, and content — or you may outsource a fair amount of your web presence. After all, you have sales targets to hit, plus thin margins and dozens of other concerns to worry you from day to day. But take some time to browse the informative analytics from Statcounter, especially with regard to device use and browsing habits. You’ll see that if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you could be experiencing a high bounce rate and penalties from Google. What’s that got to do with CarCasm and — more importantly — with your car dealership?

What Are Responsive Websites?

Let’s start by defining what a responsive website is. What, specifically, is it responding to? Time was, if you were browsing the web it was either on a desktop or laptop. Those platforms still matter, making up somewhere north of 47 percent of all web traffic, but a little mental math tells you that still leaves 53 percent of web traffic unaccounted for. Where’s it coming from?

Another 47 percent, give or take, comes from mobile phones. The remainder comes from tablets. The picture is further complicated by the number of browsers in use; while Google Chrome is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room, a number of other options are in use, including Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Explorer. The “responsive” aspect, then, is the ability to shapeshift across a number of devices and platforms.

Why Responsive Websites Matter

There are three reasons your site should be responsive.

Bounce Rate

Simply put, your bounce rate is the number of people who visit your site and leave without ever clicking past the page on which they landed. There are a number of factors that influence this, including site navigation, layout, graphics, copy, and more — but if your site isn’t displaying and working properly on someone’s iPad, they’re not likely to stick around. A high bounce rate will also hurt your SEO, since Google assumes that your site doesn’t have much of value if nobody’s bothering to click through.

SEO

Speaking of SEO, search engine optimization is another great reason for a responsive site. There’s a misconception that a responsive site actively boosts your SEO. It doesn’t, but Google will actively penalize sites that are not mobile responsive.

Time and Money

One way to cater to mobile users is to build out a separate version of the site for them. You’ll notice this if, for instance, you use Facebook on your desktop versus your mobile phone; there’s a separate site, with its own URL, to which the address redirects. While it’s feasible, it takes up time, money, and resources that you’d probably rather put to other uses.

Getting a Responsive Website

So if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, or if it is, but it seems to be missing something, what’s the alternative? You don’t need to have a degree in computer science, nor do you need to spend through the nose for a design firm. CarCasm offers responsive templates backed by a robust content management system, SEO services, and more. By allowing us to focus on your website, you can focus instead on your car dealership. To learn more about the services we offer, reach out for a consultation and solutions tailored to your dealership’s needs.