The Auto Retail Network Website Report 2013 is the first ever comprehensive study into customer facing websites in the auto retail industry. It sets out to assess the online offering from leading car manufacturers, franchised car retailers and used car retailers.

Its purpose is to highlight best practice and to identify common barriers to customer satisfaction. Although a scoring system has been used for clarity, we have not set out to identify winners and losers. Nor are we going to start handing out awards.

An important early strategic decision was that the study should be entirely customer focused and not technical. That is: we would approach the study thinking about what the customer wants and make any decisions on that basis.

A good example of this might be a live finance quote or a part-exchange valuation. We understand that there are good commercial reasons why a dealership might not want to give a computer-generated quote over the internet. But this function exists and we believe many customers are looking for it; if it’s not available, they may go elsewhere.

Equally, we decided not to worry about technical aspects such as search engine optimisation. We were looking for clean, fast loading; clear branding and, in the case of mobile devices, optimisation and adaption to the device.

The test devices

As far as possible, we tried to use the test devices in the environment in which the customer would use them. Thus, the tests were conducted as follows:

Desktop testing was done on a Toshiba Satellite L650 using Internet Explorer 10 with a typical rural broadband connection delivering 5kbps.

Tablet testing was done using an iPad 2 using the pre-loaded Safari browser and the same wi-fi broadband connection

Smartphone testing was done on a Samsung Wonder GTI8150 running Android software and using a 3G connection with a medium strength signal (usually the reception of a local hotel).

The scoring system

There was considerable discussion among our consultative panel (see: who checked us?) about how we should score the sites and, especially, how we should handle the two ‘mobile’ formats: tablet and smartphone.

In the end, we took the view that potential customers move across devices all the time and that the core judging criteria should not change just because device had changed.

As one of our panel commented: “If I want to visit Amazon or eBay I expect to be able to do everything that I can do on desktop on mobile. Why should auto retail consider itself any different?”

So, we developed a list of core criteria for each category (manufacturer, franchised and used) and then expected both the tablet and smartphone versions of the desktop site to deliver the same functionality but in the modified format.

For each of the listed core criteria, the scoring was in three parts:

Availability: does the site being checked have the function and are there any strengths or weaknesses

Navigation: is the function quick, easy and intuitive to find from the home page and simple to use

Functionality: does the function do what it’s supposed to do, noting any particular strengths or weaknesses

There were also points awarded for initial presentation and performance, including speed of loading and everything working correctly.

For the tablet and smartphone tests, the ability to adapt to the device (landscape and portrait) was critical. Failure to have a site which recognised the device and presented the function in an easily usable format resulted in no points being awarded across the test.

Finally, for the mobile devices, there were extra points available for clear contact details including functions such as ‘click-to-call’ and navigation to site. All the research suggests that this is important to customers on the move.

Choosing the criteria

The core criteria for each category are listed on this page. In our view, they represent the functions that most potential customers coming to a site would be looking for.

The criteria vary slightly depending on the category and most particularly with the used car retailers where, obviously, there is no new car functionality or brochure download. Websites have been judged purely within their category so there is no comparison between say, manufacturers and franchised retailers.

Most of the criteria are fairly obvious though some might need a bit of further explanation :

First impressions: for both the franchised and used car retail we were looking for strong retailer branding and an attempt to create trust. We assumed the branding on a manufacturer site would be strong.

Enquiry response: we sent a fairly standard enquiry about a used car but ‘out-of-hours’ (between 7pm and 9pm on a weekday). We then judged the speed and the quality of the response.

Special offers: we were looking for offers across new, used and aftersales, where appropriate.

Book a service: we expected to be able to actually book a confirmed time-slot; not just make an enquiry. This also applied to part-ex valuation. We wanted a price; not just to make an enquiry.

Social media & feedback: we expected this to boost a potential customer’s confidence to buy by being relevant and current.

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