Do you have a responsive website?

You don’t need an official study to know the number of people browsing websites with mobile devices is climbing every day.

Simply look around any crowded spot these days and you will invariably see a handful of people, their faces awash in the digital glow, lost in browsing bliss on their smartphone.

And while only a few might be checking out dealership inventories, the automotive website and digital marketing solutions firm DealerFire insists shops that have responsive websites will make the best impression in our every-growing mobile world.

“The advantages of having a responsive website benefit both the dealership and its audience,” explained Christian Salazar, director of sales for the Wisconsin-based DealerFire.

“A responsive site offers consumers increased usability with the same experience whether on a traditional desktop computer, laptop, tablet or even mobile phone. The site actually responds to display properly in whatever setting it is called up in.”

DealerFire officially launched its first responsive site to the public last October. Salazar said that making the case to transition to a tradition dealership site starts with selling the ease of maintenance of the site itself. Everything runs off a single domain.

“This is also beneficial from an SEO standpoint, as any redirect issues are eliminated with a single URL,” said Aaron Schinke, DealerFire V-P of production and digital marketing. “And with no way of knowing what devices consumers will be using in the coming years, switching to a responsive website now ensures that a dealership will be in a solid online position for the future.”

Besides simply being more affordable and less time-consuming, this new type of website ensures content is consistent across all devices. Users don’t have to maintain several different versions when a change is made. This increases the value to visitors, and in turn, to search engines.

For all practical purposes, responsive takes multiple sites and turns them into one, eliminating the need to place tags on pages to prevent duplicate content and redirect error penalties.

Inbound links are also compiled in one location meaning improved SEO rankings by eliminating competing traffic sources.

Salazar said DealerFire has a number of Canadian clients including Airdrie Dodge Jeep and Stettler Dodge and RV in Alberta, Amherst Toyota and MacIntyre Chevrolet in Nova Scotia. It has most recently signed up an Edmonton-based dealer group to handle its responsive site needs.

Its work with Truro Toyota in Nova Scotia earned DealerFire a Dataim award for the highest inventory search volume last summer.

The company said it could manage as much or a little as the dealer requires.

While case studies are still being generated on the relatively new technology, Jon Sherrell of Rairdon Nissan, which beta tested the system for DealerFire last September said the results have been impressive.

“Since upgrading our website to responsive, we have seen an increase of overall traffic to our site of 85 per cent. Our inbound leads from our website have doubled and our conversions have increased by 25 per cent.”

Responsive websites cost $1,199 per month. DealerFire said its most successful customers step up to digital marketing packages that can range anywhere from $2,099-$4,990.

For more information about DealerFire, email info@dealerfire.com or call (877) 828-9719.