August 6
PRESS RELEASE
Dealers starting to move away from apps towards responsive web sites, says iVendi
Motor dealers are starting to move away from providing individualised apps to using responsive technology, meaning their general web sites will work on just about any Internet device.
The trend is being reported by motor industry technology specialist iVendi, which says that most dealer apps are simply too specialised in purpose for general customer needs and are also expensive to produce.
James Tew, director at iVendi, said: “By design, apps only tend to do one thing, so can be quite limited. The most common motor dealer app by far is a used vehicle stock search but this is only of use to a person who is looking for a car or van at a particular point in time. Even if someone downloads it, they are likely to delete the app once they have found a vehicle.
“A further drawback is that you need an app for each different kind of device. To cover your customer base properly, you might need at least four – to cover iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. It is an expensive and potentially complicated way to provide products and services to customers.
“Another disadvantage is that you are asking a customer to visit an app store and download an app before they can access your service. It is a longwinded process that perhaps only really makes sense for major used car portals such as Auto Trader, Motors and Driving.”
By contrast, James said, dealer web sites that offered a variety of customer tools such as car locators, service booking and finance calculators using responsive technology would be highly useable on any kind of phone, tablet, PC or laptop.
He said: “The general trend is for customers to access web services on a wider and wider range of devices, so making your web site responsive seems very much like the most cost effective and productive route to take.
“Certainly, we are seeing fewer and fewer dealers creating specialist apps and more and more adopting responsive technology. Our own core products – Quoteware and Car Finance Checker – are designed to work in this way and it is also the route that our major media partners are adopting.”
About iVendi
Founded in 2009, iVendi makes e-commerce solutions that make vehicle selling easier for dealers, vehicle buying easier for buyers, and vehicle finance easier for all. With offices in Manchester and Abergele and products in use at more than 1,000 car dealer locations in the UK, iVendi believes in innovating to deliver results.
For further details, please contact Simon Wells at Paperchase Public Relations on 01283 711311/07768 912430 or
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