Manheim calls on car dealers to embrace responsive websites

More than one billion smartphones and tablets are expected to be sold worldwide in 2013, and 'on-the-move' consumers are increasingly demanding products, services and access to information from mobile devices at all hours of the day (and night). To meet this demand, Manheim Retail Services has recently launched a number of responsive websites for customers, with the results already proving their worth.

The redesigned, responsive Hendy Car Supermarket website, designed by Denfield and built by Manheim Retail Services, was launched in the autumn of 2012. Featuring intelligent search functionality, sophisticated finance calculators and detailed vehicle specifications, the website for the Exeter-based dealership has shown impressive year-on-year growth in search traffic, with the responsive platform seeing almost 18 per cent more visitors than its non-responsive predecessor.

Le Etta Pearce, sales and operations director at Manheim Retail Services, comments: "The motor industry has long debated the worth of having separate sites or platforms for different devices, with mobile websites taking precedence for a number of years. However, with the increasing variety of devices which consumers can use to go online, the logical next step is a website which can be viewed across the majority of platforms.

"As a result, we are now advocating responsive website design for the vast majority of our dealer customers, as being the most efficient and effective way of supporting as many consumers as possible. We're delighted that our work with Hendy Group, on the first responsive site of its kind, was awarded the Wheeler Dealer 'Best Used Car Website' Award at the end of last year."

Mark Busby, new car sales and group marketing director at Hendy Group, adds: "When we were looking to update our website, we knew we wanted something striking, yet simple and functional. The Manheim team advised that we look into responsive design in order to ensure customers could access information and images from any device. We're thrilled with the results and we've already seen a significant increase in traffic to the new website."