Cars took their place among discounted electronics and holiday deals during the biggest shopping weekend of the year, but dealers may not have actually seen many of these shoppers show up on the lots.

According to Dataium’s annual Holiday Auto Shopping report, mobile shopping on Black Friday continued to be a rising trend.

In fact, 33 percent of all online automotive visitors browsed with mobile devices this past Black Friday, compared to 27 percent on other Fridays in November, according to the report.

Dataium has observed mobile auto shopping on Black Friday increasing by 10 percent each year for the past three years, up from 12 percent in 2011 and 22 percent in 2012.

It seems the rising use of tablets may be contributing to these statistics.

According to the report, 44 percent of all mobile auto shopping traffic came from iPad devices during Black Friday.

Last year, iPads only accounted for 10 percent of all auto traffic from mobile devices, Dataium reported.

"This year's holiday shopping trends highlight how important it is for auto dealers to have a website optimized for mobile," says Joe Burns, director of business intelligence at Dataium.

"There's a new generation of mobile-savvy auto shoppers that use a wide variety of devices, and they expect a fully functional experience across all their devices. Even though iPads are becoming more popular, many shoppers are still accessing dealer sites on smaller screens," he continued.

"Making a website as functional as possible across all devices will ensure dealers are engaging these new shoppers effectively."

Though mobile trends marked the most significant numbers, there was also a 4-percent increase in average visitor traffic on dealer websites on Thanksgiving and a 3-percent increase in average visitor traffic over the holiday weekend, year-over-year.

Interestingly, though Cyber Monday is coined as the busiest online retail shopping day, the Monday before Thanksgiving was the busiest day for automotive websites, according to the report; the visitor traffic was 12 percent higher than average daily November traffic

And which automakers benefited the most from these increases in online traffic?

Luxury brands Acura and Audi enjoyed some of the largest overall increase in online visitor activity, according to the report.

Dataium also pointed out that visitors to Fiat dealer websites jumped 23 percent on Black Friday compared to average daily visitors in November, the single largest increase in Black Friday traffic of any automotive brand. However, the analysis emphasized that lead submissions for the brand were 28 percent lower than average daily performance in November.

Attracting the Growing Number of Mobile Shoppers

So more mobile customers are heading to dealership websites, but the questions remain, how can dealers best attract them and what should they focus on?

Dennis Galbraith, chief marketing officer for Potratz, tackled this very issue in a recent video installment of the “Hard Facts” series.

Galbraith called mobile devices and tablets “the big growth area” for automotive sales.

And he noted there way “ways to bring mobile-specific shoppers into your store,” and this may be key to sales growth.

“You are going to find that often times you can get them (mobile shoppers) at a lower cost-per-click. Often times they convert at a higher rate, so the cost for a phone, email lead or chat is less,” said Galbraith.

He also explained there is “tremendous value” is moving mobile users over to your dealership website.

In fact, Galbraith said, “Understanding the mobile user is key to maximizing your investment in terms of driving traffic over to your website.”

Sarah Rubenoff can be reached at srubenoff@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.