SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. -

There was a paradigm shift that began two to three years ago, says DealerSocket’s Aaron Schinke, where people changed how they accessed the Internet, turning to a bevy of products that included not just smartphones and tablets but devices like Apple TVs, watches and Google Glass.

More people were turning to these products than those who weren’t, he said.

As such, responsive websites and platforms became paramount, including the space of the auto business in which DealerSocket operates.

In April, that culminated in what DealerSocket referred to as “Mobilegeddon.” With an update to its algorithm, Google detected whether websites were responsive or not, Schinke explained. Those that were could realize lifts in SEO results and those that didn’t offer a strong mobile experience were punished.

So, as Schinke noted in a January interview with Auto Remarketing, not only would not having a strong mobile site hurt you in terms of the consumer not having a good experience, but they might not even see you in the first place.

“You either did it and you were kind of safe, so to speak, or you didn’t and you kind of run the risk of getting run over by those who actually made the shift,” said Schinke, who is director of product management (websites and digital) at DealerSocket.

But as big as this paradigm shift may have been, there’s another one on the horizon, DealerSocket believes.

It involves taking the various digital processes of a dealership that have often operated in silos  — websites, CRM, DMS, inventory tools, etc. — and integrating them to work hand-in-hand. And doing so for the purpose of meeting the needs of consumers, many of whom today want an increasingly digital experience.

“Everything we do is a response to consumer behavior, as it should be, being a consumer market,” Schinke said. “All of these things have lived in these silos and it’s kind of prevented us from adopting processes that are what the consumer’s looking for. You have all these people coming up, trying to disrupt the market — the Beepis, the Carvanas.

“And what they’re doing is getting rid of the silo and bringing all of these things together, so we can provide that experience,” he added.

“So, whether it’s leveraging CRM data to have a better website experience or leveraging inventory data to have better activity in CRM and be able to suggest different vehicles or get proper incentives … it’s breaking down the walls between all these systems that we use and unifying it to allow for a better in-store process, which therefore sells more cars and becomes a much more attractive process,” Schinke continued.

“Otherwise, dealerships run the risk of being disintermediated by these other people that are trying to go the pure e-commerce transactional route,” he added. “By bringing these tools together and leveraging that data between the silos and those products or systems, it will also enable the dealers to be on the leading edge of bringing that e-commerce, or digital retail, if you will, to the consumer.”

And that’s what many, though not all, consumers want, be it from startups, companies like Tesla or even the more traditional OEMs.

“It’s not everybody; but, again, just like mobile, we’re starting to see the majority of people, or a bigger percentage, want to go that route,” he noted. “And so really, making our products come together and have a more intelligent dealership because of it is what I think is coming next.”

As an example on the dealership side of breaking down those silos, Schinke mentions AutoNation, with whom he works closely.

He said the retailer has its own CRM, and is able to send CRM information back to DealerSocket’s website platform — and then the website info goes back to the CRM.

This helps determine, for example, if a consumer has submitted a lead before or if the customer is a returning visitor.

“And then they can show different pricing or AutoNation pricing or enable different incentives from the detecting, using user information to adapt the website behavior,” he said, adding that the back-and-forth exchange allows the retailer to “get true attribution.”

And, say, the dealership is using the DealerSocket CRM and website platforms. The company can provide a similar service and, for instance, notify the dealer that a customer is shopping online and show information about that shopper in the CRM

“So, there’s a billion different ways that it starts to happen, and I think the first wave is the AutoNation and the website-CRM (pairing), which has some inventory implications, as well,” he said.

These trends fit in to DealerSocket’s strategy: simplifying the admittedly complex processes involved in running a dealership to help them respond to the shifting needs of the consumer.

Or, put differently, “connecting the dots” between the consumer life cycle and the vehicle life cycle, Schinke said, and bringing the dealers those services to help accomplish that.

Again, not every shopper is going to want to completely buy that car online and pay without seeing the vehicle or test-driving. There’s a broad range of shopper types, and DealerSocket is aiming to respond to all of them.

By offering “single view of the customer,” the company aims to help dealers accomplish that.  

For example, knowing that a shopper is shopping for service items on website, they could follow up with customer service campaign via or a phone call if they’re looking for a specific vehicle.

“So, again, that doesn’t even have to mean they’re going to buy online or do the online transaction or ecommerce path; we can actually go pre-transaction and start to affect behavior that way,” Schinke said. “And again, it becomes super important because there are people trying to intercept the customer before they even think about taking an action and walking into a dealership or making that phone call.

So, it’s really about more intelligent and contextual relationship-building that we’re enabling with these things.”